Commonwealth v. Christmas

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• stating that delays caused by the defendant do not count against the Commonwealth
• reviewing cases and noting that “[t]his Court has previously held delays of fifteen months, two years, and four years are not ‘intrinsically reasonable.’” (citations omitted)
• interpreting Rule 708's language requiring a hearing to be held \as speedily as possible\ to mean within a reasonable time
• discussing “speedily as possible” portion of Rule 708(B)(1), and noting that “a court should not attribute to the Commonwealth delays caused by the defendant” (cleaned up)
• “[W]here the Commonwealth provides no explanation for the delay, the court should not attribute the delay to the defendant; instead, the court should analyze whether the delay prejudiced the defendant.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Cited by

2 cases in this archive cite this case.

• Commonwealth v. Simmons
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 2012-11-30· cited 128×
• Com. v. Clayborne, L.
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 2026-03-27

Cites

7 cases in this archive are cited by this case.

• Commonwealth v. Lord
  Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 1998-10-28· cited 1,456×
• Commonwealth v. Castillo
  Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 2005-12-29· cited 725×
• Commonwealth v. Marchesano
  Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 1988-08-10· cited 46×
• Commonwealth v. Clark
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 2004-04-06· cited 34×
• Commonwealth v. Bischof
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 1992-11-02· cited 33×
• Commonwealth v. Woods
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 2009-02-04· cited 25×
• Commonwealth v. Gaus
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 1982-06-04· cited 17×