Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 11/22/1994

Commonwealth v. Ford

Citations

650 A.2d 433
539 Pa. 85
1994 Pa. LEXIS 637

How courts have described this case

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

concluding that defense counsel’s questions eliciting the defendant’s past adjustments to life in prison opened the door to evidence of the defendant’s criminal record
specific intent to commit crime may be established through defendant's words or acts, or circumstantial evidence, considered with all reasonable inferences from that evidence
where the defendant opens the evidentiary door to his past criminal conduct, the Commonwealth may cross-examine on that point
“When charged with a capital offense, a defendant’s right to be present at his own trial is transformed into an obligation because of the gravity of the potential outcome.”
defendant’s prior criminal record is not admissible as evidence but if defendant opens an evidentiary door concerning his past criminal record, then Commonwealth is allowed to cross-examine on that issue
defendant's prior criminal record is not admissible as evidence but if defendant opens an evidentiary door concerning his past criminal record, then Commonwealth is allowed to cross-examine on that issue

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Nix, Flaherty, Zappala, Papadakos, Cappy, Castille, Montemuro

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Cited by

36 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

30 cases in this archive are cited by this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

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