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Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 12/22/1989

Commonwealth v. Marshall

Citations

  • 568 A.2d 590
  • 523 Pa. 556
  • 1989 Pa. LEXIS 412

How courts have described this case

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

  • prosecutor’s closing reference to appellant as a “systematic, brutal, calculating killer” was justifiable response to the defense argument that appellant was less culpable due to mental deficiencies
  • permissible to refer to defendant as “a systematic, brutal, calculating killer.”
  • prosecutor’s reference to defendant’s possession of stolen items taken from murder victims’ apartment was not prosecutorial misconduct, where evidence of the items was admissible and prosecutor’s remarks contained fair deductions and legitimate inferences to be drawn from the evidence
  • “When faced with a conflict of testimony, we defer to the suppression court, which, as fact[-]finder, passes upon credibility of witnesses, and its findings are not disturbed when supported by the record.”
  • immediate instruction diffused any prejudice where mother of deceased interrupted homicide trial with emotional outburst, but trial court cautioned the jury to ignore outburst and to decide case exclusively on facts and not on sympathy, emotion, or prejudice
  • “When faced with … a conflict of testimony, we defer to the suppression court, which, as fact finder, passes upon the credibility of witnesses, and its findings are not disturbed when supported by the record.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Papadakos, Nix, Larsen, Flaherty, McDermott

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

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

Cites

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

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Sourced from CourtListener / Free Law Project (CC0).

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