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Commonwealth v. Smith

Citations

  • 995 A.2d 1143
  • 606 Pa. 127
  • 2010 Pa. LEXIS 1142

How courts have described this case

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

  • holding permissible a prosecutor’s statement, that the defense expert was a “hired gun,” where the credibility of his testimony was called into doubt during cross-examination, and where he testified that he primarily worked as a defense expert
  • recognizing a public defender may not argue ineffectiveness of another attorney in the same public defender’s office, as the subsequent attorney, “in essence, is deemed to have asserted a claim of his or her own ineffectiveness.” (citation omitted, emphasis added)
  • assessing reasonableness of trial attorney’s stewardship under prevailing professional norms at time of representation
  • not all confessions or admissions secured from illegally arrested persons are per se inadmissible as trial evidence
  • “[I]neffectiveness claims are distinct from claims raised on direct appeal, and must be treated as wholly independent of underlying claim of error.”
  • prosecutor's 30 statements that defense expert was a \hired gun\ was fair comment where the expert had only testified for the defense

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Castille, Saylor, Eakin, Baer, Todd, McCaffery, Melvin

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

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

Cites

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

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