Title: Commonwealth v. Ingram

State: pennsylvania

Issuer: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Document:

467 Pa. 581 (1976) 359 A.2d 754 COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. Derek INGRAM (two cases). Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Submitted January 12, 1976. Decided July 6, 1976. *582 F. Emmett Fitzpatrick, Dist. Atty., Steven H. Goldblatt, Asst. Dist. Atty., Chief, Appeals Div., for appellant. Stanley W. Bluestine, Philadelphia, for appellee. Before JONES, C.J., and EAGEN, O'BRIEN, ROBERTS, POMEROY, NIX and MANDERINO, JJ. PER CURIAM. Order of the court below vacating judgment of sentence and granting a new trial is affirmed. ROBERTS, J., filed a concurring opinion in which O'BRIEN and MANDERINO and NIX, JJ., joined. ROBERTS, Justice (concurring). This is an appeal by the Commonwealth from a grant of post-conviction relief (1) vacating appellee's 1972 guilty plea which was the basis of his conviction of murder in the second degree and (2) granting him a new trial. The PCHA court's decision was based on its determination that appellee was ineffectively assisted by counsel when his plea was entered. This Court, by per curiam order, affirms that decision. I concur. Decedent in this case was an innocent bystander at the scene of a juvenile gang confrontation. He was killed by a single gunshot while leaving his parked car. Appellee, a sixteen year old male with an IQ of 82, was arrested the following day and, after a period of interrogation which lasted approximately eight hours, gave an uncounseled written statement to the police. Court appointed counsel filed a motion to suppress the statement. Before a hearing could be held, however, he was replaced by privately retained counsel. Testimony at the hearing on the PCHA petition established that retained counsel, Neil Carver, met with appellee only twice before his guilty plea was entered. The first meeting took place immediately before the hearing on the motion to suppress and lasted approximately 5 minutes. The motion to suppress was denied. The second and last meeting took place the day appellee's trial on a charge of murder was to begin. Appellee, *584 rather than face a jury trial, pled guilty. Appellee had not discussed such a plea with any member of his family before the day of the trial. Testimony at the PCHA hearing revealed that appellee's retained counsel advised him to plead guilty as the only alternative to a jury trial, failed to interview any of the persons named by appellee as witnesses to the killing, failed in any other way to investigate the crime, failed to explain both appellee's rights and the Commonwealth's burdens at a trial as well as the nature and elements of the various degrees of homicide for which appellee could be found guilty, and failed to recognize that his inability to communicate with appellee placed him in a poor position from which to defend his client. The PCHA court found this to be ineffective assistance of trial counsel, stating: In view of defendant's refusal to admit his guilt to counsel, or to the psychiatrists who examined him after his plea was accepted, his assertion that the statement made to the police was the product of fear and coercion and was not true, and counsel's inability to communicate with his client, the PCHA court found that the decision to plead guilty, even though the crime was stipulated by the Commonwealth, as a result of a plea bargain, to rise no higher than second degree murder, was not a course of conduct which had "some reasonable basis designed to effectuate his client's interests." Commonwealth ex rel. Washington v. Maroney, 427 Pa. 599, 604, 235 A.2d 349, 352 (1967) (emphasis in original). Instead, the trial court found that: *586 As a consequence, the PCHA court ordered that the judgment of sentence entered on the guilty plea obtained while appellee was being ineffectively assisted by counsel must be vacated. I agree. O'BRIEN, NIX and MANDERINO, JJ., join in this concurring opinion.