Source: http://pa.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19601201_0040579.PA.htm/qx
Timestamp: 2017-01-20 06:10:07
Document Index: 200032344

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2', '§ 152', '§ 88', '§ 60', '§ 9', '§ 734']

| COMMONWEALTH v. LADD (12/01/60)
COMMONWEALTH v. LADD (12/01/60)
COMMONWEALTHv.LADD, APPELLANT.
[ 402 Pa. Page 166]
The only Pennsylvania authority is Commonwealth v. Evaul, 5 Pa. D. & C. 105 (1924), when Judge GORDON assumed that the rule existed in Pennsylvania in cases of felonious homicide but refused to extend it to the misdemeanor of involuntary manslaughter, which was the case he had before him. However, he mentioned the existence of confusion over the nature of the rule and cited Heydon's Case, 4 Coke's Reports 41, where the time was held to run from the death and not from the stroke.
We are of course concerned with the date of May 14, 1776, when such of the common and statutory law of England as had theretofore been in force in the province of Pennsylvania became the law of the Commonwealth by the Act of January 28, 1777, 1 Sm. L. 429, § 2; 46 PS § 152.
[ 402 Pa. Page 167]
Only one writer throws doubt on the doctrine that the year and a day rule runs from the stroke in prosecutions for murder and from the death in appeals of
[ 402 Pa. Page 168]
death. This is Sir Edward Coke, 3 "Institutes of Laws of England", Chapter VII. On page 47 he states the rule as follows: "Murder is when a man of sound memory, and of the age of discretion, unlawfully killeth within any county of the realm any reasonable creature in rerum natura under the king's peace, with malice forethought, either expressed by the party, or implied by law, so as the party wounded, or hurt, &c. die of the wound, or hurt, &c. within a year and a day after the same."
Then at page 53 this occurs: "But seeing the year and day in the case of murder and homicide, must be accounted apres le fait, after the deed, if a man be stricken or poisoned, etc. the first day of January, and he dieth of that stroke or poison the first day of May, whether shall the year and day be accounted after the stroke or poison given, or after the death? and it shall be accounted after the death, for then the man was murdered, and not after the stroke or poison given, &c. both in the indictment at the suit of the king, and in the appeal at the suit of the party. And so it hath been often adjudged..." (Emphasis added.)
In the United States whatever confusion there may have been was put at rest by the Supreme Court in Louisville E. & St. L.R.R. Co. v. Clarke, 152 U.S. 230 (1894), 14 S. Ct. 579, where Mr. Justice HARLAN said: "Ought we to allow this obvious construction of the statute to be defeated by any rule recognized at common law as controlling upon an inquiry as to the cause of death in cases of murder, appeals of death, or inquisitions against deodands?
"In cases of murder the rule at common law undoubtedly was that no person should be adjudged, 'by
[ 402 Pa. Page 169]
any act whatever, to kill another, who does not die by it within a year and a day thereafter, in computation whereof the whole day on which the hurt was done shall be reckoned first.' 1 Hawk, P.C. c. 13; 2 Hawk, P.C. c. 23, § 88; 4 Bl. Comm. 197, 306."
Among the States only a few have classified the rule as being one of evidence, procedure, or pleading, on the one hand, or as being part of the definition of murder or as an essential element of it or as a matter of substance, on the other. In the following cases the court has explicitly held the rule to be one of evidence or procedure: People v. Clark, 106 Cal. App. 2d 271, 235 P. 2d 56 (Cal. 1951); Head v. State, 68 Ga. App. 759, 24 S.E. 2d 145 (1943); Elliott v. Mills, 335 P. 2d 1104
[ 402 Pa. Page 170]
(Okla. 1959); Nevada v. Huff, 11 Nev. 17 (1876). In Head v. State, supra, (68 Ga. App. 759), the Court of Appeals of Georgia said: "However, the question before us is not one of offense, but one of procedure and evidence...
"The courts of all the States that have dealt with the question... have with one accord held that unless death results within a year and a day from the date of the infliction of the mortal wound it is not criminal homicide.... The reasoning followed by the courts in the majority of the jurisdictions will be found well expressed in State v. Dailey, 191 Ind. 678, 134 N.E. 481, 20 A.L.R. 1006, supra.... For decisions of other States following the majority view see Howard v. State, 24 Ala. App. 512, 137 So. 532; Roberts v. State, 17 Ariz. 159(2), 149 P. 380; Kee v. State, 28 Ark. 155; People v. Kelly, 6 Cal. 210; State v. Bantley, 44 Conn. 537, 26 Am. Rep. 486; People v. Corder, 306 Ill. 264, 137 N.E. 845; Epps v. State, 102 Ind. 539, 1 N.E. 491; Rose v. Commonwealth, 156 Ky. 817, 162 S.W. 107; State v. Conley, 39 Me. 78; Commonwealth v. Snell, 189 Mass. 12, 75 N.E. 75, 3 L.R.A., N.S., 1019; State v. Keerl, 29 Mont. 508, 75 P. 362, 101 Am. St. Rep. 579; Debney v. State, 45 Neb. 856, 64 N.W. 446, 34 L.R.A. 851; Bowen v. State, 1 Ore. 270; Hardin v. State, 4 Tex. App. 355; Clark v. Commonwealth, 90 Va. 360(4), 18 S.E. 440; State v. Phillips, 59 Wash. 252, 109 P. 1047; Ball v. United States, 140 U.S. 118, 11 S. Ct. 761, 35 L. Ed. 377."
To these can be added, to show the extent of the rule in the United States: State v. Moore, 196 La. 617, 199 So. 661 (1941); Chapman v. People, 39 Mich. 357 (1878); State v. Borders, 199 S.W. 180 (Mo. 1917); State v. Orrell, 12 N.C. (1 Dev. L.) 139, 17 A.D. 563 (1826); Percer v. State, 118 Tenn. 765, 103 S.W. 780 (1907); and State v. Spadoni, 243 P. 854, 137 Wash. 684 (1926).
[ 402 Pa. Page 171]
The following states have statutory requirements: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware,
[ 402 Pa. Page 172]
Idaho, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Utah.
[ 402 Pa. Page 173]
A good reason for the rule appears in Warren on Homicide (1938), Vol. 1, § 60, where the author says, quoting Coke: "... if the person alleged to have been murdered 'die after that time, it cannot be discerned, as the law presumes, whether he died of the stroke, or poison, etc., or a natural death, and in case of life, a rule of law ought to be certain.'"
We can take judicial notice of the far advance since 1776 of scientific crime detection and of scientific medicine. We are not dealing with any of the basic and living rights of a defendant, like the right to confront his accuser, the right to be presumed innocent, or the right to due process of law. A rule becomes dry when its supporting reason evaporates: cessante ratione legis cessat lex. There is now no more reason for a rule of a year and a day than there is for one of a hundred days or a thousand and one nights. The rule, as the New York Court of Appeals said in People v. Brengard, supra (265 N.Y. 100), is an "arbitrary span of time which was fixed by the common law", and this was because of the limited medical knowledge of the times.
A modern rule should be based on causation in the light of current knowledge. Society is free to prosecute murders without a statutory limitation, and it is possible
[ 402 Pa. Page 174]
that evidence and witnesses may be lost during a long interval between crime and trial. It is therefore not a strange idea to put no restriction of time upon the death of the victim and to require only proof of causation of conventional quality at the trial.
If the common law cannot change it cannot live. In Commonwealth v. Hess, 148 Pa. 98 (1892), we said: "If the great mass of legal principles, which has descended to us under the name of the common law, were composed only of iron-clad rules, it would be wholly unsuited to the present age and generation, and the great changes which have taken place, not only in the volume of business, but in the mode of conducting it. We are constantly applying the accepted principles of the common law to new phases and modes of doing business. This is a necessity, alike dictated by common sense and the necessities of trade..."
And in Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 263 Pa. 158 (1919), 106 A. 238; affirmed 43 S. Ct. 9, 260 U.S. 22, we said: "The fundamental principles of the common law, while liable to expansion, are in essence unchangeable, but their applicability to given conditions necessarily varies according to changes wrought by usage or statutory enactment; and, pursuing this thought, what today is a trespass, may, by development of law, not be so tomorrow...."
Our conclusion is that we may change a common law rule of evidence without being guilty of judicial legislation
[ 402 Pa. Page 175]
and abolish it when we are aware that modern conditions have moved beyond it and left it sterile.
We are all agreed that the crucial question is whether the year and a day rule is part of the present law of Pennsylvania. Mr. Justice BOK and Mr. Justice MUSMANNO have made an exhaustive review of common law murder.*fn1 I agree with Justice BOK's conclusion,
[ 402 Pa. Page 176]
but I reach that conclusion by a very different route. From my examination of the authorities I am convinced that the year and a day rule was, at common law, part and parcel - and an absolutely essential indispensable part and parcel - of the substantive law of murder: Statutes of Gloucester, 6 Edward I, Ch. 9 (1278); Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice of England, 3rd Institutes of Laws of England, Ch. VII, page 52 (Circa 1620); IV Blackstone's Commentaries, Ch. 14, page 197; Hawkins "Pleas of the Crown", Vol. 1, 8th Ed. (1824), Ch. 13, § 9, page 93; Stephens' History of the Criminal Law of England, Vol. 3, pages 7, 8; Russell's Law of Crimes, 7th Ed., page 690; Halsbury's Laws of England, Vol. 9, 2nd Ed., § 734, page 428; Chitty, The Criminal Law, Vol. 3, page 276; Wharton's American Criminal Law, ...