Opinion ID: 1958935
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Should the merger doctrine be abolished?

Text: In support of its plea to abolish common law merger, amicus curiae asserts that the Pennsylvania Legislature and Supreme Court have both made known their intentions to do away with the doctrine. Of course, if that were true we would certainly have to reassess the doctrine's continued validity as both rule of statutory construction and common law rule. However, amicus curiae has overstated its case. The argument premised on legislative intent proceeds in part from passage of the 1972 Crimes Code. Although the Code derived largely from the Model Penal Code (1962 rev.), the Legislature failed to adopt Model Penal Code § 1.07 as part of the Crimes Code, an omission which amicus curiae finds significant. Section 1.07 would have prohibited conviction and punishment for both a greater and lesser included offense. The Legislature's rejection of Section 1.07, it is argued, demonstrates its total rejection of the principle of merger. In further support of this novel proposition, amicus curiae maintains that the Legislature has specifically spoken where it intended to prohibit cumulative punishments. Thus, 18 Pa.C.S. § 906 (Multiple convictions barred) forbids multiple convictions for inchoate offenses designed to commit or culminate in commission of the same crime; and id. § 3502(d) prohibits multiple convictions for both burglary and any crime below a felony of the second degree which the burglar intended to commit in the premises entered. This argument addressed to legislative intent overlooks the likely explanation for the Legislature's rejection of Section 1.07 of the Model Penal Code: the General Assembly intended to ratify the common law doctrine of merger as developed in the courts of this Commonwealth; it did not wish to replace the doctrine with a statutory rule of merger containing a legislative definition of greater and lesser included offenses. As the Supreme Court said in a related context, in holding that the new Crimes Code had not abrogated the common law rule that conspiracy does not merge with the completed offense which was the object of the conspiracy: statutes are not presumed to make changes in the rules and principles of the common law or prior existing law beyond what is expressly declared in their provisions. . . . Commonwealth v. Miller, supra, 469 Pa. at 27-28, 364 A.2d at 887. By expressly including Sections 906 and 3502(d) in the Crimes Code, the Legislature adopted a policy of statutory sentencing merger in two specific situations. See Commonwealth v. Lewis, 319 Pa.Super. 33, 465 A.2d 1038 (1983) (§ 906); Commonwealth v. Jefferson, 307 Pa.Super. 18, 452 A.2d 881 (1982) (conviction as used in § 3502(d) refers to judgment of sentence, not verdict). Enactment of these specific provisions does not demonstrate a legislative desire to dispense with the merger doctrine in all other situations. In fact, in Section 6103 of the Code the Legislature has again addressed the issue of sentencing merger, but in this provision has decreed that merger of offenses shall not occur. 18 Pa.C.S. § 6103 (punishment for certain violent crimes committed with firearms does not preclude separate sentence for Uniform Firearms Act violation). Obviously if the Legislature had completely abrogated the doctrine of sentencing merger, passage of Section 6103 to bar merger in one particular instance would be meaningless. Amicus next points out that the Supreme Court in the case of Commonwealth v. Bostic, supra , called into question the validity of the merger doctrine. The assertion is based on the Court's statement that the common law rule of merger,  whatever its current validity may be in the `lesser included offense' area, has no application in the instant situation where the legislature has explicitly manifested its desire to impose an additional sentence on a parallel crime. 500 Pa. at 354 n. 5, 456 A.2d at 1324 n. 5 (emphasis added). This ambiguous pronouncement in Bostic may be nothing more than the Supreme Court's recognition that in the `lesser included offense' area, the merger doctrine is now superfluous because the Double Jeopardy Clause has assumed the role of protecting against multiple punishments for greater and lesser included offenses. In cases not involving greater and lesser included offenses, the Supreme Court has continued to apply common law rules of merger. This holds for cases arising under the 1972 Crimes Code, see Commonwealth v. Smith, supra (burglary and criminal trespass merged); Johnson v. Commonwealth, 499 Pa. 380, 453 A.2d 922 (1982) (rape and indecent assault merged); Commonwealth v. Ayala, supra (attempted robbery merged with aggravated assault), as well as for at least one case decided after Bostic, see Commonwealth v. Lohr, 503 Pa. 130, 468 A.2d 1375 (1983) (no merger of attempted murder and statutory rape). We are thus compelled not to accept amicus curiae's argument that merger has been impliedly abolished. Nor for that matter do we think abolishment of the doctrine advisable, as in our view it continues to serve as a vital restraint on the government's ability to inflict oppressive multiple punishments for what in practical effect was a single offense against the Commonwealth.