Opinion ID: 2289965
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Raymond Kremer, with him Alexander Brodsky, for appellant.

Text: Martin H. Belsky, Assistant District Attorney, with him James D. Crawford, Deputy District Attorney, Richard A. Sprague, First Assistant District Attorney, and Arlen Specter, District Attorney, for Commonwealth, appellee. OPINION BY MR. JUSTICE POMEROY, May 13, 1971: This is a direct appeal from a judgment of sentence following a jury trial and a conviction of murder in the second degree. Appellant Camm, age 21, and one John Bytoff were charged with murder, aggravated robbery, burglary and conspiracy in connection with the death by suffocation of George Koffke, aged 94 in July, 1966. The trials of the two accused were severed, and Camm was tried on the murder charge only. The primary evidence against Camm was a confession which he gave about 15 hours after Koffke had been found dead in Koffke's home. [1] The issues to be resolved on this appeal all involve the confession in one way or another and are as follows: 1. Should the confession have been suppressed as involuntary? 2. The appellant having taken the stand to deny the voluntariness of the confession, was prejudicial error committed by Commonwealth questioning which went beyond the voluntariness issue, thus causing defendant repeatedly to claim his privilege against self-incrimination? 3. Was the district attorney's comment to the jury that appellant had not testified on the merits a violation of the privilege against self-incrimination, and if so was it prejudicial? 4. Was certain testimony as to the results of a polygraph test, bearing on how the confession was obtained, so prejudicial as to require granting appellant's motion for mistrial? 5. Did the trial court err in its instruction as to a need for unanimity by the jury in accepting the confession as evidence? We answer these questions in the negative, and affirm the judgment below.