Opinion ID: 2086402
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Failure to Object to Admission of Appellant's Unsigned Statement

Text: First, Appellant argues that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the admission of his unsigned statement to police, either as hearsay or as the fruit of an illegal arrest. Appellant's hearsay argument relies on Commonwealth v. Cooley, 484 Pa. 14, 398 A.2d 637 (1979). In Cooley, the Commonwealth called a police detective to testify to the contents of interview sheets on which he recorded the defendant's statement. Neither the detective nor the defendant had signed or initialed the interview sheets, and the Commonwealth failed to establish that [the defendant] ever adopted the writing on the interview sheets as his own statement. Cooley, 398 A.2d at 640-41. Thus, this Court held that the detective's testimony should have been excluded as hearsay. The case at bar, however, is distinguishable from Cooley, because here the Commonwealth did establish that Appellant adopted the statement as his own. Philadelphia Police Detective Harrison Graham testified that after Appellant gave his statement to Detective Ernest Gilbert and refused to sign it, Detective Graham and another officer read Appellant's statement back to him verbatim. At that time, Appellant told Detective Graham, It's what I said, but I'm not going to sign it. Thus, notwithstanding the fact that Appellant refused to sign it, the statement constituted an admission by Appellant, and thus it was admissible. See Commonwealth v. Duncan, 473 Pa. 62, 373 A.2d 1051 (1977); Commonwealth v. Darden, 311 Pa.Super. 170, 457 A.2d 549 (1983). Consequently, trial counsel cannot be deemed ineffective for failing to object to the admission of the statement. Appellant further argues that his arrest was illegal because the affidavit of probable cause was based on the statement of an unreliable witness, Baker. This argument has no merit. Baker's statement was reliable, and other witnesses corroborated it. Trial counsel was not ineffective for declining to raise this meritless issue.