Court Opinion

ID: 9749693
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:58:35.725951+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:55.739968
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from the Court’s decision, which disregards the jury’s verdict, as well as our own maxim that, upon appeal, the evidence adduced at trial must be viewed in the light most favorable -o the verdict winner. See Commonwealth v. Yost, 478 Pa. 327, 386 A.2d 956, 958-59 (1978); Commonwealth v. Rose, 463 Pa. 264, 267-68, 344 A.2d 824, 825-26 (1975); Commonwealth v. Robson, 461 Pa. 615, 625, 337 A.2d 573, 578 (1975).
The Reverend David Konz, the deceased in this case, was an ordained minister. His ministry was in the academic world: professor, chaplin and counselor at the United Weselyan College. He lived with his wife, appellant Dorothy Konz, and five children in West Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. While in the Marine Corps, he discovered he was a diabetic and for seventeen of his thirty-seven years he required quotidian injections of insulin.
In early March of 1974, Reverend Konz attended an evangelical prayer meeting. At that meeting, he was inspired to believe that his long standing burden of diabetes was lifted. On March 4, 1974, Reverend Konz proclaimed in church his desire to withdraw from insulin and trust in the efficacy of his faith to heal his diabetes.
His academic and religious confreres reminded him of the wisdom that God works through His creation; that Heaven cannot be stormed, God tempted, nor His will substituted. Reverend Konz later assured the president of the college, *651members of the student body and others that he would do nothing foolish, would carefully monitor his condition, and would take insulin, if warranted, during the withdrawal period.
For about three weeks, he put his faith to test and took insulin only once or twice. On March 18, 1974, Reverend Konz and appellant Stephen Erikson, a frequent visitor in the Konz home, made a pact to pray together to enable the decedent to resist the temptation to administer insulin to himself.
At the end of March, the crisis came. Reverend Konz’ symptoms escalated, his resolve yielded and he sought the medicine. It is then that this case took its bizarre twist. Appellants, his companions in prayer, denied him the insulin by removing it from the refrigerator and hiding it. They forced him physically into his bedroom and deliberately ripped out the phone so that he could not call the police, as he threatened, or summon other help. The r made him the unwilling prisoner of the resolve he had ab idoned. Appellants’ determination, their faith and their hope were substituted for his. From the evidence as accepted by the jury, there can be no question that appellants recklessly sacrificed the life of David Konz for their belief. They purposely isolated him and denied him access to help; they watched and ministered to his last extremity and brought ice packs to tide him over the gap between their faith and the miracle. He had pain and vomited. Visitors were told simply that he was resting. Wherever he went, one of the appellants went also. Help, but a needle point away, was discouraged and denied. His eleven year-old daughter, a witness to his forceable imprisonment, asked why a physician was not summoned. Reverend Konz died at 6:00 a. m. on Monday, March 25,1974, the victim of a ruthless, reckless determination that he be cured.1
*652The majority has adopted the view that Reverend Konz died because he wanted to; that this careful father of five children, whose last visit to the world was to take his daughter shopping for shoes, simply died for a blessing he knew had failed. Unless the rule that the verdict-winner is entitled to all favorable inferences has meaning only in weariness or whim, the verdict of the jury in this case must be sustained. The jury resolved against appellants all the inferences now adopted in appellants’ favor by the majority.2 They saw and heard all the evidence and, under an appropriate and lawful charge by the trial court, they found appellants guilty of involuntary manslaughter, as set forth in Section 2504 of the Crimes Code:
A person is guilty of involuntary manslaughter when as a direct result of the doing of an unlawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner, he causes the death of another person.
18 Pa.C.S.A. § 2504. I believe that, on the evidence recited above, the jury could properly have found that the affirmative actions of appellants in purposely depriving Reverend Konz of his life-sustaining insulin, in violently restraining his attempts to obtain assistance, and in deliberately isolating him from others from whom he might have sought aid satisfies the factual requirements of Section 2504.3 The jury was certainly not obliged to view the situation as the majority chooses to frame it, i.e., that there could be no “conclusion other than that the Reverend ... became firmly resolved to *653abstain from the administration of insulin,” regardless of the consequences. At 643.4
The majority’s “inescapable” conclusion is rendered all the more astonishing in light of the charge of the trial judge, who put the issue squarely before the jury:
In this regard it is the law that a rational person has a right to refuse medical treatment, and he has a right to refuse it for any reason whatsoever, and that includes religious convictions. If Reverend Konz did refuse treatment or did not want treatment and refused the taking of insulin and that this was his choice, the defendants are clearly entitled to a verdict of not guilty. And on this point I charge you it is incumbent upon the Commonwealth to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Reverend Konz did so refuse ....
Notes of Testimony at 460-61 (emphasis supplied). The jury’s verdict demonstrates without a doubt that it did not credit the proposition, upon which the majority relies, that Reverend Konz chose to forgo insulin and medical treatment. This court is in no position to second-guess the fact-finder on such a clear issue of fact.5
It does not matter what the relationship between appellants and decedent may have been, spouse or friend, in the real world beyond the situation precipitating the crisis which cost Reverend Konz his life. What appellants’ duties might be under different circumstances or in another context is not relevant. Appellants created their own circumstances and context and lived them out in a reckless, even ruthless, fashion. They did not simply stand by while Reverend Konz *654expired.6 Despite the majority’s creative re-interpretation of the facts, the record shows deliberate steps taken by appellants to keep from Reverend Konz the vital substance which he needed and wanted to save his life. The jury, having been carefully instructed as to the elements of involuntary manslaughter, properly could have found on this record that appellants’ actions were reckless or grossly negligent and that they directly caused Reverend Konz’ death. No more is required to sustain a conviction under Section 2504.7
I would affirm the order of the Superior Court, reinstating the jury’s verdict.
LARSEN, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

. Although Dorothy Konz was aware of her husband’s death as early as 7:30 a. m. Monday, she did not attempt to notify the authorities until 5:00 p. m.

. See Commonwealth v. Yost, 478 Pa. 327, 332, 386 A.2d 956, 958-59 (1978); Commonwealth v. Rose, 463 Pa. 264, 267-68, 344 A.2d 824, 825-26 (1975); Commonwealth v. Robson, 461 Pa. 615, 625, 337 A.2d 573, 578 (1975).

. Until today, it was well-settled that the jury is entitled to believe all, part or none of the evidence presented to it. Commonwealth v. Tyler, 495 Pa. 662, 435 A.2d 1212 (1981); Commonwealth v. Brown, 491 Pa. 507, 421 A.2d 660 (1980); Commonwealth v. Simmons, 482 Pa. 496, 394 A.2d 431 (1978); Commonwealth v. Rose, 463 Pa. 264, 344 A.2d 824 (1975); Commonwealth v. Williams, 450 Pa. 158, 299 A.2d 643 (1973).

. The majority draws its “inescapable” conclusion that Reverend Konz chose “to forgo treatment” from thin air. See At 643. There is nothing whatsoever in the record to suggest that Reverend Konz stopped taking insulin in order to end his life, or even that he preferred death to life as a diabetic. In fact, the evidence is strongly to the contrary.

. There appears to be no indication that the jurors failed to understand the trial court’s instructions or that they did not properly perform their duty. The majority’s decision to substitute its own version of the facts for the jury’s is utterly unwarranted.

. The jury’s verdict shows that we are not presented here with a case concerning the right to die or euthanasia or “mercy-killing,” in which appellants simply acquiesced in Reverend Konz’ decision to die. Nor is this a situation in which appellants merely failed to seek medical assistance for the deceased. The jury faced these issues squarely and resolved them against appellants.

. Indeed, in less charitable hands the charge might have risen higher than involuntary manslaughter.