Court Opinion

ID: 9706719
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:50:25.142158+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:41:29.169407
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Roberts :
Accepting appellant’s argument that his conviction for larceny of the decedent’s automobile operates as an acquittal of any higher, necessarily included offense of robbery, he still may be found guilty of first degree murder on the basis of the felony-murder doctrine. Section 701 of The Penal Code of 1939, Act of June 24, 1939, P. L. 872, as amended, 18 P.S. §4701, requires only that the killing “be committed in the perpetration of” any of the enumerated felonies. (Emphasis supplied.) Appellant’s argument, however, rests upon the assumption that a prerequisite for the ap*10plication of tbe felony-murder doctrine is tbe ability of tbe Commonwealth to convict the prisoner of one of the statutorily named felonies.1 I can find no such requirement in our cases; and, given the above statutory language, I would not adopt such a requirement. The evidence produced by the Commonwealth was sufficient to demonstate that Yarnal killed Blair during the perpetration of a robbery; that Yarnal could not now be convicted for commission of this robbery is statutorily irrelevant.
However, I disagree with the majority’s treatment of the sheriff’s testimony relating to Yarnal’s re-enactment of the crime. It is necessary to begin with the now well established premise that “ ‘a defendant who has pleaded guilty to murder . . . [does not waive] the right to object to the admission of improper evidence which Avill bear on the degree of guilt and the punishment to be imposed.’ ” Commonwealth v. Garrett, 425 Pa. 594, 597, 229 A. 2d 922, 924 (1987). Under our decision in Commonwealth v. Schmidt, 423 Pa. 432, 224 A. 2d 625 (1966),2 as amplified by later cases, testimony as to the re-enactment was inadmissible. We there *11held that in a trial commenced after Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S. Ct. 1758 (1964) but prior to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S. Ct. 1602 (1966), as was Yarnal’s “an individual is not unconstitutionally deprived of the assistance of counsel during police questioning, unless he requested such assistance and was not effectively warned of his right to remain silent.”3 423 Pa. at 440, 224 A. 2d at 629. I believe that Yarnal’s statements were sufficient to constitute a request for assistance of counsel.4 Since Yarnal requested counsel, under Escobedo the sheriff was required to procure such assistance before either further questioning or a re-enactment was constitutionally permissible. This is made clear by the last sentence of Escobedo (378 U.S. at 492, 84 S. Ct. at 1766) : “We hold only that when the process shifts from investigatory to accusatory—when its focus is on the accused and its purpose is to elicit a confession—our adversary system begins to operate, and, under the circumstances here, the accused must be permitted to consult with his lawyer.” See also Commonwealth v. Medina, 424 Pa. 632, 227 A. 2d 842 (1967). That *12Escobedo was apparently not warned of his right to remain silent and Yarnal was, is, to me, of no moment. To hold otherwise would be the equivalent of stating that when an accused chooses to exercise his right of silence by consulting with an attorney he can be deprived of that right because he has been told he can remain silent. Simply, a request for an attorney is an exercise of the right of silence—to give the requisite warning yet not permit an accused to benefit by the warning is. tantamount to have given no warning at all.
Yarnal was without doubt the subject of police attempts to elicit a confession. His request for an attorney was not honored and thus in my view the reenactment is inadmissible. I thus turn to the question of whether use at the guilty plea proceedings of Yarnal’s re-enactment can be deemed harmless error. See Commonwealth v. Padgett, 428 Pa. 229, 287 A. 2d 209 (1968).
My difficulty with the majority’s approach to the harmless error issue centers about its statement that the propriety of the sheriff’s testimony need not be treated since “the testimony of other witnesses -was-more than legally sufficient to support the court’s finding that Yarnal’s killing of Blair was willful, deliberate and premeditated murder.” Placed in its proper context, this statement results in nothing short of an overruling of our recent decision in Commonwealth v. Pearson, 427 Pa. 45, 233 A. 2d 552 (1967). We held in Pearson (quoting from Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85, 86, 84 S. Ct. 229, 230 (1963)) that, when dealing with errors of constitutional magnitude, “[Av]e are not concerned here with whether there was sufficient evidence on which the petitioner could have been .convicted without the evidence complained of.”. 427 Pa. at 49, 233 A. 2d at 554. There can be no doubt, in my view, that admission of the sheriff’s testimony *13was constitutional error. Yet the majority blithely asserts that this error need not trouble us because there was sufficient untainted evidence to support the conviction, a proposition explicitly rejected by a unanimous Court in Pearson.5 Use of this re-enactment, one which violates the dictates of Escobedo, is not harmless and requires a reversal.6
I dissent.
Mr. Justice Jones joins in this dissenting opinion.

 Had appellant been tried and acquitted for the robbery of the car, then perhaps in that case a felony-murder conviction based upon the robbery would be improper. However, where appellant was never in fact prosecuted for the robbery, his larceny conviction should not be a bar to a felony-murder conviction. AVere the rule, otherwise, to obtain a felony-murder conviction the Commonwealth would be forced to obtain a conviction for the underlying felony before the murder prosecution could be successfully concluded.

My citation of Schmidt in no way constitutes an abandonment of the views I expressed in my dissenting opinion in that case. See 423 Pa. at 442-45, 224 A. 2d at 630-32. Thus, although I continue to adhere to the belief that this Court’s rejection in Schmidt of the holding of Commonwealth v. Negri, 419 Pa. 117, 213 A. 2d 670 (1965) was both unnecessary and erroneous, Yarnal entered his plea in March of 1965, six months prior to Negri making the holding in that case inapplicable.

 See also Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 733-34, 86 S. Ct. 1772, 1781 (1966). Appellant does not contend that his reenactment was involuntary so that we are not called upon to decide what impact the absence of counsel should have upon such a contention. Compare id. at 730, 86 S. Ct. at 1779.

 Sheriff Jeffries, in response to a question whether Yarnal and his co-defendant, Clark, had been asked whether they had obtained counsel, stated: “Their response was they didn’t have counsel but both were going to have attorneys. Mr. Yarnal said his brothers would get him an attorney; and Mr. Clark, his uncle, Wilson Clark, would get an attorney for him.” The fact that a request for counsel couched in language of utmost specificity is not made and refused does not mean that the prisoner cannot meet the Schmidt requirement that a request for counsel be made. I believe that Yarnal’s statement that he was going to obtain an attorney is a sufficient request and would thus hold the re-enactment testimony inadmissible.

 It is, of course, not within the province of this Court to overrule Pearson, for that decision is based totally upon Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S. Ct. 824 (1967). In Chapman, the Supreme Court of the United States held that its harmless error rule was, under the supremacy clause, a constitutional imperative for state courts.

 The Indiana County district attorney’s brief in this case is not printed although, at oral argument, he stated that printed briefs would be filed within 20 days. Printed briefs have not been filed. To the best of my knowledge Indiana County has sufficient funds to print briefs (and, in any event, has not filed a petition with this Court to dispense with a printed, brief). I, therefore, fail to understand why Rule 43, requiring printed briefs, has been ignored; nor can I pass without comment the district attorney’s failure to file printed briefs after he had so promised during oral argument.