Court Opinion

ID: 9750688
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 15:21:32.515495+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:18.149158
License: Public Domain

*684Justice EAKIN,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. As Justice Saylor aptly points out, this was “a general verdict rendered on instructions permitting convictions based on divergent circumstances” which makes the jury’s intent much less clear than the majority suggests. Concurring Op., at 682-688, 39 A.3d at 987-88 (Saylor, J., concurring).
The charges in the informations here were two: (1) criminal attempt by appellant to escape; and (2) conspiracy between appellant and Seretich that they or one of them would escape. Appellant cannot be sentenced on both counts unless the object crimes of the attempt and the conspiracy were different. That is, if the conspiracy encompassed appellant’s escape, he cannot be sentenced separately for attempting that same escape; conversely, if the conspiracy encompassed only the escape of Seretich, a separate sentence for the attempt count, dealing with his own escape, is permissible.
The conspiracy allegation does not differentiate as to whether the conspiracy was for appellant, Seretich, or both to escape. Such a count may certainly be framed broadly, and a finding of any of three objects (appellant’s escape, Seretich’s escape, or the escape of both) would justify conviction of conspiracy. However, if it is framed so broadly, the jury verdict is necessarily as broad and sweeping — one cannot but guess which object of the conspiracy was accepted by the jury. Indeed, it may have found all three objects to be within general conspiracy, or just one — no one can tell. One thing for certain is that the jury did convict for a conspiracy that excluded appellant’s escape. If the jury was allowed to convict appellant of conspiracy to accomplish his own escape — and clearly it was — then the attempt and the conspiracy have the same object crime, the escape of appellant. As such, § 906 precludes sentencing for more than one inchoate crime in that circumstance.
My colleagues accept the argument that despite the charging document, the theory was never that appellant conspired to escape alone — that may be true, but the information and the court’s instructions allowed a conviction for just that. *685Simply because no attorney argued appellant conspired to escape alone does not make that allegation disappear. That may be the theory, but that was not what the prosecution charged, nor did the judge instruct the jury that way. Every element of conspiracy mentioned by the court involved “one or more of them” or “the defendant or the/ other person,” but never was the jury told the conspiracy was limited to Seretich alone. More significantly, it was never told it could not convict appellant of conspiracy to escape by himself.
Here, the conspiracy was charged broadly, and it allowed the jury to convict for an agreement that appellant would escape. To say the jury did not do so is to guess and speculate, which we may not do. The prosecution could have charged appellant with attempt for his escape and conspiracy for Seretich’s escape. It did not. Accordingly, appellant’s separate sentences are prohibited by 18 Pa.C.'S. § 906.