Court Opinion

ID: 9749709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:59:17.659852+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:56.058393
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the majority.
By a “per curiam affirmance,” we are overlooking an opportunity to clarify some very disturbing issues.
By affirming the opinion of the Superior Court, we are reasserting the iron rule of Commonwealth v. Davenport, 471 Pa. 278, 370 A.2d 301 (1977), a rule that would suppress an otherwise constitutionally-obtained statement, because the police were two minutes late in bringing a defendant before a court.
*660By affirming the Superior Court, we are narrowing the application of Commonwealth v. Triplett, 462 Pa. 244, 341 A.2d 62 (1975) and affirming that statements obtained in violation of Davenport may be used to impeach a defendant who offers his testimony at trial. We should go further and ourselves say that the iron six-hour rule of Davenport has created more mischief than it ever cured, and that, in fact, it cannot even cure the mischief to which it was addressed. The Davenport rule had shielded the guilty for no reason relevant to the individual circumstances of their cases. A prophylactic rule, such as the six-hour rule, is a classic of technicality. Classic because it applies to all circumstances, no matter what distinctions of justice may inhere in the facts of a given case. It answers a drum sounding on a different field. We have invoked the rule to prevent one form of illegality, an illegality that can be monitored without subjecting our judicial system to the sorest criticism, when the guilty go free for no reason except an unnecessary and inapplicable rule.
We should reverse Commonwealth v. Triplett in all its meanings and follow the Supreme Court of the United States in Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971), joining the major current of American jurisprudence. Triplett is a license to lie, to commit perjury, to outrage common sense and to make the parties, as well as the courts, conspirators to suppress the known truth of a case. It has not been said better than it was said by the Supreme Court of the United States in Harris v. New York:
The impeachment process here undoubtedly provided valuable aid to the jury in assessing [defendant’s] credibility, and the benefits of this process should not be lost, in our view, because of the speculative possibility that impermissible police conduct will be encouraged Assuming that the exclusionary rule has a deterrent effect on proscribed police conduct, sufficient deterrence flows when the evidence in question is made unavailable to the prosecution in its case in chief.
*661Every criminal defendant is privileged to testify in his own defense, or to refuse to do so. But that privilege cannot be construed to include the right to commit perjury... Having voluntarily taken the stand, [defendant] was under an obligation to speak truthfully and accurately, and the prosecution here did no more than utilize the traditional truth-testing devices of the adversary process.
401 U.S. at 225, 91 S.Ct. at 645.
LARSEN, J., joins in this concurring opinion.