Court Opinion

ID: 9718303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:20:39.719242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:58.296333
License: Public Domain

COOPER, Justice,
concurring.
I concur wholeheartedly with the result reached by the majority in this case. However, I would not characterize the Commonwealth’s evidence as merely creating “a reasonable inference” that Appellant completed service of sentence or was discharged from parole or probation for at least two of his prior felonies within five years of the commission of this offense. The Commonwealth proved that the judgments of conviction and sentences in at least two of Appellant’s prior offenses were entered less than five years before the commission of this offense. Thus, it would have been impossible for him not to have completed service of his sentence or to have been discharged from parole or probation less than five years before the commission of this offense. In fact, one of those prior offenses was committed less than five years before the commission of this offense — and it was committed while Appellant was imprisoned and serving his sentence for another offense. Such evidence is not merely inferential in nature. It is direct evidence which proves the proposition in question beyond any reasonable doubt.
LAMBERT, C.J., and JOHNSTONE, J., join this concurring opinion.