Court Opinion

ID: 9750072
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:17:04.140953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:02.421673
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Nix :
I continue to disagree with this Court’s determination that in order to attack a guilty plea on the ground that it was induced by an unconstitutionally obtained confession the three-pronged test formulated in Commonwealth v. Marsh, 440 Pa. 590, 271 A. 2d 481 (1970) , must be met.1 As I noted in Commonwealth v. Taylor, *346449 Pa. 345, 351-52, 296 A. 2d 823, 826 (1972) (dissenting opinion by Nix, J., in which Roberts, J., and Manderino, J., joined): “In my view, the additional requirement now imposed under Marsh [that the entry of the plea was incompetently advised] effectively prevents a defendant from challenging a coerced confession in a collateral proceeding where a plea was entered at trial. Even though the record may clearly establish that the confession was obtained in violation of constitutional mandates and did primarily motivate the guilty plea, remedy will be denied, as in the case at bar, because of the defendant’s inability to establish that the advice to enter the plea was in fact incompetent. . . . [W]here there has been a pretrial determination of the admissibility of the disputed confession adverse to the defendant,2 it is impossible to establish that the advice to enter a plea is incompetent except perhaps in the rare instances where the suppression ruling is patently erroneous. In the normal situation, where there is some basis for the ruling and the confession is damaging (as is usually the case), there is then a reasonable basis for an attorney to suggest the entry of a guilty plea.”3
However, since my review of the record convinces me that appellant’s confession was not the primary motivation for the guilty plea, I believe that the majority properly rejected appellant’s attempt to vacate his guilty plea due to an unconstitutional confession. Even before the decision in Commonwealth v. Marsh, supra, *347the law in. this Commonwealth did not permit a defendant who had entered a guilty plea at trial to collaterally challenge an allegedly coerced confession unless he could prove that his plea was primarily motivated by the confession. See Commonwealth v. Baity, 428 Pa. 306, 237 A. 2d 172 (1968) ; Commonwealth v. Garrett, 425 Pa. 594, 229 A. 2d 922 (1967).4
I, therefore, concur in the result.
Mr. Justice Roberts joins in this concurring opinion.

 In Marsh it was established that in attacking a guilty plea allegedly based on an unconstitutional confession the appellant must demonstrate: (1) that the confession was unconstitutionally *346obtained; (2) that the confession was the primary motivation for the guilty plea; and (3) that the entry of the plea was on incompetent advice of counsel.

 in the instant case, the constitutionality of the confession had been challenged before the entry of the plea.

 It is interesting to note that in the case at bar a primary basis for the majority’s conclusion that defense counsel had a reasonable basis for advising his client to plead guilty was “the denial of a motion to suppress the confession. . . .”

 I also agree that the record before us fails to establish that the confession was constitutionally infirm.