Court Opinion

ID: 9756225
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:16:04.608178+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:16.603359
License: Public Domain

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Bell :
On December 15, 1945, the brutally beaten bodies of two men, Charles Simmons, owner of the Ace Broom Factory, and Frank Endres, his employee, were found lying in pools of blood on the floor of the Ace Broom Factory on North 2nd Street, Philadelphia. Both died of their wounds without regaining consciousness. The murders occurred in the perpetration of a robbery.
Turner, one of the three self-confessed murderers, has been convicted five times of murder in the first degree — four times with sentence of death, the present time with life imprisonment. Turner, after each conviction, was granted a new trial because of trial errors.
Never before — until today — has this Court or any Court held that the Commonwealth’s evidence was insufficient — or even intimated that it might be insufficient — to make out a prima facie case of murder of the first degree. Today, for the first time, the majority declares that the Commonwealth’s evidence in this trial was not legally siofficient to prove defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of murder or of any crime whatsoever.
The majority’s present conclusion is to me incomprehensible, but equally startling and incomprehensible is the method by which it arrives at this conclusion. *268Lofton had pleaded guilty to murder, but was sentenced only to life imprisonment because he was the look-out. When Turner was taken to the scene of the homicides, and his two confederates, Johnson and Lofton, reenacted the murders of Simmons and Endres, in the commission of which crimes they assigned Turner the major role, he made no denial of their accusations but stood mute. Lofton testified against and implicated Turner in his second and third trials but now* repudiates his written confession and his oral confession, and his former testimony, and even his own plea of guilty under which he has served 10 years of his sentence of life imprisonment. Turner repudiated his written and oral confessions of guilt; and his prior written confession of guilt was held inadmissible by the Supreme Court of the United States in Turner v. Pennsylvania, 338 U.S. 62, and his oral admission of guilt was held inadmissible by this Court in Commonwealth v. Turner, 371 Pa. 417, 88 A. 2d 915, because (in each of those cases) his written and oral confessions of guilt were made as a result of interrogation by the police which amounted to coercion and a denial of due process. Even if it be assumed that the Commonwealth’s substantive evidence to connect Turner with the brutal murder of Simmons and Endres consisted only of the testimony of two detective witnesses, O’Mahoney and Thompson, it is amply sufficient, under a myriad prior decisions of this Court, to justify a finding of guilty of first degree murder.
Turner was arrested with one Jasper Johnson on June 3, 1946. This Court in Commonwealth v. Turner, 371 Pa., supra, said (page 421) : “. . . in order to connect him with the commission of the crime, the Com*269monwealth relied upon the testimony of Lofton and that of two police detectives, Thompson and O’Mahoney, who testified that on June 6, 1946 they had secreted themselves in a cell adjoining that occupied by Turner, Johnson and Lofton and overheard the three men talking. Thompson testified, ‘Turner said he had a hell of a time with the second man. He hit him pretty hard twice and blood came out of his ears.’ O’Mahoney’s testimony is as follows: ‘A. The voice I heard sounded like Jasper Johnson’s voice. He said “Hey, Tree, [Turner’s nickname was “Treetop”] why are the detectives asking all them questions?” There was reference made to something about a broom factory. The answer came back “I had to hit the second fellow— Q. Who said that? A. This defendant, Aaron Turner. Q. What did he say? A. He said “I had to hit the second fellow awfully hard twice and the blood came out of his ears.” ’ ” The detectives gave this same testimony in the present trial and that testimony was clear, positive and unshaken. All of the other testimony of the detectives at that trial and at the present trial was clear and in all material respects* consistent. Moreover, Turner took the witness stand at this (present) trial, but his testimony was so full of evasions and “don’t remembers” that it is very easy to understand why the jury did not “swallow” it.
This Court held in Commonwealth v. Turner, 371 Pa., supra, that the testimony of these detectives was constitutionally and properly admissible and that the credibility of this evidence was for the jury — exactly contrary to what the majority opinion now asserts. We there also said (page 426) : “In the instant ease there *270can be no misinterpretation of the words purportedly used by Turner. . . .” The present opinion asserts exactly the opposite. In view of the decision and opinion of this Court in 371 Pa., how is it possible for the majority to justify its present statements or position! This Court, we repeat, was unanimously of the opinion in Commonwealth v. Turner, 371 Pa. that the credibility of the two detectives was a matter for the jury; but a majority of the Court reversed the conviction and granted a new trial because the detectives violated an order of sequestration.
From time immemorial it has been the province of the jury to pass upon the credibility of witnesses. When credibility is the sole issue and the testimony of the witnesses on one side is in material respects clear and positive — although denied by the other side — if the jury believed that the witnesses were credible, but the trial Court disbelieved them, the utmost which a trial Court can do is to grant a new trial. Four times the juries and the trial Judges believed these detectives. Yet today the majority of this Court who of course did not see the witnesses, (a) not only disagree with the juries and with the trial Courts as to their credibility,* *271but (b) arrogate to themselves the power to disbelieve the clear, positive, and in all material respects consistent testimony of witnesses they did not see and to obliterate their testimony which they admit was admissible.
I concur in the grant of a new trial but I vigorously dissent (1) from the conclusion of the Court and (2) from the power and doctrine which for the first time in the history of our Country is claimed, assumed and promulgated by an appellate Court.
Mr. Justice Benjamin R. Jones joins in this opinion.

 This is merely in accord with the code of the underworld not to “rat” on each other.

 It would be inhuman not to expect inconsistencies in details dealing with minor matters, in testimony covering 10 years and 4 trials; of course such inconsistencies may affect but cannot destroy a witness’s testimony.

 The majority base this on (1) the defendants — Turner, Johnson and Lofton — denied they were ever in a cell together, and (2) O’Mahoney and Thompson never mentioned the conversation at Turner’s first trial in September, 1946 (or at Johnson’s or Lofton’s first trial), and (3) the detectives were contumacious. Of course, these reasons furnish no support in fact, logic or law for the majority’s opinion; it is clear as crystal that they merely raise factual questions for the jury. Each of these arguments could be easily answered. For example, it could as easily and persuasively be argued that the reason they did not testify to overhearing said conversation at said trials was either because they were not asked the question, or because they had far stronger evidence of the defendants’ guilt, namely, Turner, Johnson and Lofton had each signed a written confession which was offered in evidence against them, and which — until subsequently invalidated by appellate Courts be*271cause of having been coercively obtained — proved that each of said men participated in the robbery and were guilty of murder in the first degree. In addition, each signed the confession of the other two, and Lofton pleaded guilty to these murders on January 31, 1947. Lofton, 10 years after pleading guilty to these murders and after all these years in jail, now swears that he and Turner and Johnson never committed or had anything to do with these murders. How gullible can we be?