Court Opinion

ID: 9730435
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:12:11.526089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:06.437698
License: Public Domain

POMEROY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. It is true that this Court has condemned remarks of the sort made by the prosecutor in this case1 in a line of cases beginning with Commonwealth v. Lipscomb, 455 Pa. 525, 528-29, 317 A.2d 205, 207 (1974). See also Commonwealth v. Lark, 460 Pa. 399, 404-45, 333 A.2d 786, 789 (1975); Commonwealth v. Cronin, 464 Pa. 138, 141-42, 346 A.2d 59 (1975). What the majority fails to note, however, is that the trial of this case was held in July, 1973, some nine months before our decision in Lipscomb, supra.
In Commonwealth v. Triplett, 476 Pa. 83, 89-90, 381 A.2d 877, 881 (1977), we restated law of long standing when we observed:
*107“We cannot impose upon trial counsel the qualities of a seer . . . For this reason, we examine counsel’s stewardship under the standards as they existed at the time of his action, Commonwealth v. Hill, 450 Pa. 477, 301 A.2d 587 (1973); Commonwealth v. Garrett, [425 Pa. 594, 229 A.2d 922 (1967)]; and counsel will not be deemed ineffective for failing to predict future developments in the law. See Commonwealth v. Logan, 468 Pa. 424, 364 A.2d 266 (1976); Commonwealth v. Alvarado, 442 Pa. 516, 276 A.2d 526 (1971).”
Accord, Commonwealth ex rel. Washington v. Maroney, 427 Pa. 599, 604, 235 A.2d 349, 352 (1967) (“The test is not whether other alternatives were more reasonable, employing a hindsight evaluation of the record.”) (emphasis in the original). I think that for the Court to find fatal fault with defense counsel for failing to object to the prosecutor’s summation is indeed to engage in a hindsight evaluation made in light of later law. At the time of the trial of this case our standard for review of assertedly prejudicial remarks was as enunciated in Commonwealth v. Goosby, 450 Pa. 609, 611, 301 A.2d 673, 674 (1973) and Commonwealth v. Simon, 432 Pa. 386, 394, 248 A.2d 289, 292 (1968) (opinion in support of affirmance).
It is worth noting that the remarks now objected to, as quoted above, consist of but two short paragraphs of a lengthy closing argument of forty-two typewritten pages of the trial transcript. Defendant’s trial lawyer, Joseph N. Bongiovanni, III, Esq., testified at the post-conviction hearing as to his extensive experience in the trial of criminal cases and stated that he refrained from objection because he did not believe that the prosecutor’s remarks in the circumstances of this case could have a prejudicial effect on the jury; he viewed them as but “a pseudo-dramatic flourish.” Given the absence at the time of trial of a pronouncement by this Court that statements of the sort quoted above from the Commonwealth’s closing are so flagrant that they must be deemed prejudicial, I cannot conclude, as the majority does, that defense counsel’s judgment at the time of trial is *108to be discarded. Compare Commonwealth v. Hubbard, 472 Pa. 259, 285, 372 A.2d 687, 699 (1977).2 As suggested above, the majority’s conclusion that counsel’s decision at trial not to object rendered him constitutionally ineffective is necessarily based on its view that lack of clairvoyance as to this Court’s disagreement with that decision is per se ineffective. This reflects not only the “hindsight evaluation of the record” which Maroney, supra, counsels us to avoid, but also a hindsight application of law. Hence this dissent.
LARSEN, J., joins in this opinion.

. The challenged remarks are:
“ T want you to remember that as I said, our best witness is not here. Arthur Bock will never again walk the streets of Philadelphia or go to work ... or see any of his four children or see them smile, or see them grow up, graduate from school or get married or anything else, and why, because this defendant after drinking some wine, snuffed out his life for a few measly dollars, the money that his mother brought in his bloody shoes.
T say to you, ladies and gentlemen, that the only way that you can fail to bring back a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree is if Arthur Bock walks through those doors. Shall we wait?’ ”

. It was well settled at the time of trial, and still is, that assertedly prejudicial statements in a summation must be reviewed in light of the context in which they were made. E. g., Commonwealth v. Stoltzfus, 462 Pa. 43, 61, 337 A.2d 873, 882 (1975), and cases cited therein. Accordingly, counsel could properly conclude, as he apparently did, that the prosecutor’s statement that “this defendant after drinking some wine, snuffed out [the deceased’s] life for a few measly dollars” was no more than a shorthand reference to the inferences previously suggested from evidence already summarized. See, e. g., Commonwealth v. Tucker, 461 Pa. 191, 200-01, 335 A.2d 704 (1975), and cases cited therein.