Court Opinion

ID: 9651443
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:19:37.39527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:33.803473
License: Public Domain

Opinion by
Hoffman, J.,
Appellant contends that the Commonwealth’s evidence at trial was insufficient to sustain his conviction for an attempted prison breach.1
*579At the time of the alleged offense, appellant was serving a one- to three-years sentence for larceny in the Luzerne County Prison. At about 12:15 a.m., on December 26, 1972, James Larson, a Guard Supervisor at the prison, heard an alarm go off that indicated that someone was attempting an escape in the recreation area of the prison. The alarm was designed so that it could be heard in the prison office, but not in the courtyard. Larson immediately contacted Guards Szmulo and Banik. Initially, the guards checked the prison population, but found no one missing. The three men then conducted a search of the area where the alarm had been “tripped”. Near the recreation yard between two wings of the prison, they found one piece of barbed wire that had been cut. In addition, Guard Szmulo found a laundry bag filled with civilian clothing. The bags are issued by the prison and are marked with a different number for each prisoner. A check revealed that the bag belonged to appellant.
At approximately 5:15 a.m., on December 26, the appellant voluntarily approached Larson. Appellant had spent that night on the nine p.m. to five a.m. shift at work in the boiler room, situated near the point where the alarm had been triggered. Appellant explained to Larson that “I was gonna make a break last night, but I changed my mind because I thought of my family, and I got scared of the consequences.” Appellant testified at trial that he had become depressed prior to his decision to escape because he had been denied a Christmas furlough on December 24, 1972. His testimony at trial was consistent with Larson’s version of the episode: “... in the yard, I realized that I had shamed my family enough, and I did not want to shame them any more .... So I went back to the boiler room and continued working.”
On April 18, 1973, the grand jury returned an indictment charging the appellant with prison breach. Appellant went to trial on May 25, 1973, before a judge sitting without a jury and was found guilty of attempted prison *580breach. Thereafter, appellant filed motions in arrest of judgment and for a new trial. Motions were heard in October, 1973, and denied on June 10, 1974, by the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas en banc. This appeal followed.
A criminal attempt is defined as “an overt act done in pursuance of an intent to do a specific thing, tending to the end by falling short of complete accomplishment of it. In law, the definition must have this further qualification, that the overt act must be sufficiently proximate to the intended crime to form one of the natural series of acts which the intent requires for its full execution. So long as the acts are confined to preparation only, and can be abandoned before any transgression of the law or of others’ rights, they are within the sphere of intent and do not amount to attempts.” Commonwealth v. Eagan, 190 Pa. 10, 21-22 (1899) (Emphasis added). Thus, we must locate the line between an act which is mere preparation and one that is sufficiently proximate to be labelled an attempt.
A review of the cases on the law of attempt indicates that “[i]t is difficult to formulate any precise rule about how close the overt act must come to the accomplishment of the ultimate criminal result.” 21 Am. Jur. 2d Criminal Law §111. “At what point does a potential criminal pass beyond preparation and become guilty of an attempt? Among the various tests suggested or applied are: the last act doctrine, holding that the defendant will not be guilty of an attempt until he does the last act necessary to the commission of a crime; Justice Holmes’ dangerous-proximity test which focusses on both the dangerousness of the crime and the nearness to which the defendant has come to accomplishing it; and the movie camera test, which disregards the defendant’s declarations of intent and instead focusses on the extent to which his acts demonstrate a specific intent or commitment to the criminal purpose.” White, The Inchoate Crimes Provisions of *581the New Pennsylvania Penal Code, 35 Pitt. L. Rev. 235, 237-38 (1973). Professor White suggests that the law in Pennsylvania approximates the last act doctrine, Id.
Commonwealth v. Willard, 179 Pa. Superior Ct. 368, 116 A. 2d 751 (1955), represents the broadest statement of what constitutes mere preparation. In Willard, this Court reversed the appellant’s conviction for attempt to perform an abortion. The Commonwealth proved that the appellant accepted $160 from a police undercover agent, told her to undress and to lie on a bed equipped for the operation, left the room momentarily and returned with surgical instruments. At that point, the police agent and her “paramour”, stationed in the next room, arrested the appellant. These acts were held not “sufficiently close or proximate to the completed crime so that it could be said that they were done in pursuance of the intent to commit the crime as distinguished from mere preparation to commit the crime.” 179 Pa. Superior Ct. at 371, 116 A.2d at 752-753.2
In Commonwealth v. Eagan, supra, a seminal case on the law of attempts, the Court noted that “. . . the acts of the prisoner in going to [the victim’s] place and watching his house, and even of preparing the rope to tie him, while undoubtedly done in pursuance of the intent, did not go beyond mere preparation, and had the intent been abandoned at this point, an indictment for an attempt to commit robbery or burglary could not have been sustained. But the moment a blow was struck on [the victim] the first step of the actual crime had been taken, and *582the intent was merged in the attempt. Subsequent abandonment might prevent the completion of the crime, but could not save from the consequences of acts done in the attempt.” 190 Pa. at 22.
We recently dealt with an attempted prison breach in Commonwealth v. Skipper, 222 Pa. Superior Ct. 242, 294 A. 2d 780 (1972). In Skipper, appellant approached a fellow prisoner and asked him to procure hacksaw blades to be used in an escape attempt. The fellow prisoner, Commonwealth’s witness at trial, worked in a bakery in a day release program and was to hide the blades in loaves of bread bound for the prison kitchen. Prison officials intercepted a note that the Commonwealth’s witness attempted to pass to a third prisoner, one Schaef-fer, who was to pay him for smuggling the blades into the prison. Subsequently, prison officials caught Schaeffer attempting to go over the prison wall. They found one of the smuggled blades on Schaeffer. A “shake-down” of the prison uncovered two additional blades in appellant’s cell. We reversed appellant’s conviction, noting that “discovery of the hacksaw blades in appellant’s cell did no more than interrupt appellant’s alleged plan in a preparatory stage. If the hacksaw blades were in fact procured by the appellant for use in an intended prison breach, appellant would have had sufficient time to withdraw before the commission of the offense.” 222 Pa. Superior Ct. at 245, 294 A. 2d at 781.
In the instant case, the evidence on the record indicates that appellant scaled a fence within the prison walls that led to the recreation yard and then to the prison wall. Appellant testified that “I went over the fence. I was in the yard.
“Q. Well, when you say you went over the fence, this is still in the prison?
“A. This is still in the prison, yes, sir. . .”
The Commonwealth’s evidence supports the appellant’s claim that he went only as far as the yard before giving *583up his plan to escape. Guard Szmulo testified that “We checked the trip wire. We couldn’t find nothing broke. And then when I got to the gate that goes into the recreation yard between center and left wing, I found one barbed wire was cut.” Thus appellant was still within the prison, still only contemplating a prison breach, and not yet attempting the act. He was thus in a position to abandon the criminal offense of attempted prison breach voluntarily, thereby exonerating himself from criminal responsibility.
Judgment of sentence is vacated and appellant ordered discharged on the conviction of attempted prison breach.
Watkins, P. J., and Jacobs and Spaeth, JJ., join in this opinion.
Van dee Voort, J., concurs in the result.

. Act of June 24, 1939, P.L. 872, §309; as amended, 1953, July 29, P.L. 1445, §1; 1961, July 12, P.L. 575, §1; former 18 P.S. §4309.

. Professor White further points out that the new Crimes Code, Act of Dec. 6, 1972, P.L. 1482, No. 334, §1 et seq.; 18 Pa.C.S. §901 overrules the holding in Willard. Section 901(a) defines an attempt as “any act which constitutes a substantial step toward the commission of that crime.” Section 901(c), however, provides that a crime may he “abandoned” as long as the abandonment was sufficient to prevent the commission of the crime and is complete and voluntary.