Court Opinion

ID: 9735573
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:24:30.353253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:00.080142
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno :
The infliction of capital punishment is a grave and awesome thing, and, in my opinion, a death sentence should never be affirmed unless the record shows affirmatively that the defendant’s rights under the Constitution and the laws of the land have been zealously guarded and meticulously saved. Under our system of jurisprudence, a court decision in one case becomes authority for decision over other cases with similar acts or those in which an identical principle is involved. Thus, this highest tribunal in. the Commonwealth, as I view it, should not hesitate to send a case back for re-trial where an error in law has been committed, no matter how repellent may be the crime and no matter how odious might seem the character of the person convicted of that crime.
It may be that even if the trial in this case had been impeccably conducted the same verdict would have resulted, but it could also be that, with proper instructions from the learned trial court the jury might have appraised the defendant’s fate differently. Moreover, the opportunity to legally win a verdict which is something less than the clap of irretrievable doom in the electric chair’s grisly embrace is; something that every defendant charged with murder is irrevocably entitled to have. .....
At the termination of the trial and before counsel summed up to the jury, the District Attorney requested the court to order defense counsel .“not to refer to voluntary manslaughter, provocation and passion.” The court replied: “I so direct you, because I rule now *124that there is no evidence in this case of voluntary manslaughter. There is no evidence of sufficient provocation or hot blood or passion, both of which are necessary to supply — to reduce the charge of murder to manslaughter.”
I believe that this ruling constituted serious error built on a mistaken conception of the law of murder and manslaughter. The breadth of the court’s unspoken definition of “passion” is not evident from his remark, but it is clear that it is too narrow to cover the scope of that word’s meaning as expounded in the law books. Mr. Justice Moschzisker (later Chief Justice), speaking for this Court in the case of Commonwealth v. Colandro, 231 Pa. 343, said: “‘Passion, as used in a charge defining manslaughter . . . means any of the emotions of the mind known as anger, rage, sudden resentment or terror, rendering the mind incapable of cool reflection:’ 6 Words & Phrases, p. 5227. . . ‘Passion which will reduce homicide to manslaughter may consist of either anger ... or terror . . . The terror from the belief on the part of the slayer that his life is in danger is sufficient, though his belief is not reasonable. . .’ ”
If there was any possibility that the defendant may have been moved or provoked into his homicidal act because of anger, terror, rage or sudden resentment, there was then the possibility that his crime fitted into the frame of voluntary manslaughter and the jury should have been allowed to pass upon that possible verdict.
The Majority says that the defendant’s version “on the witness stand is that he found deceased on the floor dead from what he regarded as suicide or crime committed by some one other than appellant.” * But *125the defendant’s defense is not limited to what he said on the witness stand. Nor is it limited to what is advanced by his own witnesses. Whatever supports the theory of innocence or reduction in degree of crime is the defendant’s to use in his plea for acquittal or mitigation of penalty, even if it should come from the Commonwealth’s side of the case.
“In a murder case the jury are not bound to accept the version of the commonwealth or that of the defense ; it is their duty to consider all the testimony and to make up their minds therefrom as to the facts. It was possible in this case that the jury might have found that there was a certain amount of truth in the evidence produced by the commonwealth and some truth in that produced by the defense, but that neither side was wholly to be believed.” * (Commonwealth v. Colandro, supra, 350.)
The Majority makes but a passing reference to the statement obtained from the defendant on the day of his arrest, August 9, 1952, but that declaration of facts is an integral part of the stage on which the dismal killing of July 30, 1952, was re-enacted. From an evidentiary point of view the statement is as important as the oral testimony spoken by the defendant from the witness stand. As soon as the defendant came into the custody of the law he narrated events which, if believed by the jury, could supply the “passion” which could justify a reduction of the crime from murder to voluntary manslaughter: “Q. Did you and Mrs. Walker have any kind of an argument before you went to the lavatory? A. Yes, sir, we had a discussion about Mrs. Walker’s boy friend due to the that he hadn’t brought any money over as he generally does on Wednesday evening or Saturday. Q. Well did that bring up any *126kind of an argument or quarrel between you and Mrs. Walker? A. Well she accused me of being the cause of her boy friend not coming around on Wednesday with the money, she went in her dresser drawer and got the knife and I can’t recall whether she said anything but I laughed at her and then I left the room and went in the lavatory. You see the argument was getting a little strong then thats what made me to walk out of the room. Q. What position was she in at the time you came back from the lavatory and did she have the knife in her hand at that time? A. She was sitting on her vanity when I got back, she was on the vanity bench with the knife in her hand, I got to her and took a hold of her right wrist and tried to take the knife away from her, then she got up off the bench but before she got up from the bench while I was trying to wrench the knife from her, she got stabbed in the neck. Then I was still holding onto her hand she got up from the bench we were still struggling and then she dropped the knife on the floor. I picked the knife from the floor and went down stairs and told her son to go upstairs to see about his mother.”
I-Iow “strong” was the argument which caused the defendant to leave the deceased’s room? How much was he in fear when he returned to the room and found the deceased with a knife in her hand? The lower court deprived the defendant of a valuable right which was his under Trial by Jury as guaranteed in the Constitution when he forbade defense counsel from arguing properly introduced evidence to the jury. Was the defendant provoked by the deceased’s imputation that it was his fault the deceased’s boy friend did not deliver the money she expected on Wednesday? Did the woman’s accusation and her drawing of a knife arouse such a resentment in the mind of the defendant as to render him incapable of “cool reflection”? These were *127questions falling within the circle of the jury’s deliberations, and the Judge had no right to contract that circle so as to exclude these questions from the jury’s consideration.
In Commonwealth v. Curcio, 216 Pa. 380, 383, this Court said: “The power and duty of the jury to ascertain the degree of murder is fixed by law in this state, and a peremptory instruction that takes from it the power to do this is erroneous: Commonwealth v. Sheets, 197 Pa. 69; Commonwealth v. Kovovic, 209 Pa. 465. While it is not the duty of the court to submit the question of manslaughter where there is nothing in the testimony to reduce the grade of the crime below murder, instruction on this subject should be refused only in very clear cases: Commonwealth v. Sutton, 205 Pa. 605. . .”
It cannot be said that there was nothing in the testimony in this case to reduce the grade of the crime below murder. As we said in the same Curcio case: “If there is any evidence that would reduce the crime to manslaughter, the defendant is entitled to have the jury instructed upon the subject.”
In attempting to meet his responsibility of rebutting the presumption of the specific intent to kill, the defendant pointed to the scales on which rested the evidence that the deceased had provoked him and frightened him. The lower court was not warranted in dashing that evidence from the scales for whatever probative value it may have possessed.
In the case of Commonwealth v. Kluska, 333 Pa. 65, the defendant was convicted of having killed his wife by throwing acid in her face. His defense was that the death was accidental since he had intended to use the acid for his own self-destruction and only by fortuitous circumstance did it strike the deceased. In ordering a new trial for certain errors committed during the trial, *128this Court, speaking through M. Justice Stern (now Chief Justice) said: “Unconvincing as defendant’s explanation of the occurrence must have appeared to the jury, he was nevertheless entitled to have it presented for their consideration according to applicable principles of law.”
I do not believe that certain evidence in this case was presented to the jury in accordance with applicable principles of law and therefore I would grant a new trial.

 Emphasis by the Majority.

 Italics mine, except where otherwise indicated.