Court Opinion

ID: 9652324
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:22:14.169773+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:50.295570
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring:
In Commonwealth v. McNear, 238 Pa.Super. 177, 353 A.2d 39 (1975) (Hoffman, Cercone, and Spaeth, JJ., dissenting), this court divided on the meaning of the phrase “instrument of crime” in 18 Pa.C.S. § 907(a), the dissenting opinion stating that “§ 907(a) does not apply to weapons.” Id. at 185, 353 A.2d at 43. Although I joined Judge Hoffman’s dissent in McNear, I join the majority here.
*335In McNear the defendant only possessed an un concealed pistol, which he dropped upon seeing a police officer. Accordingly, he could not be found guilty under § 907(b), which requires proof that the “weapon [was] concealed.” In concluding that neither could the defendant be found guilty under § 907(a), the dissenting opinion did consider, by comparing § 907 to § 908, that a pistol may serve a lawful as well as an unlawful purpose. From this it followed that a pistol cannot be said to be “[something specially made or specially adapted for criminal use”, which is the first of the two definitions of “instrument of crime” in § 907(c). The dissenting opinion did not, however, have the occasion to consider whether a pistol may be an instrument of crime within the second definition in § 907(c), that is, “[something commonly used for criminal purposes and possessed by the actor under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for lawful uses . . . .”
I do not regard as beyond judicial notice the fact that a pistol is “commonly used for criminal purposes”; and here the evidence that appellee used his pistol in an attempt to fire on police officers was sufficient to show that he possessed it “under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for lawful uses.” Accordingly, I agree that the demurrer should have been denied. (I also agree with the majority’s discussion of the demurrers to the second and third counts.)