Court Opinion

ID: 9691900
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:23:18.881555+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:27.877592
License: Public Domain

Justice NIGRO
concurring.
I join in the result reached by the majority, as I agree with its ultimate conclusion that Appellant is not entitled to relief. I write separately, however, to address its analysis as it relates to two of Appellant’s claims.
In one of his many claims of error regarding the voir dire process, Appellant argues that the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to dismiss several venirepersons for cause, thereby forcing him to use his peremptory challenges to *256strike those venirepersons. In analyzing and ultimately rejecting this claim, the majority cites to this Court’s decision in Commonwealth v. Colson, 507 Pa. 440, 490 A.2d 811, 818 (1985), where the Court held that the trial court did not err in refusing to dismiss a venireperson for cause even though that venireperson, among other things, knew the victim’s mother, knew the prosecution witness who discovered the victim’s body, knew the wife of the prosecuting officer, and believed that the victim had actually once employed her husband. While I recognize this Court’s duty to adhere to the principle of stare decisis, I am compelled to note that I simply do not agree with the Colson court’s conclusion. Rather, it is abundantly clear, at least to me, that the nature of the venireperson’s many ties to those involved in that case created a sufficient likelihood of bias so as to warrant the venireperson’s disqualification. Id. at 818 (“A challenge for cause should be granted when the prospective juror has such a close relationship, familial, financial, or situational, with the parties, counsel, victims, or witnesses, that the court will presume a likelihood of prejudice or demonstrates a likelihood of prejudice by his or her conduct and answers to question[s].”). Nevertheless, I do not believe that the relevant facts in the instant case are even remotely similar to those in Colson, as none of the venirepersons at issue here had the same type of relationship to the case as the venireperson in Colson had. Indeed, in my view, the situations of the venirepersons in the instant case are much more akin to the situation of the venireperson in Commonwealth v. Patterson, 488 Pa. 227, 412 A.2d 481 (1980), who recognized one of the investigating officers from church services, but could not identify the officer by name. Thus, just as this Court held in Patterson that the trial court did not err in refusing to dismiss the juror at issue in that case, I agree with the majority that the trial court below did not err in refusing to dismiss the challenged venirepersons for cause here.
Appellant also argues that the trial .court erred when it refused to question jurors about their knowledge of a newspaper article relating to a prospective witness, Latanio Fraticeli. That article, as more fully explained by the majority, was *257published mid-trial and discussed incriminatory statements Fraticeli made about Appellant during an in-camera hearing. Despite the fact that the jury had not been sequestered, the trial court did not question the jurors-either individually or collectively-about the article and instead opted to reiterate its general instructions to the jury that it was to avoid any media coverage of the case and determine the facts of the case based only upon the evidence at trial. See N.T., 11/3/1994, at 1828. I question the decision by the court not to ask the jurors about the article, especially in light of this Court’s clear pronouncement in Commonwealth v. Bruno that “the preferred procedure when highly prejudicial material is publicized during the trial and the jury is not sequestered is to question the jurors individually, out of the presence of the other jurors.” 466 Pa. 245, 352 A.2d 40, 52 (1976). In finding that the trial court did not err in failing to do so here, the majority appears to rely on the follow-up language in Bruno that “giving special precautionary instructions may be sufficient precaution depending on the facts of the case.” Id. While the court here did, as noted above, give the jury general cautionary instructions the morning the article appeared in the newspaper, it is not as clear to me as it is to the majority that these instructions were sufficient to ensure that the jury had not been improperly influenced by the article. In the end, however, I believe that any error that resulted from the court’s failure to question the jurors about the article was merely harmless as the evidence of Appellant’s guilt was clearly overwhelming. Thus, I agree with the majority that Appellant is not entitled to relief on this claim.