Court Opinion

ID: 9703005
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:36:40.571144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:44.813011
License: Public Domain

McEWEN, Judge,
concurring:
I am obliged under the McCutchen Rule—the interested adult rule—pronounced by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court *10in Commonwealth v. McCutchen, 463 Pa. 90, 343 A.2d 669, cert. denied, 424 U.S. 934, 96 S.Ct. 1147, 47 L.Ed.2d 341 (1975), to join in the very able majority Opinion but am nonetheless dismayed that we may not consider the totality of the circumstances in such cases and must instead employ a narrow, rigid per se rule of exclusion. Commonwealth v. Henderson, 496 Pa. 349, 437 A.2d 387 (1981). The United States Supreme Court has made clear that the federal constitution does not mandate so unyielding a requirement as the McCutchen Rule. See Fare v. Michael C., 442 U.S. 707, 99 S.Ct. 2560, 61 L.Ed.2d 197 (1979). So rigorous an approach seems, in a word, unreasonable. Our society is far better served—while still adequately protected from the intrusion of government—by a criminal justice system that achieves the goal of fairness. Thus, while the citizens of this Commonwealth would be far better served by application of the totality of circumstances rule in such cases as we here examine, this court has no alternative but to comply with the edict of our Supreme Court in McCutchen, supra.