Court Opinion

ID: 9753921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:35:14.569605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:45.200425
License: Public Domain

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
I concur in the result announced by the Majority Opinion but I dissent to that paragraph in the Major*416ity Opinion which reads: “We refrain from making-suggestions of what the court below should do. Under Section 3é5 of the Act of 1951 (to P.S. §1225), it is to be 'satisfied’ and may 'hold a hearing, summon other witnesses, and secure further evidence . . .’ Nor should we require a stenographic transcript in all cases, since the presence of a stenographer might unusually disturb the defendant, but we should greatly prefer one whenever possible.”
How can we review a proceeding if we do not know what occurred? How can we pass upon a record which does not exist? How can we determine if a court has abused its discretion if we do not know on what it based its discretion?
We have seen how summarily the court below disposed of this case in the first instance. Although the Sanity Commission recommended that the defendant Ezio Baldassarre be committed to a hospital for mental illness, the court, without summoning a single witness, and without examining the defendant, committed Baldassarre to the Farview State Hospital, which is an institution for the criminal insane, — pathetic creatures who reflect the ultimate in pathological and violent irresponsibility.
The meager record before us shows that the alleged hearing conducted by the court below was so short in point of time that the courtroom door had scarcely opened when it was closed, and the hearing was over, and Ezio Baldassarre was on his way to the home of the doomed. Although the Farview Hospital is undoubtedly excellently operated, it still stands out, in the minds of many people, as a house of horrors.
The Norristown State Hospital and the Embreeville State Hospital, on the other hand, are institutions for mental patients who are not criminals or disposed to crime and are geographically close to the defendant’s home. Law, justice, and humanity dictate that Bah *417dassarré be placed in one of these hospitals and not in Farview which, according to the Mental Health Act of June 12, 1951, P. L. 533, “shall be exclusively devoted to the care of patients convicted of crime or with criminal tendencies.”
Sec. 102(4) of the Act defines criminal tendency as follows: “ 'Criminal tendency’ shall mean a tendency to repeat offenses against the law or to perpetrate new offenses, as shown by repeated convictions for such offenses or tendency to habitual delinquency.”
'There is no evidence that Baldassarre falls within either of these two categories. He has not been tried for the killing which brought about his arrest, so that he is not a criminal, and, so far as criminal tendency is concerned, the only evidence in the record is that he is not of criminal tendency.
The men appointed by the court below to form the examining commission were men of repute, experience and unquestioned integrity, two of them being physicians with over 25 years experience. Yet, the court treated the report of these commissioners as if they were strangers and interlopers. The commissioners were conscientious in seeking the truth. They brought before them Dr. Harvey Bartle, Jr., a psychiatrist of standing who had already treated Baldassarre as a patient; they examined Cyril Mr. Bruke and Alexander P. Baldassarre, son-in-law and son to the defendant; they questioned three hospital attendants and Warden John I. Gable. After taking this testimony and deliberating on it, they came to the conclusion that the defendant was not of criminal tendency.
Did the court, then, have the right to arbitrarily ignore this finding? In the Patskin case, 375 Pa. 377, we said: “A Court has no right to arbitrarily or capriciously reject the findings or conclusions of a sanity commission.”
*418In Commonwealth v. Ballem, 391 Pa. 626, this Court said: “Of course, the Court may not act arbitrarily or capriciously, nor may the commission, and the latter’s advice having been sought, it must be considered by the Court.”
It is quite clear that the court below gave little or no consideration to the commission’s report because, without any facts to contradict the Commission, it announced a decision diametrically opposed to what the Commission found, reported and recommended.
In view of all this I believe it is highly essential that we have a record of what the court will do in any further proceedings. The Majority Opinion here says that this Court would not recommend a stenographic transcript because “the presence of a stenographer might unusually disturb the defendant.” This reasoning lacks substance. How would the presence of a stenographer disturb the defendant any more than the presence of a court clerk or a tipstaff, or the judge himself? Perhaps the presence of a doctor might disturb the defendant, but this would be no reason for denying the defendant medical care.
A stenographer is required for the defendant’s protection, and I cannot understand why this Court, which has the responsibility of seeing that justice is done when we are appealed to, should be apologetic in requiring what is indispensably necessary for an intelligent and just disposition of the case before us.
I would amend the order of this Court to read: The record is remanded to the court below for the purpose of conducting a hearing worthy of the name, summoning witnesses, and obtaining all evidence available for the purpose of determining the proper disposition of the defendant, such hearing and all proceedings to be fully recorded by stenography and whatever documentation justice requires.