Court Opinion

ID: 9753738
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:24:39.309686+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:40.933296
License: Public Domain

Justice SAYLOR
concurring.
I have no objection to the Court moving toward sanctioning a knowing, voluntary, and intelligent plea of guilty to the offense of first-degree murder, as a number of other jurisdictions permit. I also agree with the majority that the procedural irregularity involved in the common pleas courts acceptance of Appellants first-degree-murder plea, despite this Courts then-prevailing proscription against such pleas, does *319not require the invalidation of Appellants plea on due process grounds. Cf. Commonwealth ex rel. Kerekes v. Maroney, 423 Pa. 337, 341-42 & n. 2, 223 A.2d 699, 701-02 & n. 2 (1966) (explaining that, because a guilty plea operates as a waiver of all constitutional, statutory, and judicially created safeguards ordinarily surrounding the adversary system, the defendant’s specific plea to second-degree murder, although procedurally irregular, was relevant only to the extent it affected the voluntary nature of the plea itself. My only points of difference with the majority on the plea issue relate to various aspects of its rationale, for example, reliance on sufficiency-of-evidence review as an effective safeguard in the guilty plea context, see Majority Opinion at 62,1 and characterization of Rule of Criminal Procedure 802 as intended to establish only a procedural alternative that a defendant may pursue in pleading guilty to murder. See Majority Opinion at 63.2
I also disagree with the majority’s conclusion that trial counsel had a reasonable basis for relying on the pre-sentence report prepared by the Allegheny County probation office and the associated evaluation of Dr. Christine Martone, the chief psychiatrist of the Allegheny County Behavior Clinic, in lieu of an independent investigation into mitigation evidence. See Commonwealth v. Meadows, 567 Pa. 344, 368, 787 A.2d 312, 326 (2001) (Saylor, J., concurring) (collecting cases and observ*320ing that capital defense counsel is obliged to perform an adequate pre-trial investigation into potential mitigating evidence for use in a capital sentencing proceeding). While the majority emphasizes counsels observation that Appellant displayed no overt psychotic behavior between the time of the arrest and trial, and trial counsels proffer of Dr. Martone’s testimony as mitigation, see Majority Opinion at 73, it offers little account for the limited scope of Dr. Martone’s evaluation,3 or its impact in terms of implicating further investigation into potential mental health mitigation. Accord Averhart v. State, 614 N.E.2d 924, 930 (Ind.1993) (finding capital defense counsel ineffective, inter alia, because he naively relied upon the system for generating pre-sentence reports to produce his mitigating evidence).
Ultimately, however, I agree with the majority that Appellant failed to establish the requisite prejudice, as the trial judge (who was himself the factfinder at the penalty hearing by virtue of Appellants jury waiver) considered Appellants mental health evidence at the post-sentence hearing and concluded that, had it been offered into evidence in the penalty proceeding, it nonetheless would not have affected the outcome.
I also join the majority in the balance of its reasoning and decision.

. In many cases, there will be no evidentiary record for the Court to review in the context of a guilty plea, which generally proceeds on the basis of the essential colloquy directed to ensuring the knowing, voluntary, and intelligent character of the plea. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 590 & Cmt.

. Since Rule 802 was drafted in a landscape of plain, repeated, and categorical pronouncements by this Court proscribing guilty pleas to first-degree murder, see, e.g., Commonwealth v. Appel, 547 Pa. 171, 181 n. 3, 689 A.2d 891, 896 n. 3 (1997) ("In Pennsylvania, a defendant may not enter a guilty plea to murder in the first degree[;] [ijnstead, a defendant may plead guilty to murder generally, and the burden is then on the Commonwealth to prove that the offense meets the requirements of murder in the first degree.” (citation omitted)); Kerekes, 423 Pa. at 340, 223 A.2d at 701; Commonwealth v. Jones, 355 Pa. 522, 525, 50 A.2d 317, 319 (1947); Commonwealth v. Berkenbush, 267 Pa. 455, 461, 110 A. 263, 265 (1920), I have difficulty accepting that it was designed to allow an alternative explicitly proscribed by case law.

. Dr. Martone’s examination was limited to her dialogue with Appellant; she conducted no psychological testing or records review.