Court Opinion

ID: 9649107
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:42:26.574747+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:07.812940
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
In its haste to deny the accused any possibility of relief, the majority fails even to consider whether it has jurisdiction to review the order of the Superior Court now before it. That order merely remands the record for an evidentiary hearing to ascertain trial counsel’s basis for failing to request an available instruction on involuntary manslaughter. I do not believe that jurisdiction exists and, hence, would dismiss allowance of appeal.
Absent here is a “final” order. The finality requirement, essential to this Court’s authority to review, is well-stated in Standard Pennsylvania Practice:
“An order, judgment, or decree is not final for purposes of appeal unless it terminates the litigation between the parties to the suit by precluding a party from further action in the court rendering such order, judgment, or decree.”
Vol. 9, ch. 38 (Appeals in General) § 51 at 48 (rev. ed. 1962). This is not a case where an appellate court’s remand has finally resolved an issue. Compare Golden Triangle Broadcasting, Inc. v. City of Pittsburgh, 483 Pa. 525, 527-28 n.4, 397 A.2d 1147, 1148 n.4 (1979) (Commonwealth Court remand contemplated “[n]o further proceedings” involving question presented on appeal). To the contrary, the remand order of the Superior Court would have afforded both parties ample opportunity to establish, before a proper fact-finding tribu*571nal, their respective positions regarding counsel’s actual reasons for failing to request an involuntary manslaughter instruction. After the evidentiary hearing, the Commonwealth would have been entirely free to argue to the Superi- or Court that the alleged ineffectiveness is without foundation in fact, and that counsel had good reason not to request the involuntary manslaughter instruction. See, e. g., Commonwealth v. McGrogan, 449 Pa. 584, 297 A.2d 456 (1972). Thus I fail to see any justification for a conclusion that the order of the Superior Court remanding for an evidentiary hearing has in any respect “precluded further action.” In this posture, allowance of appeal should be dismissed as improvidently granted.
That the majority’s haste has caused it to overlook a serious jurisdictional concern becomes all the more apparent in the majority’s analysis of the accused’s ineffective assistance claim. The majority concludes that, even under its restricted view of when an instruction on involuntary manslaughter is available to the accused, see Commonwealth v. White, 490 Pa. 179, 415 A.2d 399 (1980), and Commonwealth v. Williams, 490 Pa. 187, 415 A.2d 403 (1980), an involuntary manslaughter instruction would have been available. However, without the evidentiary guidance which the order of the Superior Court properly would have provided, the majority goes on to conclude that, in failing to request an involuntary manslaughter instruction, counsel was seeking an acquittal.
It must be apparent that, by making a silent record speak, the majority has utterly failed to follow this Court’s own basic tenets. It has been said many times, but apparently not often enough, that
“[t]his Court does not sit as a trier of fact, expecting to be persuaded that one or the other side is more credible. That is only a task for a trial court and we would never invade that area of the judicial process.”
Reed v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 434 Pa. 212, 217, 253 A.2d 101, 104 (1969). Surely the absence of counsel’s actual reasons for failing to request an involuntary manslaughter *572instruction, beyond question the proper focus under Pennsylvania’s test of ineffective assistance of counsel, see Commonwealth ex rel. Washington v. Maroney, 427 Pa. 599, 235 A.2d 349 (1967), provides all the more reason for dismissing allowance of appeal.
Because the order of the Superior Court fully permits proper development of the record, I would dismiss the appeal.
O’BRIEN, C. J., joins this dissenting opinion. .