Court Opinion

ID: 9765373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:01:24.556111+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:09.371752
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
concurring.
I concur only in the result reached by the majority today. I write separately to express my strong dissatisfaction with the strained reliance the Court unnecessarily places on the United States Supreme Court’s plurality decision in Baldasar v. Illinois, 446 U.S. 222, 100 S.Ct. 1585, 64 L.Ed.2d 169 (1980). It is the antithesis of this Commonwealth’s great tradition of jurisprudential independence for this Court to ignore our own Constitution and forsake its own powers of reasoning. The majority defers to the admittedly esoteric rationale of the Court in Baldasar as though that Court possessed some preternatural power, absent which a rule of law could not be independently fashioned. The majority’s interjection of the facts of the case before us into a hypothetical situation with a resultant prognostication of what *118the United States Supreme Court would hold (majority-opinion at pp. 60-61) in my estimation rises no higher than an exercise in law school forensics. My dissatisfaction is further exacerbated because it is apparent that the result obtained by the majority today could logically have flowed from an analysis based solely upon the decisional and statutory laws of this Commonwealth.
Whatever the precedential value of a per curiam opinion with appended concurring opinions, I question whether Baldosar can even be applied to the facts of the case before us. I think not. The sentence imposed in that case was greater than what could have been imposed for a first offense, hence enhanced. In the instant case neither appellant received a sentence of imprisonment beyond what could be imposed upon conviction of a first offense. Baldasar’s precursors, Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25, 92 S.Ct. 2006, 32 L.Ed.2d 530 (1972) and Scott v. Illinois, 440 U.S. 367, 99 S.Ct. 1158, 59 L.Ed.2d 383 (1979), both dealt with the right to counsel when a sentence of imprisonment is imposed. Argersinger held that no person could be imprisoned for any offense without the assistance (or knowing waiver) of counsel. Scott refined that holding to an “actual imprisonment” test. If no sentence of imprisonment was imposed, an uncounseled conviction could stand. Baldasar, on the other hand, dealt with whether an uncounseled misdemeanor conviction, valid because the sentence imposed was a fine and probation, could be collaterally used to enhance what would have been a misdemeanor involving a fine and imprisonment for up to one year, to a felony punishable by fine and imprisonment for up to three years. Baldasar’s sentence for the second conviction was imprisonment for one to three years, a sentence beyond the one year imposable for a first offense and therefore enhanced due to the evidence of the prior conviction. The United States Supreme Court, for the various reasons given in the concurring opinions, held that the prior uncounseled conviction could not be used to enhance a term of imprisonment. The *119operative word in Baldasar as well as the instant case is enhanced.
Upon the facts before us, it is clear that under Pa.R.Crim.P. 316 no right to counsel existed at the time of the first offenses since there was no likelihood that imprisonment would be imposed, or that it in fact had been imposed. On the subsequent convictions, the cases at bar, Appellant Bruce received a sentence of one year probation, and Appellant Thomas received a seven day prison sentence to be served on the weekend days of his choice. Since the possible sentence for a summary offense involves imprisonment for no more than 90 days, it cannot be said that the sentence in either of these two cases was in fact “enhanced” beyond what was imposable if they had been treated as a first offense.1 This distinguishes the instant cases from Baldasar in that Baldasar’s sentence was increased from a maximum of one year to one to three years imprisonment. While it is beyond question that the grading of the offense was affected, there is no evidence that the sentence has been enhanced. Nowhere is it urged nor can it be said that the Constitution prohibits the different grading of an offense under these circumstances.
From the foregoing it is obvious that the facts of the instant case do not fall within any scenario anticipated by the per curiam opinion in Baldasar, or any of its satellite concurrences or dissents. Nor do the facts require us to decide the question of whether the Pennsylvania Constitution mandates the exclusion of prior uncounseled conviction for use in enhancing a subsequent sentence. I therefore concur in the result, but not the reasoning of the majority today.

. I leave for another day, when the facts are squarely before us, any discussion relative to right to counsel under the Pennsylvania Constitution, or the propriety of using an uncounseled summary conviction, when the subsequent penalty exceeds imprisonment for 90 days.