Court Opinion

ID: 9717340
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:02:01.053906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:52.654153
License: Public Domain

NIX, Chief Justice,
concurring.
The reasoning employed by the majority to sustain the validity of the Act of 1913, Act of June 19, 1913, No. 338, P.L. 528, 61 P.S. §§ 2121-2129, would boggle the mind of even the residents of Alice’s Wonderland. The majority begins this curious journey by distorting the very first sentence of section 1, which provides:
Every person, his aiders, abettors and counsellors, hereafter convicted of the crime of murder of the first degree, shall be sentenced to suffer death in the manner herein provided, and not otherwise. (Emphasis added.)1
Notwithstanding the majority’s protestations to the contrary, this language prescribes the punishment as well as the method for its imposition. This position is clearly stated in Commonwealth v. Meyers, 290 Pa. 573, 583, 139 A. 374, 378 (1927):
Appellant urges that the Act of 1925 attempted to amend the Act of 1913 by reciting the provisions of section 75 . of the Act of 1860 which had been repealed. *354Even if appellant’s contention be correct, he would be no better off, as the Act of 1913 is effective to carry the punishment as it does the method of inflicting it____ (Emphasis added.)
Moreover, a brief history further confirms that the Act of 1913 imposed the punishment as well as the method for its execution. The Act of 1860, section 75, fixed the punishment for murder at death and provided for hanging as the means of executing the sentence. Both the 1860 Act and the Act of 1913 fixed the punishment for murder in the first degree at death. However, the Act of 1913 changed the means of execution from hanging to electrocution. It was not until the Act of 1925 that the punishment was fixed at either death or life imprisonment as the jury may determine.
In fairness to the majority, they were forced into the position articulated today by the holding of the Meyers Court. That Court construed the Act of 1860 as being amended by the Act of 1925 and dismissed the Act of 1913 as only having vitality as to prescribing the manner of death. In reaching its result, the Meyers Court invalidated the penalty provision which it admitted the Act of 1913 provided and made no effort to reconcile this action with section 12 of the Act of 1913.
Section 12 provides:
This act is intended to furnish a comprehensive and complete method of inflicting the death penalty. If any portion of this act shall be declared invalid or unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the entire act shall thereupon be null and void.
61 P.S. § 2129.
There can be no question that this Court in Meyers found that the penalty portion of the Act of 1913 had been superseded by the Act of 1925. This clearly is an invalidation of that portion of the Act of 1913 by this Court. My quarrel with the majority is that candor requires that we acknowledge that section 12 has been offended. No *355amount of common law sophistry can gloss over that fact.2 I am nevertheless constrained to concur in the result in view of the fact that Meyers was decided over sixty-one years ago and the General Assembly has been content to treat the Act of 1913 merely as an act prescribing the method of execution. Thus, appellant’s argument has long since lost its potency. The legislature obviously has been satisfied with the modification of Meyers and has deemed it not to be offensive to the provisions of section 12.
I concur in the result.

. The full section provides:
Every person, his aiders, abettors and counsellors, hereafter convicted of the crime of murder of the first degree, shall be sentenced to suffer death in the manner herein provided, and not otherwise. Such punishment, in every case, must be inflicted by causing to pass through the body of the convict a current of electricity of intensity sufficient to cause death, and the application of such current must be continued until such convict is dead. The said punishment shall be inflicted by the warden or deputy warden of the Western Penitentiary, or by such person as the warden shall designate, and shall be inflicted in a building to be erected on the land owned by the Commonwealth in Centre County, whereon the buildings of the new Western Penitentiary are to be built.
61 P.S. § 2121.

. Note the discussion in Commonwealth v. Meyers, 290 Pa. 573, 583-585, 139 A. 374, 378 (1927), relating to the effect of the Act of 1913 upon the Act of 1860 resulting in that Court’s ultimate conclusion that the Act of 1913 ceased to exist except as to prescribing the method of execution. The Meyers Court, by implying the curious distinction between "repealers" and "reenactments," reached this result. Id. Today’s majority, based upon this questionable predicate, confidently dismisses the first sentence of 61 P.S. § 2121 as being "merely a prefatory recitation of the penalties existing under another statute____” See Maj. op. at p. 345.