Court Opinion

ID: 9637204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:00:22.859314+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:54.423005
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the majority; I believe, however, that the rationale employed by the majority in reaching that result is not appropriate in this case.
In Commonwealth v. Edmunds, 526 Pa. 374, 586 A.2d 887 (1991), this Court stated that, as a general rule, it is important that litigants brief and analyze certain factors in each case implicating a provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Such factors are intended to assist the courts in Pennsylvania in undertaking an independent analysis of a provision of the *122Pennsylvania Constitution, vis-a-vis the United States Constitution.
The sole issue on appeal in this case is whether Article I, § 6 of the Pennsylvania Constitution entitles a party who demands a twelve person jury to a verdict from a twelve person jury. Once it is established that the minimum guarantees afforded by the United States Constitution are met, the focus of this appeal is Article I, § 6 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The instant issue is resolved by interpreting the following language from Article I, § 6: “trial by jury shall be as heretofore”; this language has been included in every Pennsylvania Constitution since 1776. Where the words in the Constitution are plain, they must be given their common meaning. Breslow v. School Dist. of Baldwin Twp., 408 Pa. 121, 182 A.2d 501 (1962). Interpretations of related case law from other states or policy considerations involving issues of state and local concern are irrelevant to a determination by this Court of what the citizens of Pennsylvania understood these words to mean when they adopted Article I, § 6 of their Constitution.
The extended four-part analysis set out in Edmunds is appropriate only when there is a question of whether our constitution provides a source of individual rights which is alternative to and independent of rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Here, appellant grounds his claim only upon Article I, § 6 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. It is unnecessary, therefore, to subject this case and, indeed, every case involving a provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution to the four-part Edmunds analysis as a matter of course.
Justice PAPADAKOS joins in this concurring opinion.