Court Opinion

ID: 9651603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:28:39.301743+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:36.644538
License: Public Domain

PAPADAKOS, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
While I agree that the order of the Superior Court must be reversed, I cannot join that portion of the majority opinion which discusses why Appellee’s kidnapping and assault convictions should not merge because it repudiates our analysis recently enunciated in Commonwealth v. Michael Williams, 514 Pa. 124, 522 A.2d 1095 (1987).
Using the Michael Williams analysis, I am satisfied that our aggravated assault statute protects substantially different interests than does our kidnapping statute. The former protects the bodily integrity of the victim. The latter variously prevents felons from shielding attempted flight with innocent hostages, prevents the taking of persons for *365ransom, and prevents various other kinds of criminal victimization which often follows the taking and isolation of a kidnap victim. Since substantially different interests underly both statutes, I have no hesitancy in concluding that Appellee should have been sentenced on both convictions.
While I have serious questions as to the majority’s wisdom in discarding the Michael Williams analysis, I am still more concerned with the test substituted for the Michael Williams analysis. If I understand the majority correctly, if a person commits one act of criminal violence and that act is the only basis upon which he may be convicted of another crime, the act will merge into the other crime. Thus, arsonists should be comforted in the knowledge that they can burn down our homes, with our families in them, and be convicted of one crime. So, too, murderers can drive into a crowd of pedestrians killing and maiming at will and be convicted only of one crime. Is the majority also discarding our holding in Commonwealth v. Frisbie, 506 Pa. 461, 485 A.2d 1098 (1984)? The wisdom of such logic escapes me but since we have now abrogated our duty to look at the legislature’s intent in determining how to apply their sentencing scheme, maybe the next step will be to ignore the Crimes Code altogether and promulgate our own Crimes Code. The future should be interesting, but criminals should take heart for they have a friend in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
LARSEN, J., joins this concurring and dissenting opinion.