Court Opinion

ID: 9644177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:49:30.774918+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:09.410081
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. The trial court erroneously excluded from evidence recordings of two telephone calls to the Lower Merion Township Police, received at about the time of the homicide, in which the caller stated, “I got one of them bastards. I am going to get the rest of them.” (2:07 a. m.) and “I got one of them--. You will find his body in Ardmore. Good-by.” (2:26 a. m.) The jury should have been allowed to hear the recordings and, if they believed the voice not to be that of appellant, to consider the possibility that another committed the crime. Failure to allow the jury to hear the tapes cannot be said to have been harmless and, therefore, I would reverse the conviction and grant a new trial.
The majority concludes (1) that the evidence was hearsay, not within any recognized exception to the hearsay rule and (2) the offered evidence did not fall *247within the rule of Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973). I cannot agree.
I have previously stated that “. . . this Court should adopt as part of the common law of evidence the view permitting extrajudicial declarations against penal interest to be admitted into evidence as an exception to the hearsay rule.” Commonwealth v. Nash, 457 Pa. 296, 303, 324 A.2d 344, 347 (1974) (concurring opinion of Roberts, J., joined by Jones, C. J., and Pomeroy, J.). While the two recorded calls were hearsay, they were also declarations against penal interest and, therefore, should have been admitted.
The majority reasons that “. . . an anonymous statement subjects no one to any responsibility and, therefore, the key to reliability ... is absent.” The reliability of a declaration against penal interests derives from the assertion of facts which may be harmful to the declarant’s interest. There is no requirement that the declarant intend to suffer the consequences of his statements. For example, in Chambers v. Mississippi, supra, the declarant made his incriminating statements to his friends and did not expect them to reveal the remarks to others. Like the anonymous caller in this case, the declarant in Chambers made his remarks against penal interest without any expectation of getting caught. Anonymity did not destroy the inherently reliable nature of the declarations against penal interest recorded by the police in this case.
Even if this Court does not adopt the hearsay exception for declarations against penal interest, the evidence should have been admitted under Chambers. In Chambers, the Supreme Court stated:
“The testimony rejected by the trial court here bore persuasive assurances of trustworthiness and thus was well within the basic rationale of the exception for declarations against interest. That testimony also was critical to Chambers’ defense. In these circumstances, where constitutional rights directly affecting the as*248certainment of guilt are implicated, the hearsay rule may not be applied mechanistically to defeat the ends of justice.”
410 U.S. at 302, 93 S.Ct. at 1049.
The foundation of the Chambers rule is that the offered evidence is reliable. Here, the calls were made at about the time the victim was killed. It is highly unlikely that anyone other than the killer could have known about the crime at that hour. In addition, the caller indicated that the body could be found in Ardmore. There were no other homicides in Ardmore on the night in question, a fact ignored by the majority. In these circumstances, there can be little question concerning the reliability of this evidence, the key factor under Chambers.
The majority’s attempt to distinguish Chambers is totally unpersuasive. The majority reasons that the declarant was available in Chambers for cross-examination by the prosecution, while the anonymous caller was unavailable here. The Supreme Court’s reference to declarant’s availability in Chambers was not intended as a requirement before a defendant may introduce reliable and probative evidence. The Court was addressing the prosecution’s argument that the declaration against interest could be contrived. 410 U.S. at 301, n. 21, 93 S.Ct. at 1049, n. 21. Here, the possibility of a contrived defense is remote at best. The real question then is whether appellant made the calls to the police. This is precisely the type of determination which is properly left to the jury.
Appellant was denied the opportunity to introduce reliable evidence tending to prove his innocence and therefore, was denied a fair trial.
I would reverse the judgment of sentence and grant a new trial.
MANDEKINO, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.