Court Opinion

ID: 9652430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:23:39.285633+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:51.335721
License: Public Domain

POPOVICH, Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I dissent to that portion of the Majority’s opinion that holds that this Court is without authority to entertain and examine a challenge to Philadelphia’s Career Criminal Program by the appellant, Stephen Barnes. The reasons for my belief to the contrary are fully set forth in the Dissent*336ing Opinion by Popovich, J. in Commonwealth v. Simmons, 388 Pa.Super. 271, 565 A.2d 481 (1989).
For the lower court to have required that the appellant first offer evidence of prejudice in being included into the Career Criminal Program, in the absence of the appellant being privy to the criteria established by the District Attorney’s office, would have, of necessity, hampered the appellant’s ability to present a case in support of his contentions against the existence and/or implementation of a Program which operated without the benefit of the accused being cognizant of the conditions under which he qualified for inclusion in such a Program.
Such a unilateral enforcement of a program does little to promote the interests of the citizenry in this Commonwealth and of an accused in the operation of the judicial system. Rather, it creates a cloak of secrecy in that arm of the judicial system (the prosecution and, in this case, the judiciary) that should be at the forefront of “openness” in the administration of our system of justice.
Because there appears to have been, at least in this writer’s eyes, a breach of the “openness” spoken of and endorsed by our Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Lutz, 508 Pa. 297, 495 A.2d 928 (1985) and Commonwealth v. Sorrell, 500 Pa. 355, 456 A.2d 1326 (1982), in regard to the operation of our criminal justice system, I must refrain from joining in the Majority’s condonation of the Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s “office practice”, see Dissenting Opinion by Popovich, J. in Commonwealth v. Simmons, supra, of not disclosing either the criteria examined in determining whether an accused is to be admitted into the Career Criminal Program or the reasons of the individual responsible for making such a determination being stated in record form so as to allow a challenge if one is so desired by a defendant.
For the reasons herein stated, I respectfully dissent to the Majority’s resolution of the Career Criminal Program issue.