Court Opinion

ID: 9750081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:17:11.654875+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:02.453094
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Pomeroy:
I do not disagree with the philosophy expressed today by the Court that prosecutors should not have the power to force a defendant through multiple trials of offenses arising out of “the same criminal episode”, even though each trial involves an admittedly separate offense. I do disagree with the method by which the majority has carried that philosophy into law.
The majority, well into its opinion, states that “[w] e are thus left without specific guidance from the Supreme Court on this particular issue . . . .” I find that statement to be incorrect, and therein lies the basis of my disagreement. There is decisional law of the Supreme Court of the United States on precisely this issue, law which that Court has on three occasions recently refused to reconsider.1
*264In 1958 the Supreme Court of the United States decided the companion cases of Hoag v. New Jersey, 356 U.S. 464, 2 L. Ed. 2d 913 (1958) and Ciucci v. Illinois, 356 U.S. 571, 2 L. Ed. 2d 983 (1958). Hoag involved several robberies committed in a raid on a tavern. Giucci involved the simultaneous, multiple murder of four members of the same family. The defendant Hoag was tried on three separate occasions by the State of New Jersey for the separate robberies of three of the tavern patrons and on each trial was acquitted. On the trial for robbery of a fourth person, however, a conviction was finally obtained. Ciucci, on the other hand, was tried in the first two trials for murder, was convicted on each occasion, and received sentences of 20 years’ imprisonment and 4.5 years’ imprisonment respectively. In a third trial for the murder of yet another victim, the prosecutor obtained a conviction and the sought-for death penalty. In both cases the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not embody a rule of compulsory joinder of different offenses. Mr. Justice Harlan, speaking for the majority in Hoag, wrote: “We do not think that the Fourteenth Amendment always forbids States to prosecute different offenses at consecutive trials even though they arise out of the same occurrence. The question in any given case is *265whether such a eourse has led to fundamental unfairness. Of course, it may very well be preferable practice for a State in circumstances such as these, normally to try the several offenses in a single prosecution, and recent studies of the American Law Institute have led to such a proposal. See Model Penal Code §1.08(2) (Tent. Draft No. 5, 1956). But it would be an entirely different matter for us to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment always prevents a State from allowing different offenses arising out of the same act or transaction to be prosecuted separately as New Jersey has done. For it has long been recognized as the very essence of our federalism that the States should have the widest latitude in the administration of their own systems of criminal justice.” 356 U.S. at 467-68. In Ciucci v. Illinois, decided in a per curiam opinion on the same day as Hoag, the following appears: “The State was constitutionally entitled to prosecute these individual offenses singly at separate trials, and to utilize therein all relevant evidence, in the absence of proof establishing that such a course of action entailed fundamental unfairness. Hoag v. New Jersey . . . .” 356 U.S. at 573.
The decision in Hoag has been overruled to an extent by Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 25 L. Ed. 2d 469 (1970). That case presented exactly the same factual situation as did Hoag2 and the Court held that principles of collateral estoppel embedded in the Fifth Amendment barred a prosecution for an offense if a prior prosecution for a different offense had resulted in an acquittal and that result was necessarily premised on a finding of the non-existence of an element essential to success in the second prosecution. Mr. Jus*266tice Stewart, writing for the majority of the Court, was careful to demonstrate the narrowness of the issue : “The question is not whether Missouri could validly charge the petitioner with six separate offenses for the robbery of the six poker players. It is not whether he could have received a total of six punishments if he had been convicted in a single trial of robbing the six victims. It is simply whether, after a jury determined by its verdict that the petitioner was not one of the robbers, the State could constitutionally hale him before a new jury to litigate that question again.” 397 U.S. at 446. Mr. Justice Brennan filed a concurring opinion in which Justices Douglas and Marshall joined; that opinion appears to be the model for this Court’s opinion in the case at bar.
The decision in Ciucci v. Illinois—which, unlike Hoag, involved not prior acquittal of a different offense but rather prior conviction—was undisturbed by the collateral estoppel rationale of Ashe v. Swenson; in fact, it is unmentioned in that case. Giucci continues to represent the controlling federal constitutional law on the subject of successive prosecutions for separate offenses arising out of the “same criminal episode”. That this is so becomes clear from the following quite recent developments:
First: On April 3, 1972 the Supreme Court of the United States denied a writ of certiorari in the case of Miller v. Oregon, 405 U.S. 1047, 31 L. Ed. 2d 590 (1972). Mr. Justice Brennan, in an opinion in which Justices Douglas and Marshall joined, dissented from that denial on the basis that his view of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Constitution, as set forth in his concurring opinion in Ashe v. Swenson, supra, would indicate that having tried petitioner for violation of an ordinance of the City of Portland (possession of a concealed weapon), the State of Oregon should be held *267powerless to try him in a second prosecution for the crime of use of a weapon during the perpetration of a felony on the person or property of another, a different offense arising from the same criminal transaction.
Second: On November 13, 1972 the Supreme Court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari, in Grubb v. Oklahoma, 109 U.S. 1017, 34 L. Ed. 2d 309 (1972). Mr. Justice Brennan again dissented and again was joined by Justices Douglas and Marshall. As appears from the dissenting opinion, the State of Oklahoma had convicted the petitioner Grubb in one trial of armed robbery and in a second trial of kidnapping. Both the offenses had arisen from the “same transaction” within the meaning of Mr. Justice Brennan’s test in his Ashe v. Swenson concurrence.
Third: In Robinson v. Neil, 109 U.S. 505, 35 L. Ed. 2d 29 (1973), the Supreme Court considered a double jeopardy claim made via federal habeas corpus sought by a state prisoner, a claim which is on all fours with the situation presented by the appeals at bar. The petitioner had been tried and convicted in a municipal court of violation of an ordinance of the City of Chattanooga (assault and battery) and subsequently indicted by a grand jury of assault with intent to commit murder under state law. He pleaded guilty to the state charges, but later attacked the conviction on double jeopardy grounds. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the question of retroactivity of the decision in Waller v. Florida, 397 U.S. 387, 25 L. Ed. 2d 435 (1970), and, holding that decision fully retroactive, remanded for determination of “whether the state and municipal prosecutions were actually for the same offense109 U.S. at 511 (emphasis added). Once more Mr. Justice Brennan, joined by Justices Douglas and Marshall, dissented. This dissenting opinion took the position that Mr. Justice Brennan’s proposed rule of constitutionally compelled joinder would require the prosecutor *268“to join at one trial all the charges against a defendant that grow ont of a single criminal act, occurrence, episode, or transaction.” 409 U.S. at 511.
Robinson v. Neil can only be read as holding that successive prosecutions for different offenses arising from the same transaction, however defined, are constitutionally permissible, the views of the three dissenting members of the Court to the contrary notwithstanding. Ciucci v. Illinois, in other words, is today the existing constitutional law on the subject.3
Under our federal system, of course, this Court undertakes to pronounce federal law only when the highest authority in that field, the Supreme Court of the United States, has not spoken to the issue.4 Here that is not the ease; the issue which the majority has today framed and answered in the affirmative—whether the federal constitution contains a rule requiring joinder of admittedly separate offenses arising from the “same *269criminal episode”—has already been answered for us in the negative. Ciucci v. Illinois, supra. The Court’s failure to recognize this fact, in my view, bids fair to disturb in a serious manner the allocation of power as between our State courts and the United States Supreme Court.5
The Court does not purport to bottom its decision on any theory of Pennsylvania as distinguished from federal constitutional law. Nor could it do so without overruling our prior cases. As the opinion of the Court points out, we have heretofore construed the Double Jeopardy Clause of our own Constitution, Art. I, §10, as applicable only to “capital offenses.” Commonwealth v. Baker, 413 Pa. 105, 196 A. 2d 382 (1964); McCreary v. Commonwealth, 29 Pa. 323 (1857). None of the offenses involved in the cases now before us is “capital.”
Even were we to construe our Double Jeopardy Clause in such a way as to make it applicable to all offenses, I would not favor announcing a rule of compulsory joinder (such as that set forth today) as a matter of state constitutional law for two reasons:
*270First: There is a vital and palpable distinction between being—(a) on the one hand twice convicted and twice punished for the “same offense” or in being convicted and punished following an earlier acquittal of the “same offense” (areas in which the Fifth Amendment traditionally operates), and (b) on the other hand, twice made to appear in court to answer to two separate charges that the State would admittedly be entitled to press in a single prosecution. To equate the two is to say that being convicted and imprisoned is an imposition of the same order as being made to attend a judicial proceeding. Clearly, however, these detriments are not of the same order, and while it is doubtless wise to have a prohibition against the former written into the Constitution as a principle of fundamental fairness shared by all civilized people, the latter is not of that fundamental dimension required for a constitutional precept.
Second-. There is our well-founded reluctance to decide issues of constitutional law (or at least novel issues of constitutional law) when disposition can be had on some other adequate ground. As we are empowered to adopt rules of criminal procedure, it is both unnecessary and unwise for us to proceed by the more rigid and inflexible route of constitutional adjudication. We have only recently recognized that the rule-adoption route is the better alternative. Commonwealth v. Milliken, 450 Pa. 310, 300 A. 2d 78 (1973). Cf. Commonwealth v. Phelps, 450 Pa. 597, 301 A. 2d 678 (1973). I mention below briefly my preference for what such a rule should contain were we to adopt one.
The majority has made mention in its opinion of two different rules proposed by highly respected institutions—the American Bar Association Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice and the American Law Institute. The ALI proposes, in brief, that joinder *271should be required “for multiple offenses based on the same conduct or arising from the same criminal episode. . . .”6 The American Bar Association Project on Minimum Standards, however, would afford the defendant the right to request joinder if the charges are “based on the same conduct or arise from the same criminal episode.”7
The majority adopts the ALI proposal as constitutionally required; joinder will be the rule and severance can be obtained only if the defendant can “demonstrate prejudice.”8 Although I have no more information than does the majority on the subject of defendants’ attitudes toward multiple trials, I strongly suspect that many defendants will regard a single trial of multiple offenses as having the proverbial book thrown at them. It appears possible to me that clustering into one trial all chargeable offenses arising from a single criminal episode will work to the detriment of a sizeable number of defendants in that it may discourage the assertion of other fundamental rights (such as the right to plead not guilty and to demand a jury trial). If a defendant does intend to assert these rights at least as to some of the offenses, he will doubtless regard the presence of a multitude of charges as a distinct embarrassment and Avill consequently move for severance.9 *272Because the mere fact of joinder of multiple offenses cannot possibly be tbe prejudice of which the majority speaks (since the joinder is now constitutionally required), a hearing will be necessary to determine whether the defendant is sufficiently prejudiced by the joinder to be entitled to severance.10 To require yet another hearing in the tortuous process of criminal procedure is unlikely to conserve judicial resources. I am therefore highly doubtful that the goals of the majority—“conservation] of precious judicial and professional manpower as well as the time of jurors, witnesses, and the use of public resources”—will be realized.
To my mind the better (but, by today’s decision, unconstitutional) approach is that of the American Bar Association Project on Minimum Standards for Crimi*273nal Justice. The ABA proposal would bar the prosecutor from pursuing a defendant in multiple prosecutions by the simple expedient of empowering the defendant to require joinder of separate offenses arising from the same criminal episode. Adoption of this device (1) would not burden judicial resources because the defendant could regulate joinder or severance without the necessity of a hearing, and (2) would cure whatever unfairness and hardship inheres in multiple prosecutions for different offenses arising from the same episode. Furthermore, if the rule proved deficient in operation, then this Court would be at liberty to alter it as it might see fit.
Adoption of a rule of criminal procedure granting a defendant the right to request joinder, however, would be of no benefit to appellants in the cases at bar. It would be necessary therefore to decide the instant appeals by reaching the question which appellants actually argued before this Court: whether they had been twice prosecuted for the same offense in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. Resolution of that question is beyond the scope of this dissenting opinion; the general approach is sketched in the margin.11
*274I note, finally, that the excursion into constitutional law which the Court now undertakes will predate the effectiveness of this state’s new Crimes Code, Act of December 6, 1972, P. L. 1482, 18 P.S. §101 et seq., by only two months. That Code (effective June 6, 1973) contains provisions on compulsory joinder12 *275which, would accomplish as a matter of state statutory law what the Court here does (erroneously aud unecessarily, as I think) by interpretation of the federal constitution.
In sum, the Court’s holding that the federal constitution compels joinder in one trial of different offenses arising out of the same criminal episode is not only incorrect, but is also unwise as a matter of constitutional law in general, and is unresponsive to any argument made to this Court by the parties. Beyond this, it preempts an area which could be better handled by adopting a rule of criminal procedure, or, in light of the Crimes Code provision cited supra, by leaving the matter to the Legislature. It is for these reasons that I dissent.

 It seems to me clear that today’s decision has the effect of declaring unconstitutional Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 219, a rule promulgated by this Court:
*264“(a) Where murder is alleged in an indictment, no other counts may be joined in the indictment except voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.
“(b) Two or more offenses, of any grade, other than murder, may be charged in the same indictment if they are of the same or similar character or are based on the same act or transaction or on two or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or plan. There shall be a separate count for each offense charged.”
It well may be that this Court will now feel obliged to invalidate convictions obtained in separate trials by Commonwealth prosecutors who operated in reliance on the permissive nature of our Rule. See note on retroactivity, footnote 5 infra.

 In Ashe v. Swenson, the defendant had allegedly robbed the several participants in a basement poker game. In Hoag the robbery was of the several patrons of a tavern.

 It should also be noted that while the Supreme Court has statutory authority to propose changes to existing rules of federal criminal procedure, it has not acted to alter the current language of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 8(a) : “ (a) Joinder of offenses: Two or more offenses may be charged in the same indictment or information in a separate count for each offense if the offenses charged, whether felonies or misdemeanors or both, are of the same or similar character or are based on the same act or transaction or on two or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or plan.” (Emphasis added). Professor Wright notes that “Rule 8(a) is permissive only,” and Professor Moore remarks in 1971 that “the Advisory Committee on the Criminal Rules has apparently abandoned any intention of amending Rule 8 to provide for compulsory joinder of offenses. ...” 1 C. A. Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure §143, at 313 (1969) and 8 J. Wm. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice para. 8.07, at 8-61 (Cum. Supp. 1971).

 Because the issue here has a controlling federal precedent, the cases cited by the majority in note 40 of its opinion (eases in which this Court has of necessity decided an issue of federal law in an unplowed field) are of no value.

 One obvious problem created by the majority’s decision to dispose of these appeals on constitutional grounds is the question of retrospective application of this new rule of joinder. Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 23 U. Ed. 2d 707 (1969), which applied the Fifth Amendment to the states, was held fully retroactive in Price v. Georgia, 398 U.S. 323, 26 L. Ed. 2d 300 (1970). Similarly the decision in Waller v. Florida, 397 U.S. 387, 25 L. Ed. 2d 435 (1970), was hold fully retroactive in Robinson v. Neil, 409 U.S. 505, 35 11. Ed. 2d 29 (1973), discussed in text supra.
If today’s decision is likewise to be fully retroactive, we are likely to be confronted by a PCHA petitioner’s claim that his earlier conviction for violation of the Uniform Firearms Act, for example, precluded the Commonwealth from later obtaining the conviction of first degree murder under which he is now imprisoned. Is such a prisoner to be regarded as having been afforded “a relatively painless form of immunity” by the circumstance that the slate happened to prosecute the less serious offense first?

 ALI, Model Penal Code §1.07(2) (Proposed Draft 1902).

 ABA Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice, Standards Relating to Joinder and Severance §1.3 (Approved Draft 1968).

 Majority Opinion, note 37.

 The idea that defendants may not regard today’s decision as an unmitigated blessing is evidently shared by two noted commentators on criminal procedure.
Professor Wright, after noting that there exist proposals for compulsory joinder of multiple offenses arising from the same criminal transaction, concludes that “there would be serious difficulties in any such procedure . . . .” 1C. A. Wright, Federal Practice and *272Procedure §143, at 313 (1969). Professor Moore would agree: “By eliminating the opportunity for afterthought, compulsory joinder would deprive the prosecutor of the means to correct what he considers a failure of justice. Thus put on notice that there will be no second chance, the prosecutor’s probable reaction wiU be to multiply and magnify the possible offenses within a single indictment, thereby enhancing the likelihood of conviction, and the chance of cumulative punishment A realistic appraisal of the operation of the adversary system recognizes that any marked shift in the balance of advantage inevitably produces a counteraction. TMs perspective malees one approach the compulsory joinder proposal with some ambivalence.” 8 J. Wm. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice para. 8.07[3], at 8-64 (emphasis added).

 ABA Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice, Standards Relating to Joinder and Severance §1.3, 22 (Approved Draft 1968) (Comment) (emphasis added) : “It is the judgment of the Advisory Committee that it is preferable to place this burden on the defendant [of requesting joinder], for whose protection this joinder-of-related offenses requirement is intended. In this way the trial court will be spared the necessity of holding a hearing on the question of whether related offenses should be tried together or separately in those cases in which the defendant concludes that it is in his best interests not to attempt to force a joint trial of related offenses. There may be many occasions when the defendant will make this judgment”

 Tlie fact that appellants’ first convictions were before a justice of the peace does not affect the operation of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Waller v. Florida, 397 U.S. 387, 25 L. Ed. 2d 435 (1970). It is therefore open to appellants to argue, as they have, that the second prosecution in the court of common pleas is barred because it was for the “same offense” within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. What is the test for determining when one offense is the “same offense” as another?
The federal courts have developed what is generally referred to as the “same evidence” test to determine whether two offenses are the same for double jeopardy analysis. Gore v. United States, 357 U.S. 386, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1405 (1958) ; Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 76 L. Ed. 306 (1932) ; United States v. Brisbane, 239 F. 2d 859 (3d Cir. 1956).
*274In Pennsylvania we have developed a doctrine of “merger” whereby we determine whether one offense necessarily involves another, as, for example, rape involves fornication, and robbery involves both assault and larceny. Commonwealth ex rel. Moszczynski v. Ashe, 343 Pa. 102, 104, 21 A. 2d 920 (1941) ; Commonwealth v. McCusker, 363 Pa. 450, 70 A. 2d 273 (1950) ; Commonwealth v. Comber, 374 Pa. 570, 97 A. 2d 343 (1953). If one offense is found to have “merged” with another, then prosecution or conviction for the second offense is barred.
This Court has not had occasion to consider the question whether, following application of the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause to the states in Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 23 L. Ed. 2d 707 (1969), our “merger” decisions might satisfy the requirements of federal double jeopardy law. Our merger test, however, focuses on the conduct of the defendant rather than on evidentiary considerations and as such is generally thought more lenient to defendants than the “same evidence” tests. See Note, Twice in Jeopardy, 75 Yale L.J. 262, 275 (1965).
Were the Court to decide these appeals on the question actually presented—whether the second prosecution was for the “same offense”, then I think it would be a matter of applying our merger test.

 Section 110 of the Crimes Code provides (emphasis added) :

“When Prosecution Barred by Former Prosecution for Different Offense

“Although a prosecution is for a violation of a different provision of the statutes than a former prosecution or is based on different facts, it is barred by such former prosecution under the following circumstances:
“(1) The former prosecution resulted in an acquittal or in a conviction as defined in section 109 of this title (relating to when prosecution barred by former prosecution for same offense) and the subsequent prosecution is for:
“(ii) any offense based on the same conduct or arising from the same criminal episode, if such offense was known to the appropriate prosecuting officer at the time of the commencement of the *275first trial and was within the jurisdiction of a single court unless the court ordered a separate trial of the charge of such offense;.. .”