Court Opinion

ID: 9697102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:05:56.69977+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:29.184469
License: Public Domain

*398ZAPPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
I would vacate the judgment of sentence and remand the case for a new trial because the .trial court erred in allowing the jury to view the contents of 81 detective magazines. The magazines had been seized from Hawkins’ residence pursuant to the execution of a search warrant related to the disappearance of a woman in a case unrelated to this case. The Commonwealth introduced the detective magazines for the purpose of showing that Hawkins had extensive knowledge of police techniques.
The Commonwealth asserts that the magazines were relevant to the issue of the identity of the killer of Andrea Thomas because the killer was someone familiar with police investigation, techniques, and procedures. The Commonwealth bases this assertion on the fact that evidence found at the crime scene indicated that the murderer attempted to divert the attention of the police by making it appear as if the killing had happened in the course of a burglary. The Commonwealth claims that Hawkins had staged a phony burglary scene in the victim’s home and left virtually no forensic evidence. It asserts that the absence of forensic evidence suggested that the murderer knew enough about police forensic techniques to be aware of the danger of even leaving trace evidence.
The magazines apparently had been marked on different pages, but the parties had stipulated that the magazines had been retrieved from the trash by Hawkins and there was no proof that the pages had been marked by him. During closing argument, defense counsel asked rhetorically how Hawkins could have learned forensic techniques from reading magazines. Twice during its deliberations, the jury asked the court if it could see the magazines. After the second request, the court permitted the jury to take the magazines into the jury room.
A cautionary instruction was given to the jury concerning the purpose of admitting the magazines into evidence. The *399court indicated that the sole purposes for the introduction of the magazines were to determine whether a person who reads them could become familiar with police investigative techniques, and as possible corroboration of testimony given by a police lieutenant and the two prison inmates as to alleged statements of Hawkins that he had learned about police techniques by reading detective magazines.
The Commonwealth argues that the court did not decide to send the magazines out with the jury until trial counsel had opened the door to the issue of their contents and after two requests by the jury to see the magazines. The decision to permit a jury to examine exhibits during deliberations is committed to the trial court’s discretion and will not be reversed absent an abuse of that discretion. Commonwealth v. Rued 543 Pa. 261, 670 A.2d 1129 (1996). Where the probative value of properly admitted evidence outweighs its prejudicial value, there is no abuse of discretion. Id.
Since the actual contents of the magazines were never admitted into evidence, and the Commonwealth had stipulated that there was no proof that Hawkins had marked certain pages in the magazines, the prejudicial impact of the evidence clearly outweighed its probative value. The magazines contained highlighted or marked text regarding murders by strangulation, stabbing or clubbing combined with sexual assault. When the jury was given the opportunity to review the contents of the magazines with descriptions of similar murders involving sexual assault, extraneous information unrelated to the charges against Hawkins may have been considered in determining whether he was guilty of first degree murder.
A conviction must be based on evidence of the crime allegedly committed, not on similar dramatized or fictionalized crime events detailed in magazines. I do not agree with the majority that the cautionary instruction given to the jury was adequate to overcome the prejudicial effect of the jury’s examination of the magazines. The trial court clearly abused its discretion in allowing the jury to consider information contained in the magazines themselves.
FLAHERTY, C.J., joins this dissenting opinion.