Court Opinion

ID: 9641762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:39:52.309111+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:39.609124
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the judgment of sentence must be reversed and a new trial awarded in this case. However, I cannot accept the suggestion that double jeopardy concerns may preclude appellant’s further prosecution for these offenses. Here the majority concedes that the Commonwealth did in fact present sufficient evidence to sustain convictions of murder in the first degree in the case of Tina Spalla and murder in the second degree of Carl Luisi, Sr. To imply that the error in this trial might require insulating this appellant forever from liability highlights my frequent objections to the mistaken view of the scope of protection provided by double jeopardy. Commonwealth v. Hoskins, 494 Pa. 600, 601, 432 A.2d 149, 150-151 (1981) (Nix, J., Opinion In Support of Affirmance); Commonwealth v. Starks, 490 Pa. 336, 344, 416 A.2d 498, 502 (1980) (Nix, J., dissenting opinion); Commonwealth v, Lee, 490 Pa. 346, 350-351, 416 A.2d 503, 505-506 (1980) (Nix, J., concurring opinion); Commonwealth v. Potter, 478 Pa. 251, 287, 386 A.2d 918, 936 (1978) (Nix, J., Opinion In Support of Reversal).
*283Further, in Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667, 102 S.Ct. 2083, 72 L.Ed.2d 416 (1982) the Supreme Court of the United States held:
.. . that a criminal defendant who successfully moves for a mistrial because of prosecutorial or judicial misconduct may not invoke the bar of the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments against a second trial except in those cases in which the prosecutorial or judicial conduct giving rise to the successful motion for a mistrial was intended to provoke the defendant into moving for a mistrial.
The “prosecutorial overreaching” standard, referred to by the majority (p. 1193), previously an exception to the “manifest necessity” exception to the general rule that when a mistrial is declared over the defendant’s objection, retrial is barred, was disavowed as a federal constitutional standard in Oregon v. Kennedy, supra. And there is no such standard under state law. Thus the majority’s double jeopardy concerns are unwarranted and do not require further consideration.