Court Opinion

ID: 9750687
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 15:21:32.512449+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:17.792698
License: Public Domain

Justice SAYLOR,
concurring.
The lead Justices address this appeal based on what they regard as “clear evidence of the jury’s intent.” Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court, op. at 680, 39 A.3d at 987. For my own part, I am unable to glean such clear intent from a general verdict rendered on instructions permitting convictions based on divergent circumstances. If I were to guess, based on the record presented, I would surmise the jury grounded the attempt and conspiracy verdicts upon the conclusion that both crimes related to the planned escape of both Appellant and Seretich. Of course, for purposes of this appeal, we are foreclosed from doing so, since Appellant, for reasons of his own, has limited his argument to the position that the attempt conviction pertained to his escape alone. See id. at 670, 674-675, 39 A.3d at 981, 983-84. This idiosyncratic aspect of the case alone seems to me to militate against issuance of an opinion by this Court which may be read as having more general application.
The matter also seems problematic in that, at least according to the lead opinion, the trial court authorized the jury to return a guilty verdict based on a theory which there was insufficient evidence to support. See id. at 677, 39 A.3d at 985. In this and other respects, I find that the decision to accord Supreme Court error review here may yield more trouble than it is worth. If the determination of whether and what offenses should be preserved in light of Section 906’s proscription against multiple convictions for inchoate crimes is truly one connected with the sentencing stage (as we are presuming under the lead Justices’ approach, see id. at 672-673, 39 A.3d at 982-83), I see little reason why the trial judge should not make it at sentencing upon his own view of the *683record and/or the sentencing presentations. Cf. Oregon v. Ice, 555 U.S. 160, 169, 129 S.Ct. 711, 717-18, 172 L.Ed.2d 517 (2009) (declining to extend Apprendi''s proscription against deciding non-jury factual findings increasing a maximum sentence to a sentencing system affording judges discretion to determine facts allowing imposition of consecutive or concurrent sentences for multiple offenses, explaining that the determination of consecutive versus concurrent sentences is traditionally not within the function of the jury). Indeed, this seems to be what the trial court attempted to suggest, albeit belatedly, in its opinion under Rule of Appellate Procedure 1925. See Commonwealth v. Jacobs, CC 200602109, slip op. at 5 (C.P.Allegheny, Oct. 28, 2008) (“This Court recognizes that it erred by sentencing the defendant for both criminal attempt and criminal conspiracy in violation of 18 Pa.C.S. § 906, which states that a person may not be convicted of more than one of the inchoate crimes of criminal attempt, criminal solicitation or criminal conspiracy, for conduct directed towards the commission of the same crime.”).
Finally, at least in the post-Apprendi landscape, and in matters which are governed by the decision, serious arguments are being made to the effect that the courts ought to reconsider the policy against special jury findings. See, e.g., Meghan A. Ferguson, Balancing Lenity, Rationality, and Finality: A Case for Special Verdict Forms in Cases Involving Overlapping Federal Criminal Offenses, 59 Duke L.J. 1195, 1208 n. 85 (2010) (collecting decisions reflecting the use of special verdict forms in the wake of Apprendi). Therefore, I would refrain from continuing to suggest an inflexible position on the subject. See Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court, op. at 679-680, 39 A.3d at 986-87.
I support the result obtained under the lead opinion on the basis of the waiver ensuing from Appellant’s peculiar framing of his argument.
Chief Justice CASTILLE joins this concurring opinion.