Court Opinion

ID: 9701773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:37:25.634503+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:29.108513
License: Public Domain

POMEROY, Justice,
dissenting.
I must once again register my dissent to the application of a per se rule concerning juvenile confessions. See Commonwealth v. Chaney, 465 Pa. 407, 350 A.2d 829 (1975) (dissenting opinion by POMEROY, J., joined JONES, C. J. and EAGEN, J.). And while I agree that this Court should zealously protect the rights of minors, I think the present case highlights the absence of realism which characterizes the per se approach.
The record discloses that immediately upon arresting Gordon Harvell, the police offered to bring his father to the police station. The father declined the offer, purportedly because of the availability of other transportation, yet never arrived at the station house. The record also shows that repeated telephone calls to appellant’s mother and offers to bring her to the police station were equally fruitless. Under the majority’s holding, the son’s statement must nevertheless be discarded.
The application of the exclusionary rule in the case at bar, moreover, is not a response to police activity in disregard of a rule of law which they knew or should have known, for the arrest and interrogation here involved *424took place prior to this Court’s announcement of the rule in Commonwealth v. Roane, 459 Pa. 389, 329 A.2d 286 (1974) and its progeny. See my dissent in Commonwealth v. Lee, 470 Pa. 401, 368 A.2d 690 (1977), joined by JONES, C. J. and EAGEN, J. The remedy the Court here imposes is ill-suited to accomplish the goal of protection of minors from coerced confessions. Indeed, the police in the instant case were more protective of the juvenile accused’s rights than our case law demanded at that time. Hence this dissent.
EAGEN, C. J., joins in this dissenting opinion.