Court Opinion

ID: 9699532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:31:09.116751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:52.229408
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Cohen :
The majority’s conclusion permits a defendant to he tried and convicted for a crime that he did not commit on evidence of the commission of a crime for which he has already been acquitted. I can see the wisdom of giving a jury the power to find a defendant guilty of an offense which is less than and included in the offense charged in the indictment. That was established in common law and is the law presently sanctioned by a majority of the states. But that is only true when the offense that the jury finds the defendant guilty of is less than and included in the offense alleged in the indictment.
Here, the defendant is being tried for an offense of voluntary manslaughter — no other offense is charged and no other crime is included in that charged offense. The evidence produced at trial discloses that the defendant, if guilty of anything, was guilty of a higher crime than that charged against him in the indictment. It discloses that defendant might be guilty of murder in the first or second degree. But a jury has already acquitted him of that crime. Evidence of a crime for which he has been acquitted cannot be used to secure the conviction of a lesser crime when the elements of the lesser crime are not proven.
I cannot conceive that the Commonwealth is so greedy for a culprit that we must abandon the safeguards that have characterized our system of jurisprudence. No appeal to emotions by phrases such as “protection of society”, “technical rules”, “dangerous criminal”, “mockery of law and justice”, should deprive any accused of the right to know the nature of the crime, with which he is charged and to require the evidence *218upon which he is convicted to conform with the charged crime. To do so deprives him of his liberty without due' process of law.
I agree wholeheartedly with the lower court. “There is not a scintilla of evidence in the record which could sustain ... a conviction of voluntary manslaughter as defined by our appellate courts.” Since defendant is not now on trial for a murder indictment but only on trial for voluntary manslaughter, the evidence produced must show the elements necessary to constitute the crime of voluntary manslaughter. Neither the Commonwealth nor the majority argues that the evidence produced meets that requirement. Hence, the action of the lower court must be sustained.
I-dissent.