Court Opinion

ID: 9764425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:21:20.661208+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:56.386346
License: Public Domain

*154POMEROY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. There is no doubt that when the prosecution calls as an inculpatory witness a person who is known to be or who may be found to be an accomplice with the defendant in the crime which is the subject of the trial, a so-called “accomplice charge” is proper. In the less usual situation where an accomplice is called by the defendant as an exculpatory witness, the Court now holds, as I read its opinion, not only that the normal accomplice charge is improper, but that no accomplice charge is proper. It is with this latter part of the Court’s ruling that I disagree.
The normal accomplice charge contains admonition to the effect that persons caught in the commission of a crime may falsely blame others because of some corrupt or wicked motive, or in the hope of obtaining leniency through inculpating others. The jury is usually told that the testimony of such a person, standing alone, is enough to convict only if the jury is satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the witness testified truthfully. Such a charge was given in the instant case with reference to a Commonwealth witness, one Grissell. I agree with the Court that it would be wrong for a trial judge to charge relative to a defense accomplice witness that only if the jury believed beyond a reasonable doubt that the witness was telling the truth could they accept his testimony. So to charge would distort the well established principles of burden of proof. Commonwealth v. Griffin, 216 Pa.Super. 410, 413-414, 268 A.2d 129, 131 (1970). See In Re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970). But I see no harm in a limited accomplice charge. As the Superior Court put it in Griffin, supra:
“Since the [defense] witness could properly be considered an accomplice and had admitted prior convictions of felonies a cautionary charge was proper. The form of such instruction lies within the discretion of the lower court. .
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“However, there is no burden on the defendant and no justification for requiring that his witness be believed *155‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ” Ibid. 216 Pa.Super. at 414-415, 268 A.2d at 131-132.
The trial court in the case at bar gave such a limited instruction, as quoted in Mr. Justice ROBERTS’ opinion at page 867.* In my view it was exercising proper discretion in so doing.
The policy behind such a charge, of course, is to alert the jury to the possibility of perjured testimony. While the hope of favorable treatment by the prosecution would not be the motive for the testimony of a defense witness, other motives might well come into play. The favorable testimony of a witness like Adolf Schwartz, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on the offense for which the appellant *156was on trial, might have been motivated by feelings of friendship, loyalty or even fear of future revenge by appellant or his friends should he, Schwartz, refuse to testify; such a person, moreover, would have nothing to lose by lying for a colleague, having already been convicted and sentenced himself. Hence, like the prosecution’s evidence from an accomplice source, such testimony by a defense witness is also susceptible to the possibility of perjury. Thus I agree with the view held in a number of other jurisdictions that “whether an accomplice testifies for the defendant or for the State his credibility may be suspect, and the trial judge should have judicial discretion to decide whether to advise the jury to accept the accomplice’s testimony with caution.” People v. Legear, 29 Ill.App.3d 884, 890, 331 N.E.2d 659, 665 (1975). Accord, United States v. Nolte, 440 F.2d 1124 (5th Cir. 1971).
I would affirm the judgment of sentence.

 It is apparent that in giving this charge the trial judge was following the recommended charge proposed by this Court’s Committee for Proposed Standard Jury Instructions where one or more of the defendant’s exculpatory witnesses are accomplices. Section 4.05 of the Proposed Standard Jury Instructions reads:
“In deciding whether or not to believe ( ) and ( ), you should be guided by the following principles:
“First. The testimony of ( ) and ( ) should be looked upon with disfavor because it comes from a corrupt and polluted source.
“Second. You should examine ( )’s and ( )’s testimony closely and accept it only with caution and care.
“Third. You should consider whether ( )’s and ( )’s testimony is supported, in whole or in part, by other evidence aside from his (their) own testimony, for if it is supported by independent evidence it is more dependable.
“Fourth. However, you may believe ( )’s and ( )’s testimony even though it is not supported by any other evidence.”
The majority opinion reads the court’s charge as incorporating by reference the full accomplice charge given with reference to the Commonwealth witness Grissell into the charge later given with reference to the defense witness Schwartz. While there is language in the charge which can be so construed, I am satisfied that there was a sufficient break between the two passages in the charge so that the jury was not misled into thinking that their approach to the two witnesses should be identical. The four points in the cautionary charge given to the jury as to Schwartz were also included in the longer instruction as to Grissell, and that is no doubt why the trial judge assimilated the one to the other. But his charge as to Schwartz did not contain the “beyond a reasonable doubt” caution, as did the charge on Grissell, nor did it say, as does the longer charge, that a person caught in committing a crime may falsely blame others because of some corrupt and wicked motive.