Court Opinion

ID: 9751282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:19:48.290228+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:42.234003
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. Although appellant’s chronological age was eighteen years at the time of his arrest and confession, *347the record is uncontradicted that his ability to comprehend was not equal to that of most eighteen-year-olds. His I.Q. was in the range of 70-75 (a “borderline mental defective”) and he had gone only as far as the eighth grade in school. It is my opinion that a review of the circumstances surrounding the giving of the statement here shows that the confession was obtained in violation of appellant’s rights and should have been suppressed. See also the opinion of this writer in Commonwealth v. Jones, 459 Pa. 286, 328 A.2d 828 (1974).
The majority asserts that this Court will not consider the impact of the alleged police deception as part of the “totality formula” because the time of appellant’s arrest was a “credibility issue” for the suppression court alone to decide. Yet, the testimony of the police officers themselves shows that appellant (an eighteen-year-old “mental defective” with an I.Q. of 70-75) was presented with what the police knew was a patently defective “warrant”, and then “requested” to accompany them from his father’s garage in Philadelphia to the courthouse in Media, Pennsylvania, in a different county and a distance of more than 15 miles away. It seems clear to me that no credibility issue need be resolved to conclude that appellant was subject to police control and, therefore, under “arrest” at the moment he left his father’s garage in their company.
The majority states that “[t]he suppression judge obviously rejected [appellant’s] testimony [that it was impossible for him to leave the Media courthouse] as incredible.” More incredible, it seems to me, is the majority’s assertion that appellant (an eighteen-year-old “mental defective” with an I.Q. of 70-75) voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waived his rights and chose, of his own volition, to remain.
In its analysis of the “totality of the circumstances” the majority apparently forgets that it is the prosecution which has the burden of showing that the waiver was *348voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. The defense need not show that it was involuntary, unknowing, or unintelligent. Yet, the majority’s analysis focuses on what the defense did not show: (1) deception was not proven because the suppression judge made a credibility determination adverse to the defendant; (2) appellant did not prove that he was coerced into staying with police officers at the Media courthouse because that allegation was “incredible”; (3) appellant’s age and mental condition did not prevent a valid waiver because the suppression judge adversely determined that credibility issue; (4) there is “nothing in the testimony of appellant that he was tired, confused, or harassed or that he did not comprehend the frequent constitutional warnings.” But what is there on the other side? That appellant gave standard “yes”, “no”, responses to the officers’ pro for-ma recitation of the Miranda warnings, that in the nine hours that appellant spent in police custody, only two were devoted to actual interrogation, and that he was “well treated in every respect by the police.” That evidence, it seems to me, falls far short of establishing a voluntary, knowing, and intelligent waiver of one’s constitutional rights. I therefore dissent.
ROBERTS and NIX, JJ., join in this dissenting opinion.