Court Opinion

ID: 9695777
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:29:13.94988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:16.383600
License: Public Domain

POMEROY, Justice
(concurring).
I agree that the trial court acted correctly in not admitting into evidence the confession of Jose Hernandez. I come to this conclusion, however, because at his separate trial for the murder of Michael Kochmanowicz (the same victim for whose murder Colon was tried), Hernandez repudiated his statement under oath. He charged that he was coerced into giving the statement because the police had beaten him. I agree with Mr. Justice Roberts in his statement that the plurality opinion in Commonwealth v. Nash, 457 Pa. 296, 324 A.2d 344 (1974), which I joined, “recognized that declarations against interest are admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule because their trustworthiness is safeguarded by the improbability that a declaration would fabricate a statement which is contrary to his own interests.” Here, however, the element of improbability has been undercut by the fact that the declarant himself has denied the truth of his prior declaration in sworn testimony.* The presumed trustworthiness which forms the basis of the hearsay exception is therefore lacking, and the statement was properly excluded.
In view of this approach to the case at bar I do not reach the question addressed by Mr. Justice Roberts as *587to whether statements against penal interest are “divisible” for the purpose of determining their admissibility. See V J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1465 (1974).

 Unless previously excluded at ‘a suppression hearing, this disclaimer by Hernandez and his charge of physical coercion by the police would not serve to keep the statement out of evidence in his own trial, but would go to its weight.