Court Opinion

ID: 9732277
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:13:47.707452+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:25.772583
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority would insulate the immunized witness from any fear of sanction if they answer all questions with “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall”; that, even where no rational person under ordinary circumstances could not know the answer to the specific questions asked. In addition, the majority summarily overrules In re Grand Jury, April Term 1977, Wayne County, 251 Pa.Super. 43, 379 A.2d 323 (1977), and condemns as prosecutorial misconduct the warning to a grand jury witness that what she says she does not know is under the circumstances egg on the face of common sense.
The prosecutor simply told the witness there is more than one way to skin a deliberately uncooperative witnesses, and in doing so he said what he thought he could prove. All, of course, is time wasted as the majority cheers her on in what the trial judge considered her blatant intransigence, and, in passing, devises an escape to all who simply say “I do not know.” Whether a witness does not know must be left to the trial judge. If he, present and hearing, believes beyond *491a reasonable doubt that such an answer is a subterfuge he must be empowered to act.
I vigorously dissent.
STOUT, J., joins in this opinion.