Court Opinion

ID: 9693601
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:52:00.623395+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:48.855567
License: Public Domain

*363NIX, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent and would hold that the conflict between Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 11011 and 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 5104(c)2 requires the rule be found in violation of the limitation of this Court’s constitutionally vested power: “to prescribe general rules governing practice, procedure and the conduct of all courts...” contained in Article 5, § 10, of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
This limitation requires that rules promulgated by this Court must be “consistent with this constitution and neither abridge, enlarge nor modify the substantive rights of any litigant, nor affect the right of the General Assembly to determine the jurisdiction of any court. . . ” Pa. Const., Art. 5, § 10.
At the time of the adoption of Rule 1101 (January 24, 1968), there was neither a constitutional right nor a statutory right vesting the Commonwealth with the power to demand trial by jury in criminal cases.3 In the promulgation and in the amendment of this rule, the Court was discharging its responsibility of setting forth the manner in which a party seeking to waive trial by jury should proceed. In deleting the original requirement of the attorney for the Commonwealth’s approval in 1973, this Court was not seeking to curtail a right of the Commonwealth but rather was designing a procedure, recognizing that the Commonwealth possessed (at that time) no right in the decision as to whether or not a jury trial should be permitted. By the enactment of § 5104(c) (promulgated in 1976) the Legislature created a substantive right in the *364Commonwealth to veto the decision to waive trial by jury in criminal matters. Thus, at the time of these two cases, the Commonwealth did have a legislatively conferred substantive right to object to the defendant’s decision to be tried without a jury.
The fact that a rule, promulgated prior to the creation of this right did not provide for the exercise of the right, cannot be construed as authority for the abrogation of that right. As stated, the Court rule was never intended to take away a right of the Commonwealth. It also may not be allowed to be used as a vehicle to ignore a subsequently conferred right.
Commonwealth v. Wharton, 495 Pa. 581, 603-604, 435 A.2d 158, 169 (1981) (Nix, J., Opinion in Support of Reversal). Once again, the crux of the instant controversy is framed
in terms of whether the right to trial by jury is a “substantive right” or “a right of procedure through which rights conferred by substantive law are enforced.” (Maj. Op. ante at 1329). However, it is obvious that the solution to the issue is not provided by a conclusory label that the right to trial by jury is per se either “substantive” or “procedural.” The truth of the matter is that the right to trial by jury unlike most other rights is neither purely “procedural” nor purely “substantive,” but rather “. . . fall[s] within the uncertain area between substance and procedure, [and is] rationally capable of classification as either.” Hanna v. Burner, 380 U.S. 460, 472, 85 S.Ct. 1136, 1144, 14 L.Ed.2d 8 (1965).
It therefore becomes necessary to look beyond and inquire into the inherent nature of legislative action and its effect on the processes employed by its co-equal branch of government, the judiciary. It is submitted, that when a particular right falls within the “grey zone” between substance and procedure, an explicit affirmative enactment on the subject by the General Assembly of this Commonwealth tips the *365balance in favor of finding the right to be substantive.3 When the General Assembly enacted the statute giving to the Commonwealth the same right to trial by jury as possessed by the accused in a criminal case, it affirmatively created a new right of substance. Section 5104(c) merely created in the Commonwealth a corresponding right possessed by the accused.
Finally, the majority premises its result on the theory that Section 5104(c) provides for prosecutorial control of the accused’s motion to waive trial by jury without any provision for the prosecutor’s accountability through judicial review. The majority implicitly suggests that the constitutional right of a defendant to trial by jury necessarily includes an absolute right to waive trial by jury. This is obviously a fallacious conclusion and I would hold that the court rule in this, instance must defer to the statutory enactment.
HUTCHINSON, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.
McDERMOTT, Justice, dissenting.
Upon the thinnest semantic ground, in a usurpation of authority, naked of precedent, the majority is diluting the right of the people to trial by jury.
The Court has peremptorily declared unconstitutional an act of the Legislature reaffirming the people’s absolute right to trial by jury.1 One usually expects deference due the constitutionality of legislative enactments. That may be *366overlooked here in haste to write Pennsylvania into a new phase of concern over the integrity of prosecuting officials.2
To indulge its predilection of distrust for prosecuting authorities, the Court is obliged to find that the right of the people to trial by jury is a “procedural” and not a “substantive” right. To do so, it has collated one of the most irrelevant and contradictory catenas of authorities that so important an issue has yet received.3
Mr. Justice Roberts has cited no case that says aught but that trial by jury is the fundamental mode of trial under our law. One may describe it as he wishes. Trial by jury is neither procedural nor substantive; it is the apodictic mandate of the constitution. The right to trial by jury is a fundamental, elemental right that has always inhered in the people, as well as the accused. As Chief Justice Warren stated:
*367“Not only must the right of the accused to a trial by a constitutional jury be jealously preserved, but the maintenance of the jury as a fact-finding body in criminal cases is of such importance and has such a place in our tradition, that, before any waiver can become effective, the consent of government counsel and the sanction of the court must be had, in addition to the express and intelligent consent of the defendant. And the duty of the trial court in that regard is not to be discharged as a mere matter of rote, but with sound and advised discretion, with an eye to avoid unreasonable or undue departure from that mode of trial or from any of the essential elements thereof, and with a caution increasing in degree as the offenses dealt with increase in gravity.”
Singer v. United States, 380 U.S. 24, 34, 85 S.Ct. 783, 789, 13 L.Ed.2d 630 (1965), quoting, Patton v. United States, 281 U.S. 276, 277, 312-313, 50 S.Ct. 253, 263, 74 L.Ed. 854 (1929).
Doubtless saddened by such a burst of authority, the majority ignored, without comment, the careful history and logic of Singer. Certainly, they have rejected the holding and the lesson; notwithstanding their enduring respect for Chief Justice Warren, who they have emulated and endeavored to surpass so often. As the Chief Justice said with such precision:
In light of the Constitution’s emphasis on jury trial, we find it difficult to understand how the petitioner can submit the bold proposition that to compel a defendant in a criminal case to undergo a jury trial against his will is contrary to his right to a fair trial or to due process. A defendant’s only Constitutional right concerning the method of trial is to an impartial trial by jury. We find no Constitutional impediment to conditioning a waiver of this right on the consent of the prosecuting attorney and the trial judge when, if either refuses to consent, the result is simply that the defendant is subject to an impartial trial by jury — the very thing that the Constitution guarantees. The Constitution recognizes an adversary system as the proper method for determining guilt, and *368the Government, as a litigant, has a legitimate interest in seeing that cases in which it believes a conviction is warranted are tried before the tribunal which the Constitution regards as most likely to produce a fair result.
380 U.S. at 36, 85 S.Ct. at 790. To avoid such clarity, the majority has retreated to a circumvention.
The contention that the people of Pennsylvania in their Constitution of 1968 yielded their right to trial by jury to the procedural whims of this Court is totally unsupported. In the Constitution of 1968 the people addressed the right of trial by jury in the creation of the Municipal Court for Philadelphia. They specified that the Municipal Court would have jurisdiction in certain specified criminal cases wherein neither the people nor the accused would have trial by jury unless, after conviction, the accused appealed for trial de novo. In that special creation they carefully and advisedly yielded their right to trial by jury. They reposed in the Legislature the power to fix the jurisdiction of that court, a jurisdiction the Legislature has exercised from time to time. Nowhere in the document do they yield more, and certainly nowhere do they empower this Court to alter their immemorial and fundamental right to trial by jury, except as they provided. Indeed, with provision that may grow more appealing, they left the very jurisdiction of this Court at the disposal of the Legislature. To say that that power given exclusively to the Legislature is only a procedural device is to say that rain is not water, but rather a form thereof.
The majority, with some piety, believes its rule will provide an “impartial determination and foster public accountability on the part of the prosecutor by encouraging him to state his reasons on the record.” Majority Opinion at 1329.
The right of' the accused to a jury trial is based among other reasons on his right to be free of the “complaint, biased or eccentric judge”. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 155, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 1450, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968). We might add, the venal and arrogant judge, as well as other combinations. The majority has put the fox in charge of the chickens by institutionalizing judge-shopping for one of the *369litigants. There may be any number of reasons why a prosecutor could not put his reasons upon the record, one of them being to save the face of justice. Whether he can, does or won’t, does not deprive anyone of his right to the fundamental fairness of trial by jury. As Chief Justice Warren in Singer noted, while affirming that federal prosecutors do not have to state their reasons for refusing consent to waiver: “Nor should we assume that federal prosecutors would demand a jury trial for an ignoble purpose.” 380 U.S. at 37, 85 S.Ct. at 791. Nor should we.
Accordingly, I dissent.

. Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 1101 provides:
Waiver of Jury Trial.
In all cases the defendant may waive a jury trial with the consent of his attorney, if any, and approval by a judge of the court in which the case is pending, and elect to be tried by a judge without a jury. The judge shall ascertain from the defendant whether this is a knowing and intelligent waiver, such colloquy shall appear on the record....

. Section 5104(c) provides:
In criminal cases the Commonwealth shall have the same right to trial by jury as does the accused.

The rule as originally drafted required the approval of the attorney for the Commonwealth before a waiver of jury trial could be accepted by the court. That requirement was deleted in the 1973 modification of the rule.

. This is not to imply that “... the Legislature could abolish any procedural rule adopted by this Court merely by enacting a contravening statute whose language confers a ‘right’ upon a litigant.” Commonwealth v. Wharton, supra 495 Pa. at 585, 435 A.2d at 160. (Roberts, J., joined by Flaherty, J.; in Parts I, II, and V of which O’Brien, C.J., joined, Opinion in Support of Affirmance).

. As the Legislature did in 1935 by Section 1 of the Act of June 11, 1935, P.L. 319, No. 141, 19 P.S. § 786, wherein a defendant was allowed waiver of jury trial with the consent of the District Attorney. The Act was passed to allow a waiver by a defendant reflecting the uncertainty at ancient law whether a waiver by either side was possible.

. As this Court has stated:
[A] legislative enactment enjoys a presumption in favor of its constitutionality and will not be declared unconstitutional unless it clearly, palpably and plainly violates the Constitution. All doubts are to be resolved in favor of a finding of constitutionality.
Parker v. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 483 Pa. 106, 116, 394 A.2d 932, 937 (1978) (citations omitted).

. The catena of cases cited are all addressed to what crimes at common law were treated summarily. Mr. Justice Frankfurter, in his law review article, 39 Harv.L.Rev. 917 (1926), never suggested jury trial is other than a mandated mode of trial and in Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U.S. 269, 63 S.Ct. 236, 87 L.Ed. 268 (1942), he held:
We have already held that one charged with a serious federal crime may dispense with his Constitutional right to jury trial, where this action is taken with his express, intelligent consent, where the Government also consents, and where such action is approved by the responsible judgment of the trial court.
317 U.S. at 278, 63 S.Ct. at 241 (emphasis supplied).
Professor Thayer, quoted in Singer v. United States, 380 U.S. 24, 85 S.Ct. 783, 13 L.Ed.2d 630 (1965), by Chief Justice Warren said, “... [trial by jury] grew first to be regarded as the one regular common-law mode of trial, always to be had when no other was fixed. Thayer, A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law 60 (1898).” 380 U.S. at 28. Professor Oppenheim in his law review article, 25 Mich.L.Rev. 695 (1927), was simply arguing that waiver should be allowed defendants. He does not equate the right to waive to the right to choose another forum.