Court Opinion

ID: 9695675
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:27:07.243786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:15.757667
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring:
Anyone who has been a trial judge will recognize what happened here. The judge had a difficult decision to *39make. He made it — -he found appellant guilty — but then he started to worry that perhaps he had made a mistake.
We have all experienced such worry. It can be very painful. It does not, however, justify a change of mind. Had the judge been sitting with a jury, and had one of the jurors come to him after the trial and expressed the wish to change his verdict, the judge would have told him that he could not. Here, the judge was the jury. He should have said to himself what he would have said to the juror.
It is important to note a distinction, in the cases. If a judge sitting without a jury indicates by something he says on the record that when he found the defendant guilty, he had a reasonable doubt, we will — must—reverse. Commonwealth v. Oglesby, 438 Pa. 91, 94, 263 A.2d 419, 420-421 (1970), Commonwealth v. Molina, 236 Pa.Super. 598, 601, 346 A.2d 351, 353 (1975) (Dissenting Opinion by Spaeth, J. in which Hoffman and Cercone, JJ., joined). The reason is that the record discloses error of law; the case is the same, in substance, as though the judge had been sitting with a jury and had failed to instruct the jury that it could not find the defendant guilty unless satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt. This is not such a case. There is nothing on the record to support the conclusion that when the judge found appellant guilty, he had a reasonable doubt. It only appears that the judge had some doubt later. Thus, no error of law appears. In these circumstances both the trial judge and we are without power to change the verdict.
I therefore concur in the majority’s order.