Court Opinion

ID: 9758609
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:38:04.523251+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:53.409480
License: Public Domain

*470POMEROY, Justice,
concurring.
As fully set forth in Commonwealth v. Polimeni, 474 Pa. 430, 378 A.2d 1189 (1977) (opinion by Pomeroy, J., joined by Eagen, C. J., announcing the decision of the Court), decided this day, the Crimes Code1 has made “[a]ll grades of unlawful killing lesser included offenses of the overall crime of criminal homicide.” It was there stated that “because the legislature [in the Crimes Code] has classified both murder and involuntary manslaughter as subdivisions of the major offense of criminal homicide, a defendant who has been charged with murder is entitled on request to have the jury instructed on the elements of involuntary manslaughter at least where evidence is presented at his trial on which a verdict of that less serious offense could rationally be based.” Ibid. 474 at 430, 378 A.2d at 1189.
In the case at bar, as in Commonwealth v. Polimeni, supra, and Commonwealth v. Ford, 472 Pa. 542, 372 A.2d 821 (1977), also decided this date, a jury could rationally have found the appellant guilty of involuntary manslaughter on the evidence presented;2 thus I agree that the trial court should have granted appellant’s request to have the jury instructed on involuntary manslaughter, and that a new trial is required because this was not done. I thus concur in the mandate of the plurality opinion. As in Polimeni, supra, and Ford, supra, however, there is here no need to reach, as the plurality does, the question whether a defendant being tried for murder is entitled on request to an involuntary manslaughter charge regardless of the evidence presented to the jury. As Mr. Justice Roberts stated in Commonwealth v. Moore, 463 Pa. 317, 328, 344 A.2d 850, 856 (1975), “[we] need not decide whether rationality should be a requirement for a permissible verdict, for in this case, a verdict of involuntary *471manslaughter would have been rational.” (Concurring opinion of Roberts, J.) (footnote omitted). Moreover, no such broad claim is made by appellant, and the point was neither briefed nor argued by either party in this Court.

. 18 Pa.C.S. § 2501 et seq.

. Garcia’s testimony was essentially that his gun had accidentally discharged while he and the victim were engaged in a struggle. Similar evidence in Commonwealth v. Ford, 472 Pa. 542, 372 A.2d 821 (1977), and Commonwealth v. Moore, 463 Pa. 317, 344 A.2d 850 (1975) has been held sufficient to justify a verdict of guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

. Certainly in the area of double penalty prohibitions, for example, such an analysis is most helpful. See Commonwealth v. Sparrow, 471 Pa. 490, 370 A.2d 712 (1976) (Dissenting Opinion of Nix, J., joined by Roberts J.); Commonwealth ex rel. Moszczynski v. Ashe, 343 Pa. 102, 21 A.2d 920 (1974).