Court Opinion

ID: 9641547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:34:15.434751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:38.282245
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I wish to note my adherence to what I believe is the correct interpretation of Garvin, as was demonstrated by Judge HOFFMAN (albeit in dissent) in Ryan : That the question that must be asked is whether the police would have reached appellant by independent means. Here, the police suspected appellant and could have shown his file photograph to the victims without having arrested him at all. Thus the police in fact would have eventually apprehended the defendant through the use of independent means.
*358Furthermore, I should award a new trial because the testimony by the two police officers, that they knew both appellant and Price and had seen them in one another’s company “many times,” should not have been admitted. The majority’s citation of McCormick does not go far enough. As McCormick says, in the section cited by the majority:
But relevance is not always enough. There may remain the question, is its value worth what it costs? There are several counterbalancing factors which may move the court to exclude relevant evidence if they outweigh its probative value. In order of their importance, they are these. First, the danger that the facts offered may unduly arouse the jury’s emotions of prejudice, hostility or sympathy .
McCormick at 438-39 (footnotes omitted).
Here, Price had been identified as one of the robbers, by witnesses who could not identify appellant. The police officers’ testimony regarding appellant’s association with Price encountered the very danger McCormick cites: Whatever relevance it had was outweighed by its tendency to show not guilt, but guilt by association.
The judgment of sentence should be reversed and the case remanded for new trial.