Court Opinion

ID: 9750189
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:32:06.647089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:04.075546
License: Public Domain

Opinion by
Mr. Justice O’Brien,
On January 12, 1971, Bruce Carlisle, a four-month-old infant, was found dead by members of the Philadelphia Police Department responding to an emergency call from the residence of appellant, Margaret Boykin. A police officer observed a large spot of what appeared to be “dried blood” on the appellant’s white blouse. A post-mortem examination of the infant’s body, conducted by the medical examiner, disclosed that the infant died from “suffocation”.
The following day, appellant, who had been caring for the baby for some weeks prior to his death, was interrogated by the Philadelphia Police Department Homicide Division, concerning the death. Appellant was given the required warnings, after which she gave a statement, which was typed by a police detective, in *27which she admitted that she had held the baby’s head, against her chest to stop him from crying. In this statement, she conceded that she had held the baby “excessively tight” but stated that she did not realize this until she noticed blood from the baby’s nose on her blouse. In her signed statement, she admitted that earlier versions she had given the police orally concerning the incident “were lies”. This statement was signed at 3:10 a.m.
Three and one-half hours later, appellant orally admitted to a detective that when she held the infant tightly against her shoulder, she knew that “it would smother him”. She further admitted that she “deliberately smothered” the infant. Following the oral admission of her culpability for the death of Bruce Car-lisle, she orally confessed to the deliberate smotherings of two other infants.
Appellant was indicted on charges stemming from the deaths of each of the three infants. The three cases were severed, on motion of appellant’s counsel, and having waived a jury trial, appellant was tried nonjury on October 27, 1971, on the indictments relating to the death of Bruce Carlisle. After a four-day trial, appellant was adjudged guilty of voluntary manslaughter. After denial of her post-trial motions, appellant was sentenced to a term of imprisonment not to exceed ten years. This appeal followed.
Appellant first argues that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the verdict. However, the appellant’s oral admission that she knowingly smothered the infant and the medical examiner’s testimony that suffocating was, in fact, the cause of the infant’s death, amply support the court’s verdict. Consequently, the principal question in this case is whether appellant’s oral confession was properly admitted into evidence. Appellant raises two separate contentions in her challenge to the admissibility of her confession.
*28She first contends that the statement should not have been admitted because her purported waiver of her rights to remain silent and to have the advice of counsel was constitutionally ineffective because she had not been informed of the nature of the crime for which she was being questioned. In support of this contention, appellant emphasizes that at the pretrial suppression hearing, the Commonwealth’s police witnesses admitted that they had never told appellant specifically that she was suspected of having murdered the Carlisle baby. Instead, she was simply told the officers “were investigating the [baby’s] death”.
Appellant relies on our opinion in Commonwealth v. Collins, 436 Pa. 114, 121, 259 A. 2d 160 (1969), where we said that “an intelligent and understanding waiver of the right to counsel is impossible where the defendant has not been informed of the crime which is being investigated.”
However, regardless of the precedential value of our decision in Collins,1 it is easily distinguishable from the instant case. Here, the evidence shows that the appellant was told, more than once, that the police were investigating the death of the Carlisle baby. We believe that this is sufficient to alert the appellant to the fact that she was involved in a possible criminal homicide case, since she knew that the police would not have investigated the baby’s death unless a crime were suspected. The fact that the appellant was not told that the police suspected that a specific degree of homicide, or negligent manslaughter, had been committed makes no difference. Before the appellant made her oral confession, the police could only suspect that the baby’s death was caused by some criminal conduct. They had no valid reason for specifying that they suspected an intentional rather than a negligent homicide.
*29Appellant next argues that her statement should not have been admitted because the Commonwealth failed to prove the corpus delicti. To support her contention that no corpus delicti was established, appellant asserts that absent hearsay elements in the opinion of the medical examiner that the cause of death was unnatural,2 the evidence only proved a death consistent with both accidental and criminal causes.3 Under Pennsylvania law, that is all the Commonwealth had to do. See Commonwealth v. Gockley, 411 Pa. 437, 192 A. 2d 693 (1963); Commonwealth v. Kravitz, 400 Pa. 198, 161 A. 2d 861 (1960); Commonwealth v. Kostan, 349 Pa. 560, 37 A. 2d 606 (1944).
As we said in Commonwealth v. Gockley, supra, at 454, quoting from Kravitz, supra: “The corpus delicti, like other facts, may be shown by circumstantial evidence; it is sufficient if these circumstances are consistent with crime even though they are also consistent with suicide or accident; if it were otherwise, it would be impossible in many cases, where there were no eyewitnesses, to convict a criminal: [citing cases].” (Emphasis supplied.)
In this case, where the medical examiner found that the infant died from suffocation, which cause of death was consistent with both criminal homicide and accident, the Commonwealth offered sufficient proof of the corpus delicti to establish its right to offer the appellant’s extrajudicial statement into evidence.
Appellant’s contention that the medical examiner’s opinion was based on hearsay reports and, therefore, *30should not have been admissible is unsupported by the record. The examiner’s conclusion that the baby died from suffocation was reached independently from the police reports. The reports only led him to conclude that the suffocation was from “unnatural” means. As we have already said, evidence that the cause of death was suffocation, whether “natural” or “unnatural” is sufficient to render the appellant’s extrajudicial statements admissible.
Appellant makes one more allegation of error. She contends that a police detective should not have been permitted to testify for the Commonwealth, in rebuttal, concerning statements she had made to him confessing to having smothered two other babies in the same year; in both cases “to stop them from crying”.
Appellant argues that this testimony should not have been admitted under the general rule outlined in Commonwealth v. Wable, 382 Pa. 80, 114 A. 2d 334 (1955), where we said, at page 84: “It is true, of course, that a distinct crime, except under certain special circumstances, cannot be given in evidence against a defendant who is being tried for another crime, because the fact of the commission of one offense is not proof of the commission of another. . . . But it is also true that sometimes there exist the ‘special circumstances’ which operate as exceptions to the general rule, and bring the case within the equally well established principle that evidence of other crimes is admissible when it tends to prove a common scheme, plan or design embracing the commission of two or more crimes so related to each other that proof of one tends to prove the others or to establish the identity of the person charged with the commission of the crime on trial,—in other words where there is such a logical connection between the crimes that proof of one will naturally tend to show that the accused is the person who committed the other.” (Emphasis in original.)
*31In its brief, the Commonwealth argues that the evidence was not presented to show appellant’s “propensity to commit infanticides”. Bather, the Commonwealth contends that it was offered to rebut the appellant’s denial on cross-examination that she had admitted smothering the other babies. However, if evidence of the other two incidents were otherwise inadmissible, then it would be equally improper to permit cross-examination concerning these other incidents. Therefore, we must decide whether evidence of the other two occurrences, whether by cross-examination or by direct testimony concerning the appellant’s previous admissions, was properly admissible under the rule enunciated in Wable.
Evidence of previous crimes is generally inadmissible because its tendency to prejudice a jury unfairly usually outweighs its tendency to prove a material fact at issue. In this case, the real issue was whether the Carlisle infant suffocated by accident or as a result of the appellant’s deliberate conduct. The appellant’s admissions that two other infants who suffocated while in her care died as a result of her deliberate acts, in smothering the infants to keep them from crying, matches the explanation she previously gave in this case and indicates that the three infanticides are logically related by a “common motive or design”. The fact of these previous admissions is logically relevant to a determination of whether her original admission of guilt in this case is to be believed or whether, as she contends, the Carlisle baby’s death was due to an innocent accident.
Judgment of sentence affirmed.
Mr. Justice Manderino concurs in the result.

 See Commonwealth v. Cooper, 444 Pa. 122, 278 A. 2d 895 (1971).

 The medical examiner admitted that his conclusion that the baby’s suffocation was due to “unnatural” means was based, in fact, on reports that the appellant had admitted that she deliberately caused the suffocation.

 Evidence was offered that an examination of the infant’s body disclosed the presence of no diseases and the toxicology report eliminates the possibility of gases, poisons, or other foreign substances.