Court Opinion

ID: 9645183
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:15:21.851236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:24.475232
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Bell:
I would hold that a magistrate’s hearing is not and never has been a “critical stage” in Pennsylvania at which a person arrested for a crime cannot make a voluntary confession, unless represented by counsel.
The Majority does not and cannot say that this appellant — this dangerous criminal who was convicted in 1951 or aggravated assault and battery and robbery — was not guilty. This is still another case in the many recent decisions of this Court which the Majority believe are necessitated — not expressly but impliedly, or by a Procrustean stretch — by recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. In the last few years, both Courts have invalidated guilty pleas, guilty verdicts, and voluntary confessions of dangerous and undoubtedly guilty criminals on some recently invented, unrealistic and farfetched interpretations of the United States Constitution which the minority of the United States Supreme Court correctly said found no “home” in and were not “supported” by the Constitution: Harrison v. United States, 36 U.S.L. Week 4549, 4551; Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 494, 499; Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 525. See also, Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 42.
In Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S., supra, Justice White joined in by Justice Clark and Justice Stewart, dissenting, said (page 499) that the majority Opinion excluded voluntary confessions “for . . . reasons, which can find no home* in any of the provisions of the Constitution”; and on page 494 thereof, Justice *638Stewart said that the Majority was “supported by no stronger authority than its own rhetoric. . . .”
In Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S., supra, Justice Harlan, joined in by Justice Stewart and Justice White, dissenting, said (pp. 525-526) : “Nothing in the letter or the spirit of the Constitution or in the precedents squares with the heavy-handed and one-sided action that is so precipitously taken by the Court in the name of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities”; and Justice Clark said (page 500): “The ipse dixit of the majority has no support in our cases.”
In Harrison v. United States, 36 U.S.L. Week 4549, 4551, Justice White, dissenting, said: “But here, as in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), decision has emanated from the Court’s fuzzy ideology about confessions, an ideology which is difficult to relate to any provision of the Constitution and which excludes from the trial [,] evidence of the highest relevance and probity.”
See also, Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S., supra, where Justice Harlan, joined in by Justice Stewart, dissenting, said (page 42) : “The Constitutional right which the Court creates is manufactured out of whole cloth.”
Our law-abiding citizens need, as never before, equal Justice with, and adequate protection from, all murderers, rapists, robbers, violent rioters, and all violators of the law; and I am sorry to say that they are not getting it.
For these reasons, I would affirm the decision of the Court of Common Pleas and of the Superior Court.
Mr. Justice Musmanno joins in this dissenting Opinion.

 Italics, ours.