Court Opinion

ID: 9754648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:08:45.627324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:56.157443
License: Public Domain

NIX, Chief Justice,
concurring.
I join the opinion and write in an attempt to further clarify an area which has proven over the years to be one elusive of satisfactory explication.
The inherent failing of the former concepts of legal and factual impossibility, aside from the difficulties encountered in attempting to make that distinction in a given factual setting, was that the use of this dichotomy tended to focus on the legal form rather than upon an evaluation of the substantive danger the defendant’s actions posed for society. The latter concern is the only legitimate basis for assigning criminal liability to the conduct. Thus, where the crime charged to have been attempted would have constituted a violation of our criminal laws, had the attendant circumstances been such as the actor believed them to be, whether commission was factually or legally impossible is of no moment. Criminal liability should attach in either instance because the actor’s mental frame of reference reflects the requisite dangerousness to society to justify that result.
The effect of section 901(b) of the Crimes Code, 18 Pa.C.S. § 901(b), is to allow prosecution for an attempt, without regard to the impossibility of achieving the intended result, where the conduct would constitute the crime, if the attendant circumstances were as the actor believed them to be. However, as the majority points out, we must be careful to distinguish situations where the intended conduct is not a crime. The mere fact that one thinks his conduct is criminal, but it is in fact lawful conduct, does not provide a basis for attaching criminal liability. The actor’s willingness to perform an act which society has not deemed criminal does not reflect the dangerous disposition that would warrant a criminal sanction.
*418Up to this point in the development of our law, we have not accepted a willingness to break the law as the sole criterion for attaching criminal liability. The abstract inclination to violate the law must be concretized into an intent to engage in specific conduct which, if completed as intended, would amount to a violation of the criminal law. In both instances there is a subjective willingness to engage in the activity regardless of its legality. The justification for criminal sanction in the latter is that the conduct intended and entered upon is in fact a crime.
Candor requires the acknowledgement that the new distinction we establish today is not beyond question. Experience may prove that this approach will produce its own problems in its application. Since I am not willing to accept the position that intent to break the law should be the sole criterion,* and the former approach has demonstrated its gross deficiencies, I applaud this legislative change.
LARSEN and ZAPPALA, JJ., join in this opinion.

 We should not rush to generalize proclivities beyond the proclivity to commit a specific recognized crime. To do otherwise would allow the law of attempt to manufacture crimes not previously defined by the legislature.