Court Opinion

ID: 9752558
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:14:47.52945+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:17.432760
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
dissenting.
While I have no disagreement with the majority’s peroration on the importance of one’s reputation, I see little need to make that point by resort to a book of famous quotations, and I fail altogether to see what relevance it has to the question in the case: viz., the correctness of the instruction given to the jury.
The trial court’s charge on character, which the majority chooses not to recite, is as follows:
Evidence of good character is very important testimony, because the law says that when a person has a prior good reputation in the community, that person is not *242likely to commit a crime that’s against that person’s nature. Evidence of good character is material and essential testimony in determining the guilt or innocence of the defendant.
This kind of testimony as to the defendant’s good character is not to be made light of. It’s not a mere makeweight thrown in to fill out the case or fill in a gap. It’s affirmative, substantive, testimony to be weighed and considered by the jury in connection with all the other evidence in the case as bearing upon the question of whether or not the Commonwealth has or has not established the guilt of the defendant as he stands charged beyond a reasonable doubt.
It is difficult to see where this charge is defective, for, as the Commonwealth points out, it accurately states that character evidence is important substantive evidence, like any other evidence, and is neither inferior nor superior to any other type of evidence; and also, it correctly states that character evidence must be considered with all the other evidence in one overall inquiry on reasonable doubt.
I agree with the Commonwealth that the “of itself” charge is fundamentally misleading because it suggests that character evidence, unlike other types of evidence, creates a reasonable doubt in a manner different from all other evidence. Insofar as that misconception is, in fact, promoted, reputation evidence usurps the jury’s function by suggesting what weight to give a particular type of evidence, thereby encouraging the jury to ignore all other evidence and to give reputation evidence what the English call “pride of place.”
While some of this Court’s past cases have approved of the use of the “of itself” charge, only one case can be read as requiring its use, and that case treats the issue in a one-sentence footnote which is dictum. See Commonwealth v. Scott, 496 Pa. 188, 195 n. 1, 436 A.2d 607, 611 n. 1 (1981).1 Of the thirty-one states which have considered the *243question, only one state has required a charge similar to that at issue here; the remaining states favored a charge similar to that given by the trial court in which character evidence is considered along with all other evidence.
It simply makes no sense to instruct a jury, in effect, that its task is divided into two steps in which it first must consider whether the defendant’s evidence of good reputation creates a reasonable doubt in the case, and then if it does not, consider the rest of the evidence, both of the defense and the prosecution. Instead, reputation evidence should be treated like any other evidence, one of many considerations in a one-step process of determining guilt or innocence. The trial court properly instructed the jury and should be affirmed.

. In Commonwealth v. Aston, 227 Pa. 106, 75 A. 1017 (1910), the defendant asked for the following charge:
*243Evidence of good character is material and substantive evidence in the cause, and may, of itself, reduce the crime from murder in the first degree to murder in the second degree.
(Emphasis added.) The Court, in rejecting this charge, stated:
The rule of all the cases is that evidence of good character is always admissible and must be weighed and considered by the jury in connection with the other testimony in the case, and it to be regarded as evidence of a substantive fact like any other evidence tending to establish innocence. In some instances it may of itself create the reasonable doubt which will entitle the accused to an acquittal____ The jury were instructed that evidence of good character must be considered in connection with all the other testimony in the case, but that it did not raise a distinct issue. The defendant was given the benefit of his evidence of good character, and there is nothing in this record about which he can justly complain.
227 Pa. at 111, 75 A. 1017. This is still good law today, and it is inexplicable why the majority ignores it. The Aston Court’s statement that in some cases, character evidence may of itself create reasonable doubt which would result in an acquittal does not mean that a jury must be instructed in these words, but only that when the jury is considering all the evidence, it may, in a given case, find that character evidence is so strong that it “of itself” raises a doubt as to guilt. See also Commonwealth v. Stelma, 327 Pa. 317, 323, 192 A. 906 (1937); Commonwealth v. Beingo, 217 Pa. 60, 66 A. 153 (1907).