Court Opinion

ID: 9697478
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:17:46.608963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:32.913132
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority that a “no adverse” charge must be given when requested. That is not, however, the essential issue here because the trial judge did not deny the charge; rather he believed it done when in fact it was not. *458Ultimately, the question which the majority ponders is whether the mistaken absence of the charge can be harmless error.
Our doctrine of harmless error, found in the analysis of the United States Supreme Court, is clearly outlined by the majority. It is then put on the shelf, while the majority indulges itself in providing for a future the Supreme Court of the United States has not yet considered or commanded. In short, they now provide that this error, however plainly harmless, must yield to the majority’s doctrine that it is never harmless if a “no adverse” charge is not given when requested; which is, of course, to say the facts of this nightmare murder were not proven, or could not be proven, to their satisfaction even if that which could not reasonably be expected to help is not done. To come to this conclusion they find that a “colorable” argument could be or was made that rendered the eyewitness testimony of the prison guards suspect. Their testimony was that the appellant had the knife that killed in his hand when he and a howling mob pursued the deceased against the prison gate yelling “kill him.” The blood of the deceased was on that knife. To some that may raise “colorable” questions. The jurors who saw and heard the evidence, however, were not so easily persuaded.
The majority notes that whether the unintended failure to give a “no adverse” charge can be harmless, has not yet been decided in the United States Supreme Court. They choose nonetheless to forge ahead and announce that even if it does, Pennsylvania will not follow. They find that the Pennsylvania Constitution is a treasure trove of yet undiscovered rights. In their continued quest we can expect they will find what they will to make Pennsylvania a safer haven to do here what experience teaches should not be done anywhere. See e.g. Commonwealth v. Edmunds, 526 Pa. 374, 586 A.2d 887 (1991) (eschewing the “good faith” exception in search and seizure); Commonwealth v. Davis, 526 Pa. 428, 586 A.2d 914 (1991) (imposing a more restrictive rule on the use of hearsay); and of course, Commonwealth *459v. Triplett, 462 Pa. 244, 341 A.2d 62 (1975) (where more realistic voters were forced to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution to overrule this Court when it insisted that the right to lie was a precious liberty).
The majority has made it clear that a request for the charge requires the charge. It is conceivable that such error can recur despite the clear ruling, and prove as harmless as it proves here. For that reason, I would not slam the door shut by using the power to transcend what has not yet been mandated by the United States Supreme Court. The temptation to go beyond what is mandated by the United States Supreme Court by enlarging our State Constitution is a journey into areas best left to the legislature. Such journeys may make Pennsylvania unique and stranded in unworkable locks in the search for the truth: in many cases giving benefits, not constitutionally required, to those that count the rights of others as small change.
Finally, in passing on whether the issue was waived because counsel did not press the matter, the majority finds it to have been an unbecoming burden on counsel to press with firmness and appropriate courtesy for a proof, but inches away in the court reporter’s machine. To my mind, for counsel not to do so was an abdication of his duty to the court and to his client. Here, counsel knew the charge was not given and the court was mistaken. To yield without more smacks of intention to hopefully leave an uncorrectable error in the case to the cost of his client, the court and, of course, seemingly last but certainly not least, the truth. The majority’s view that one need not “scratch, scream or plead” for the truth is like minding one’s business as the blind man walks off the cliff. The majority has apparently grown thinner skin than trial judges in the daily realities of trial where counsel are expected to press their points with “logic and vigor.” Polite silence in the presence of a known and immediately reachable and rectifiable error is more than unbecoming.