Court Opinion

ID: 9643510
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:31:50.344285+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:01.132740
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Chief Justice,
concurring.
While I join Mr. Justice Saylor’s majority opinion, I write separately to clarify my position on defining “life imprisonment” in capital cases. In terms of appellant’s argument that he was entitled to an instruction on the meaning of “life imprisonment,” I agree with Mr. Justice Saylor’s disposition of the issue since it is consistent with precedent.
I would, however, require a Simmons instruction in every capital case. Mr. Justice Nigro cogently explained the rationale for such a rule in his concurring opinion in Commonwealth v. Clark, 551 Pa. 258, 710 A.2d 31, 43-44 (Pa.1998)(Nigro, J., concurring), which I joined:
However, I would suggest that the better practice and policy is to require trial courts to give a Simmons instruction in all death penalty proceedings, regardless of whether counsel raises the issue of a defendant’s potential future dangerousness during the penalty phase.
Under this practice, a jury considering the death penalty would automatically be informed, before deliberations began, of what life imprisonment actually means in Pennsylvania at the time of the instruction. In my opinion, a standard Simmons instruction would, in the first instance, serve to clarify that issue for the jury. For example, since commutation is, at this time, a possibility in Pennsylvania for those *376serving life sentences, and therefore proper for the jury’s consideration, trial judges giving a Simmons instruction could be equipped with statistical information relating to the percentage of life sentences which had been commuted within the last several years. Not only would the jury be aided by knowing those percentages during their penalty deliberations, but the defendant should be entitled to have the jury aware of what statistical possibility exists that a life sentence imposed on him would result in commutation. Moreover, I can see no prejudice that the Commonwealth would suffer if every defendant facing a sentence of death received a Simmons jury instruction explaining, as thoroughly as possible, what “life imprisonment” means in Pennsylvania.
(Footnotes omitted). I think it is self-evident that every juror in the penalty phase of a capital case is always concerned with the issue of future dangerousness.
Justice NIGRO joins in this concurring opinion.