Court Opinion

ID: 9709050
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:38:58.01738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:45.614368
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice,
concurring.
I join in the majority’s affirmance of the trial court’s order. I must, however, note the inconsistency between the majority’s statement that we “may affirm if the order below is correct for any reason” (at p. 317), and the law as we have recently stated it. See, Commonwealth v. Clair, 458 Pa. 418, 326 A.2d 272 (1974) and its progeny.
Suppose a convicted defendant requests a reversal claiming a violation of constitutional rights. Would we sua sponte find a non-constitutional issue requiring reversal in order to avoid the constitutional question raised? “Emphatically not!” We have said in case' after case in which defendant has failed to raise that non-constitutional issue in the trial court. If a defendant fails to raise an issue in the trial court, we have said it is not preserved for appellate review. Period. If we are now going to “find” an issue so that we may affirm a lower court’s order favoring a defendant, we should also “find” an issue when warranted to reverse a lower court’s decision inimicable to a defendant. But that we will not do.
If we are to remain consistent with our requirement that issues be raised for the first time in the trial court in order to be preserved for appellate review, we should now state that we will affirm a trial court’s order for any reason raised in the trial court, even though the trial court did not rule on that issue. In this case, the issue decided by the majority was raised in the trial court by appellees. I therefore join in the result reached by the majority here.