Court Opinion

ID: 9774643
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:28:05.587237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:12.348572
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION BY
Senior Judge FRIEDMAN.
I respectfully dissent. The majority holds that, because Donna S. Bruce (Claimant) entered into the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) program following her arrest, the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review (Board) properly found that Claimant was guilty of the charges against her, and, thus, Claimant’s incarceration did not constitute good cause for her violation of Chapman Nissan’s (Employer) “no call/no show” policy. I cannot agree.
Employer has a policy stating that two days of “no call/no show” results in termination of employment. Claimant failed to call off work on March 5, 2009, and March 6, 2009, because she had been arrested on drug-related charges and receiving stolen property. Employer discharged Claimant, and Claimant applied for unemployment benefits. Claimant eventually entered into the ARD program in connection with the charges against her.
*678The question is whether Claimant’s incarceration constitutes good cause for her failing to call off work. As the majority states, the Board concedes that, if Claimant had been acquitted of the charges, the Board would have found that her incarceration was through no fault of her own and would have concluded that Claimant had good cause for violating Employer’s policy and could not be denied benefits. (Majority op. at 14.) However, because Claimant entered into the ARD program, the Board found that Claimant’s incarceration was her own fault, i.e., that Claimant was guilty of the charges against her. In my view, the Board’s finding lacks support in the law governing ARD and cannot stand.
Rules 314 and 315 of the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure make clear that, when a defendant is accepted into the ARD program, all action on the charges against the defendant is deferred. Pa. R.Crim.P. 314 and 315. Under Rules 319 and 320, when a defendant completes the ARD program satisfactorily, the charges are dismissed and, absent compelling reasons to retain the arrest record, it is expunged. Pa.R.Crim.P. 319 and 320. Thus, the legal effect of satisfactory completion of the ARD program is a clean record, i.e., no record of fault or guilt.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has recognized that defendants who may be able to obtain an acquittal of the charges against them nevertheless accept entrance into the ARD program in order to have a clean record. “Although legal defenses may be available in many of the cases selected for ARD which would result in acquittal ... if tried, the program is attractive to many defendants because it provides them with an opportunity to ‘earn a clean record ...’” Commonwealth v. Armstrong, 495 Pa. 506, 511-12, 434 A.2d 1205, 1208 (1981) (citation omitted). Moreover, our Superior Court has stated that, in practical effect, the ARD program is not much different from a jury’s acquittal. Commonwealth v. Briley, 278 Pa.Super. 363, 420 A.2d 582, 586 (1980).
Because the Board has conceded that Claimant would be entitled to benefits had she been acquitted, because the Rules governing ARD provide that its successful completion results in the dismissal of charges, because the courts have recognized that entrance into the ARD program is not necessarily a confession of guilt and because the courts have likened ARD to acquittal, I would reverse.