Court Opinion

ID: 9733595
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:11:20.602028+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:42.593619
License: Public Domain

HUDOCK, Judge,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent. I believe the majority has mistakenly applied our Supreme Court's specific holding on the particular facts presented in Commonwealth v. Kimmel, 523 Pa. 107, 565 A.2d 426 (1989), to a substantially different factual pattern presented by the instant appeal. In doing so, the majority has also found that our Supreme Court overruled precedent it had established only eight months earlier.
*455In Kimmel, supra, the defendant was arrested on December 28, 1986, and charged with Driving Under the Influence, (DUI).1 Kimmel pled guilty to this charge on May 4, 1987. Kimmel’s record also contained a prior arrest for DUI on November 7, 1979, to which he pled guilty on January 4, 1980. Subsequent to Kimmel’s guilty plea in 1987, the trial court determined that Kimmel was a second offender under 75 Pa.C.S.A. § 3731(e)(1)(H). This Court affirmed in an unpublished memorandum. Commonwealth v. Kimmel, 377 Pa.Super. 653, 541 A.2d 1152 (1988).
Allocatur was granted and our Supreme Court was presented with a factual situation where Kimmel’s first offense occurred on November 7, 1979 and the second offense occurred on December seven years and one month later. Thus, the Supreme Court was faced with the issue of “whether [Kimmel's] record fits ‘within the previous seven years.’ ” Commonwealth v. Kimmel, supra, 523 Pa. at 109, 565 A.2d at 427. In arriving at its conclusion, the Supreme Court noted that this Court had already addressed this problem in Commonwealth v. Kearns, 365 Pa.Super. 13, 528 A.2d 992 (1987).2 In Kearns, the conviction date for the first DUI offense was August 6, 1979, and the second offense occurred on April 23, six years and eight months *456later.3 This Court rejected Ream's argument that the seven year period should be measured from the date of the first offense to the date of the second offense, or from the date of the prior conviction to the date of the present conviction, finding instead that the seven year period was to be measured from the date of the prior conviction to the date of the second offense.
In Kimmel, supra, our Supreme Court, in expressly evaluating the phrase “within the previous seven years,” § 3731(e)(l)(ii), found that the seven year “look-back” period for recidivism is measured “from the date of the prior conviction to the date of the second offense.” Id., 523 Pa. at 109-10, 565 A.2d at 427. Our Supreme Court relied solely on the application of well-settled rules of statutory construction to arrive at this conclusion.4 In both Kimmel and Kearns, both our Supreme Court and this Court5 were confronted with factual situations where, depending on the start date and end date of the seven year period, the respective defendant would qualify for sentencing under § 3731(e)(ii). I cannot believe that our Supreme Court, by affirming this Court’s decision in Kimmel,6 supra, intended *457such a holding to apply to circumstances in which multiple DUI offenses/convictions occur well within the seven year time period contemplated by the penalty enhancement provisions of § 3731(e). Unlike the majority, I find that other recently established precedent by the Supreme Court requires a different conclusion.
In Commonwealth v. Towns, 356 Pa.Super. 592, 512 A.2d 54 (1986), an unpublished memorandum, Towns was arrested and charged with DUI on October 30, 1984. On December 26, 1984, Towns was again arrested and charged with DUI. Towns was accepted into ARD for the October offense on February 15, 1985. After entering a guilty plea to the second DUI charge on April 8, 1985, Towns was sentenced as a second offender pursuant to § 3731(e)(l)(ii). The sole issue raised on appeal to this Court was whether the trial court erred in invoking § 3731(e)(1)(h) because Towns contended that, at the time of the commission of the December offense, he was not a second offender. Towns premised his argument on the contention that whether one is a recidivist offender under the DUI statute is determined at the time of the commission of the offense, rather than at the time of sentencing. The panel in Towns rejected such an argument as “specious”, and affirmed Towns’ judgment of sentence. Id., memorandum at p. 1. Our Supreme Court affirmed this Court’s decision via a per curiam order. Commonwealth v. Towns, 517 Pa. 389, 537 A.2d 1361 (1988). Thus, under the facts presented in similar to those presented in the instant Supreme Court found that the fact that Towns committed a second DUI violation prior to his conviction on the first offense was not an impediment to sentencing Towns as a second offender.
In Commonwealth v. Gretz, 368 Pa.Super. 94, 533 A.2d 732 (1987), Gretz was first arrested and charged with DUI in Chester County on May 2, 1984. She thereafter was accepted into ARD and, while under the supervision of that program, was arrested and charged with DUI in Bucks County on January 18, 1985. Following Gretz’s guilty plea *458to the January offense, the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas sentenced Gretz under the first offender provision of the DUI statute, 75 Pa.C.S.A. § 3731(e)(l)(i). Upon learning of this conviction, the district attorney for Chester County requested and obtained Gretz’s removal from the county ARD program. Thereafter, on March 31, 1986, Gretz appeared before the Chester County Court of Common Pleas, pled guilty to the May, 1984, DUI arrest, and was sentenced as a second offender under the recidivist portion of the DUI statute. Thus, although the May 2, 1984 incident occurred before the one in 1985, for sentencing purposes it was treated as a second offense.
This Court reversed the decision of the trial court, finding that Gretz should have been sentenced as a second offender for the 1985 offense and as a first offender for the 1984 offense. More importantly, however, the panel was required to determine whether “one has been previously convicted for purposes of [§ 3731(e)(l)(ii) ] where he is convicted on a subsequent DUI charge prior to sentencing, but after commission of the offense for which he is being sentenced (the principal offense).” Id., 368 Pa.Superior Ct. at 98, 533 A.2d at 734 (emphasis in original). Gretz urged the panel to interpret § 3731(e) in accordance with the principles established by our decisions in Commonwealth v. Wolfe, 349 Pa.Super. 415, 503 A.2d 435 (1986), appeal dismissed, 517 Pa. 406, 537 A.2d 1370 (1988), and Commonwealth v. Mourar, 349 Pa.Super. 583, 504 A.2d 197 (1986), vacated and remanded, 517 Pa. 83, 534 A.2d 1050 (1987).7 In these cases, this Court interpreted the guidelines promulgated by the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing, see 204 Pa.Code § 303.6, reprinted at 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9721 (Purdon 1982 and Supp.1991), as conforming to the principle that “prior convictions must antedate commission of the principal offense to be eligible for application as sentence enhancers.” Commonwealth v. Gretz, supra, 368 Pa.Su*459per. at 99, 533 A.2d at 734, quoting Commonwealth v. Mourar, supra, 349 Pa.Super. at 592, 504 A.2d at 202 (emphasis in original). The Gretz panel, noting that the enhanced sentencing provision of § 3731(e)(1)(ii) applied to recidivists, applied the holding of Wolfe and Mourar, and held that the mandatory minimum sentence of § 3731(e)(l)(ii) does not apply unless the previous conviction precedes commission of the principal offense.
Allocatur was granted and our Supreme Court, once again via a per curiam order,8 reversed this Court. In doing so, the Supreme Court, citing to our decision in Commonwealth v. Towns, supra, stated that the panel in Towns rejected the sentencing argument as specious. Moreover, the Supreme Court explicitly stated, “[I]f at the time of sentencing, the defendant has been previously convicted, it matters not in what sequence the arrests or other events occurred.” Commonwealth v. Gretz, 520 Pa. 324, 325, 554 A.2d 19, 20 (1989) (emphasis added).
In the instant appeal, due to the close proximity in which Appellant committed two DUI offenses, his previous conviction on the first offense did not precede the commission of the second offense. Under the Supreme Court holdings of Towns and Gretz, this sequence of events is of no consequence and Appellant was properly sentenced as a second offender. The Supreme Court's discussion in Kimmel does not mention either Towns or Gretz. I, unlike the majority, do not view this omission as expressing an intention by our Supreme Court to overrule the latter cases sub silentio, since the Supreme Court was dealing with a separate and distinct question.
I would affirm the judgment of sentence.

. As this court stated in Dickerson, supra, our holding is not meant to suggest that the sentencing court cannot consider the fact of the prior offense in fashioning an appropriate sentence. 404 Pa.Super. at 261 n. 5, 590 A.2d at 772 n. 5. " ‘Prior connections, of whatever nature, with law enforcement authorities are unquestionably among the circumstances to be scrutinized [in sentencing].'” Commonwealth v. Wolfe, 349 Pa.Super. 415, 442, 503 A.2d 435, 439 (1986) (quoting Commonwealth v. Lupatsky, 341 Pa.Super. 338, 340, 491 A.2d 845, 847 (1985)).

. The Supreme Court also cited to Commonwealth v. Perkins, 372 Pa.Super. 30, 538 A.2d 930 (1988). Perkins dealt with the failure to establish the requisite proof of a New York violation as an equivalent offense for the purpose of § 3731(e)(1)(h). Beyond citing to Commonwealth v. Kearns, supra, for well-settled principles of statutory construction, the Perkins court did not engage in any independent interpretation of § 3731(e)(1)(h) because it was not necessary to the case’s disposition.

. The opinion in Kearns did not list the date on which the first offense was committed. It is obvious, however, that the DUI arrest must have occurred at some time prior to the conviction. Moreover, given Kearn's argument as stated in the opinion, it is proper to assume that the arrest occurred more than seven years before the commission of the second offense.

. In Kearns, supra, this Court compared § 3731(e)(1)(h) to other sentence enhancer statutes in reaching its conclusion that § 3731(e)(1)(H) should be analyzed in accordance with other sentencing enhancer statutes which have been interpreted to require that the previous conviction precede the commission of the principal offense. See e.g., Commonwealth v. Mourar, 349 Pa.Super. 583, 504 A.2d 197 (1986), vacated and remanded, 517 Pa. 83, 534 A.2d 1050 (1987). This rationale was adopted and applied by another panel of this Court in Commonwealth v. Gretz, 368 Pa.Super. 94, 533 A.2d 732 (1987). However, as shall be seen above, the application of such a rationale to § 3731(e)(1)(h) has been rejected by our Supreme Court.

. A petition for allocatur was not filed following our decision in Kearns, supra.

. In a very brief unpublished memorandum, this Court affirmed the trial court's sentencing Kimmel as a second offender, noting that precisely the same issue had been decided in Kearns, supra.

. In Mourar, our Supreme Court reversed and remanded for resen-tencing in light of its decision in Commonwealth v. Sessoms, 516 Pa. 365, 532 A.2d 775 (1987). In Sessoms, the Supreme Court invalidated the sentencing guidelines.

. In the per curiam order, our Supreme Court also explicitly stated that, although the panel decision in Towns was supported by an unpublished memorandum, which itself could not be cited as prece-dential, the per curiam affirmance constituted a binding decision of precedential authority on the question presented and accepted by the Supreme Court for review. It is obvious from reading the per curiam orders, as well as the memorandum and opinion detailed above, that the application of § 373 l(e)(l)(ii) was the sole issue accepted for review by our Supreme Court in Towns and Gretz.