Court Opinion

ID: 9757103
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:18:52.92155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:34.859082
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
Appellant Kenneth Nickol was tried in January, 1975, for murder. At the time of appellant’s trial, 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 1311 (Supp.1977) provided that a jury could impose a sentence of death for first degree murder, but that a judge sitting without a jury could impose the same sentence only pursuant to rules promulgated by this Court. At the time of trial, *82this Court had not promulgated such rules, so that no judge sitting without a jury could impose a sentence of death upon appellant. Appellant chose to be tried by a judge sitting without a jury because, he asserts, he feared the potential sentence of death accompanying the exercise of his constitutional right to a trial by jury. The majority concludes that appellant’s “waiver of the right to trial by jury was not unconstitutionally coerced.” I dissent.
This case presents the same issue as Commonwealth v. Bhillips a/k/a Gergel, 475 Pa. 427, 380 A.2d 1210 (1977) (Roberts, J., dissenting, joined by Manderino, J.). Both this case and Bhillips are indistinguishable from United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570, 583, 88 S.Ct. 1209, 1217, 20 L.Ed.2d 138 (1968). In Jackson, the United States Supreme Court held that a sentencing scheme which allowed capital punishment following a jury trial but not following a bench trial is unconstitutional because it “impose[s] an impermissible burden upon the assertion of a constitutional right,” the right to a trial by jury. Id.
“When ... a defendant is unwilling to admit his guilt and exercises his undoubted right to put the Commonwealth to its proof, there can be no justification for holding as ‘voluntary’ the waiver of the right to trial by jury when that waiver was admittedly compelled by a patently unconstitutional sentencing scheme. The decision of the majority reflects an insensitive regard for the basic principle that the waiver of a constitutional right must be voluntary, and not the result of impermissible coercion.”
Commonwealth v. Bhillips, supra, 475 Pa. at 437, 380 A.2d at 1215 (Roberts, J., dissenting). For these and the other reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Bhillips, I believe United States v. Jackson compels us to reverse the judgment against appellant and grant him a new trial, and must dissent. I therefore do not reach the other issues addressed by the majority.
MANDERINO, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.