Court Opinion

ID: 9755203
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:30:05.050827+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:04.911553
License: Public Domain

PAPADAKOS, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
It is distressing to see this Court once again repudiate precedent less than two years old especially where no party has argued that the precedent is in need of reversal or that it provides an unworkable test. Today, a majority of this Court gratuitously reverses our prior holding of Commonwealth v. Michael Williams, 514 Pa. 124, 522 A.2d 1095 (1987), upon its self-serving declaration that the Michael Williams merger analysis is flawed and must be abandoned. As I understood that case, we summarized the law of merger and held that:
Merger is required only when two prerequisites are met. First, the crimes must “necessarily involve” one another. Second, even if the two crimes necessarily involve one another, they do not merge if there are substantially different interests of the Commonwealth at stake and the defendant’s act has injured each interest. To determine whether multiple offenses involve substantially different interests, or how many evils are present in a given criminal act, the sentencing court must examine both the language of the particular statutes and the context in which each statute appears in the crimes code. Michael Williams, 514 Pa. at 135, 522 A.2d at 1101.
*566This test was designed to give direction to the trial courts and our Superior Court to keep in mind that in multiple sentencing situations the sole issue is one of statutory construction, whereby the courts must determine, in the absence of legislative expression to the contrary, whether the legislature intended to prescribe multiple punishments under two separate statutory provisions for what might arguably be considered the “same offense.” Commonwealth v. Bostic, 500 Pa. 345, 456 A.2d 1320 (1983). Apparently, today’s majority has decided that it is easier to ignore the legislative intent and simply to resort to a mechanical test and apply merger only if a crime is a lesser included offense.
Unfortunately, the majority has forgotten that the legislature has included in its catalogue of crimes many types of crimes whose elements overlap and has prescribed penalties for each of these crimes. Our function as a judiciary is to determine when it is appropriate to impose multiple sentences in these overlapping crime situations and thereby give efficacy to the scheme of multiple sentences legislatively enacted. The old merger analysis resurrected by today’s majority is a return to the days when this Commonwealth was a common law jurisdiction and when the judiciary fashioned sentences as part of its common law powers. Merger was an appropriate sentencing tool for the judiciary to fashion and apply to sentencing schemes since it was devising and imposing them.
Today, however, the legislature has taken away from the judiciary the common law right of prescribing sentences and in its place has promulgated a crimes code with a complete sentencing code. We are no longer at liberty to ignore the legislature’s sentencing schemes and for this reason the majority’s resort to common law merger has no place in contemporary sentencing. We must, in all situations where criminal acts have overlapping elements, examine the legislative intent to determine whether multiple sentences are appropriate.
*567The Superior Court and the trial courts have apparently had little difficulty in adjusting to referring to the legislative intent in such matters and it is puzzling to me how the majority concludes that we have left our trial courts and the Superior Court without cohesive rules in this area of the law especially where no party before us has raised that issue. In this case, the Superior Court examined the crimes of aggravated assault and unlawful restraint, resorted to the crimes code, and made various conclusions concerning the Commonwealth’s interests in prosecuting an individual for committing both of these crimes, where some, but not all, elements coalesce. I have no difficulty in applying the Michael Williams analysis in this case and in concluding, as did Judge Wieand in his concurring and dissenting statement in this matter, that the crime of unlawful restraint is a crime which protects the separate and distinct interests of the citizens of this Commonwealth who have the right to move freely about without restraint that would expose them to the risk of serious injury. Aggravated assault does not protect the citizenry against the same behavior because it protects against assaultive behavior likely to inflict serious bodily injury upon them. Robbery protects the separate interest of protecting property and persons from the danger of bodily injury. I would hold these interests to be separate and distinct requiring separate sentences thus giving effect to the legislative will in including all these crimes in the crimes code and prescribing penalties for each. I would, therefore, reverse the opinion and order of the Superior Court and reinstate the sentences imposed by the trial court.
LARSEN, J., joins in this opinion.