Court Opinion

ID: 9735091
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:00:49.88157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:55.170940
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice
(dissenting).
Relying on a decision expressing the views of only two members of this Court, the majority concludes that a confession obtained after six hours of delay in arraigning appellant is admissible. Because the admission of appellant’s statement violated the mandate of Pa.R. Crim.P. 130, I dissent.
Appellant was arrested at 7:15 a. m. For the next five hours, he denied any involvement in the crime. At 12:20 p. m. he made his first inculpatory admission and about an hour later, he made a full oral confession. Of the six hours that elapsed between appellant’s arrest and his full oral confession, 20 minutes were spent transporting appellant to police headquarters, and 25 minutes, at most, were consumed while appellant made a telephone call. Of the remaining time, an hour and a half was spent while the police interrogated appellant about the crime, about an hour was used “preparing” appellant for a polygraph test, and about three hours passed while appellant “rested.” Because appellant was not administratively processed until some six hours after the police had extracted a confession from him, the delay prior to his confession cannot be justified as “a brief period of detention [necessary] to take the administrative steps incident to arrest.” Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 114, 95 S.Ct. 854, 863, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975). Appellant was finally arraigned sometime after his “processing.”
Despite the fact that appellant admitted his complicity only after a period of delay of about six hours, the ma*603jority holds his confession admissible. The majority does not pretend that the bulk of the delay was not unnecessary. Rather, it claims that because appellant was only questioned for an hour and a half during the delay, the delay was not a “contributing factor in the confession.” The only support on which the majority can rely for this dubious proposition is the opinion announcing the result in Commonwealth v. Blagman, - Pa. -, 326 A.2d 296 (1974), an opinion without precedential value because it expressed the views of only two Justices.
In Commonwealth v. Futch, 447 Pa. 389, 290 A.2d 417 (1972), we held that all evidence obtained during an unnecessary delay must be excluded at trial unless it has “no reasonable relationship to the delay whatsoever.” Id. at 394, 290 A.2d at 419. Subsequent cases hold that where a defendant initially denies involvement in the crime and afterwards, following a period of unnecessary delay, admits complicity, the required nexus between the confession and the delay is established. See, e. g., Commonwealth v. Johnson, 459 Pa. 171, 327 A.2d 618 (1974); Commonwealth v. Cherry, 457 Pa. 201, 321 A.2d 611 (1974); Commonwealth v. Tingle, 451 Pa. 241, 301 A.2d 701 (1973).
Mr. Justice O’Brien’s statement of this principle in Johnson, supra at 172, 327 A.2d at 619, is precise and controlling here:
“[T]he fact that appellant did not [initially] cooperate with the police and the absence of any intervening events between the initial questioning and the questioning which began [three and one half hours after the initial denial] indicate that it was the delay which caused appellant to change his mind and decide to admit his involvement in the killing.”
In the present case, appellant initially maintained his innocence. Only after the period of unnecessary delay during which the police questioned appellant and “prepared” him for the polygraph test did appellant confess. *604On this record as in Johnson, Cherry, and Tingle, it cannot be concluded that appellant’s confession had “no reasonable relation to the delay whatsoever.” Because the evidence should have been suppressed, I would reverse the judgment of sentence and remand for a new trial.
NIX and MANDERINO, JJ., join in this opinion.