Court Opinion

ID: 9747782
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:35:26.489213+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:27.236434
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
There should be no rule which declares, with the finality of doom on the Day of Judgment, that no explanation will be permitted to show that something is not what it seems. The defendant in this case, Clement DaPra, has been convicted of performing an obviously innocent act. He was fooled, deceived, and imposed upon, and, because he was subjected to indignity and harm through no fault of his own, the law, speaking through this Court, comes along to push him off the ledge of the window to which he fell from a higher floor without negligence on his part.
It is not correct to say, as the Majority Opinion does, that there are certain laws which have no exception. There is not a rule in the law books of the country which may not be set aside when it can be shown that the serpent of fraud has spoken with forked tongue. When deceit and wickedness tie a guiltless person to the stake, the law will cut the bonds and release him. But not, according to the Majority, in this case. Why not?
Clement DaPra and his wife, Antoinette DaPra, own a modest tavern in Canonsburg, Washington County. One day, a young man came in and asked for beer. Clement DaPra, fearing this customer might not be an adult, asked him his age. The youth replied that he was over 21 and, in documentation of this assertion, presented a West Virginia draft card which showed he was 26. Washington County borders on the State of West Virginia and many West Virginians *102come into Washington County on business and for social reasons. DaPra was convinced that there was nothing unusual about the youth’s visit and accordingly sold him, in accordance with the youth’s request, four bottles of beer, which he took away with him.
The Liquor Control Board served a citation on DaPra and, after a hearing before an examiner of the Board, suspended his restaurant liquor license. DaPra appealed to the Court of Quarter Sessions of Washington County which went into an extensive hearing and found that DaPra had not violated the law. In its decision the court said: “Since Smith had a West Virginia draft card, it would have been idle to have asked him for Pennsylvania type identification, either that furnished by the Liquor Control Board or voter’s registration.” The court said further that the description on the card fitted Charles Smith “almost perfectly and Smith certainly looks like an Anglo-Saxon hillbilly from the Appalachian region.”
The Liquor Control Board appealed the decision of the Washington court to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, which, after argument and study, affirmed the decision of the Washington court. The Liquor Control Board then appealed to this Court, and this Court reversed the previous two courts. On what basis?
The court of Washington County was the fact-finder. What do we know about the facts? Who are we, sitting here higher than the Appalachians, to train oiir jurisprudential telescope on a humble fellow-man and declare that there is no Balm in Gilead for him because he sold four bottles of beer? Certainly DaPra didn’t become wealthy by that sale. He is a poor tradesman trying to eke out a living in what the laws of the Commonwealth declare to be an honorable business. DaPra is not a man of means, but he possesses one wealth which the decision of the Majority would take away from him, and that is his good name.
*103The lieutenant of police in Canonsburg, Patrick Matrogran, as well as a reputable businessman in the community, testified to DaPra’s “good reputation, as a licensee, a citizen and a church member.” He had never been in trouble before. No one pictured him other than an honest, straightforward person without guile or misdemeanor.
This Court now allows a shadow to darken his name, in spite of the fact that two other courts of record, closer to the facts, more familiar with the entire episode than we, have given him a clean slate. This Court, in its interpretation of decisions coming down from the Supreme Court of the United States, has released, or in some way mitigated the punishment due confessed burglars, robbers and established killers. It seems to me that it might be a little considerate of a man who honestly sells a few thimblefuls of beer to put some bread on his table for himself and family. The lower court said that DaPra was “not particularly successful.” DaPra would not be the first honest man who failed to become rich.
In reversing the two other courts, this Court goes into a learned discussion between laws malum in se and laws malum prohibitum, taking me back nostalgically to my law school days, but I think that this erudite dissertation could be saved for something a little more substantial than what is involved here. Suppose someone, without the knowledge of the proprietor, turned back the clock in a tavern, and the proprietor sold beer after the official closing hour, according to Eastern Standard Time. Would this Court say that, regardless of clock, calendar, chronometer, or compass, regardless of deception, imposture, and trickery, regardless of common sense and arithmetic, the proprietor was guilty of violating the criminal code?
This is a little case. I should not be writing a Dissenting Opinion about it. Why should I care? The *104Majority of the Court has spoken. It has spoken bad law, it has jettisoned logic, equity and sapience, but it has spoken, and it should not be my concern to complain about it. I have other cases of far more importance than this one awaiting my attention, study, and midnight lamp, but I am compelled to express my dissent against the decision of the Majority of this Court because I am disturbed about Clement DaPra, an honest citizen and a good church member, who is being stigmatized because someone blindfolded him and pushed him into a pit of undeserved prosecution.
When DaPra learned that Charles Smith was not 21 years of age, he hurried to the police station to notify the authorities of what had occurred. He was concerned with the dignity of the law and he was disturbed about young Smith who, he felt, was starting on the wrong path of life. DaPra gave of his time, attention and concern to the law. And for this he is now branded a law-breaker.
I cannot help stating with all candor that this case should never have come to the Supreme Court. We had no business to touch it. The court of common pleas, after listening to numerous witnesses, after considering all the evidence, and after taking judicial notice of the West Yirginia-Pennsylvania boundary line and the traffic which passes back and forth over that line, found no violation in the law on the part of DaPra and released him. The Liquor Control Board appealed to the Superior Court, and the Superior Court, after studying the record, after hearing arguments,' and after due deliberation, affirmed the decision of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Washington County and released DaPra as being without fault.
Then the Liquor Control Board, with a Javert persistence, all the while spending the money of the Pennsylvania taxpayers, petitioned this Court for an allocatur. This Court could well have turned down this *105request for allocatur, as it turns down hundreds. But it allowed the petition. The Liquor Board then again spent large sums of the taxpayers’ money to print the record and brief; its lawyers, again using taxpayers’ money, gave of their expensive time to this monumental litigation, one or more of them traveled to the seat of judgment and delivered themselves of their extensive learning about a little case involving a little tradesman, who had been twice told by the Courts of the Commonwealth to go home and forget about the hard luck which had visited him when someone tripped him and sent him reeling into a brier patch of legal entanglement.
This Court then, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the Court of last resort in the Keystone State of the Union, sat in exalted session, listened to the attorneys, went into deliberation, and finally, after months of study, analysis and profound cerebration, produced the decision which overruled the court of quarter sessions, overruled the Superior Court, and overruled the law of common sense, which is as much a part of the jurisprudence of American justice as formalistic codes.
But it is possible I am unfair in complaining. The Majority Opinion has been good to me by providing me with a magic carpet transporting me back in fancy to my halcyon days at Georgetown Law School where I learned with bated breath the distinction between laws malum in se and those malum prohibitum. The Majority Opinion has revived for me those ivy-clad days of my youth when I was joyously drinking in the lesson being taught me that law was the “distillment of reason.”
Alas, I have since found out that that distillation is occasionally diluted by stale beer.