Court Opinion

ID: 9747435
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:15:01.792906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:55:35.804058
License: Public Domain

CAPPY, Justice,
concurring.
I join in the decision of the majority. I write separately only to further elucidate my understanding of the majority’s holding respecting the interplay between the decisions in Commonwealth v. Boykin, 450 Pa. 25, 298 A.2d 258 (1972) and *374Commonwealth v. Byrd, 490 Pa. 544, 417 A.2d 173 (1980). My understanding of that holding is that Boykin merely stands for the proposition that, for purposes of determining the admissibility of an extra-judicial inculpatory statement of the accused, the corpus delicti is established if there is evidence, independent of that inculpatory statement, which is consistent, but not merely equal, with both accident and criminality; and that the court’s later holding in Byrd, that the evidence must be more consistent with criminality than with accident before extra-judicial inculpatory statements of the accused may be admitted, is no more than a refinement of the Boykin standard.