Court Opinion

ID: 9637946
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:27:25.329791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:28.731592
License: Public Domain

OPINION IN SUPPORT OF REVERSAL
MANDERINO, Justice.
I dissent. My position is properly stated by Justice Roberts, in Commonwealth v. Peterson, 453 Pa. 187, 204, 307 A.2d 264, 273 (1973) (Roberts, J., dissenting). Whenever a defendant is charged with two or more separate and distinct offenses and evidence of one offense could not be admitted at a separate trial on the other offense, the defendant has an absolute right to severance of the offenses.
Rule 219 states: “Two or more offenses may be charged in the same indictment if . . .on two or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting a common scheme or plan.” The opinion in support of affirmance finds both of these requirements. In footnote 5, after stating that different modi operandi were used, it reasons that due to the fact of possession of the fruits of all the burglaries by the defendant that there was actually one scheme to burglarize homes and *595trucks. I suppose if the defendant was also charged with the burglary of a retail establishment within the same two month period and he was found wearing clothes from that burglary, it would be a single scheme to burglarize homes, trucks and retail establishments. The possibilities are infinite.
Furthermore, here we are speaking of a two month period not a twenty-four hour period as occurred in Peterson, supra, and in Commonwealth v. Smith, 443 Pa. 151, 277 A.2d 807 (1971). Although Smith dealt with the use of other offenses as evidence and not the joinder of indictments, Justice Pomeroy found a common scheme when the three robberies occurred within twenty-four hours and employed the same modus operandi. Each of the robberies also involved a gas station.
The opinion in support of affirmance also found that if appellant’s possession of the fruits of all of the burglaries did not indicate a common scheme or design, it at least indicated a “series of crimes so closely connected that proof of one logically tends to prove each of the others.” For this it relies on Commonwealth v. Gusciora, 169 Pa.Super. 27, 82 A.2d 540 (1951), where evidence of possession of property stolen in another burglary for which the defendant was not on trial was admitted on the theory that “the two offenses became inextricably intertwined and inseparable, and the two offenses were no longer independent crimes.” Id. at 33, 82 A.2d at 542. While it is true that in Gusciora the “loot” from the two burglaries was mingled in appellant’s car, there was much more. Both burglaries took place within thirty-six hours of each other, both involved retail establishments and the goods from the one store were carried away in containers stolen from the other store. This was the crucial fact. The Court said:
“They were different aspects of the same pattern, and the Commonwealth, upon which rested the duty of disclosing all the circumstances, could not prove the Kane *596burglary without also and necessarily showing that the fruits of that crime were carried away, indeed concealed, in containers stolen at Coudersport.”

Id.

In the present case there is no common design nor are the crimes inextricably intertwined. If they were tried separately, evidence of one would not be admissible to prove the other. Consequently, the possible prejudice to the appellant requires that they be tried separately.