Court Opinion

ID: 9692267
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:49:17.213417+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:32.680357
License: Public Domain

Justice SAYLOR,
Concurring and Dissenting.
I concur in the Court’s abandonment of the “six-hour rule” governing the admissibility of a pre-arraignment confession as developed in Commonwealth v. Davenport, 471 Pa. 278, 370 A.2d 301 (1977), and Commonwealth v. Duncan, 514 Pa. 395, 525 A.2d 1177 (1987), in favor of a totality-of-the-circumstances *382approach since, as noted by the majority, the six-hour rule has become so attenuated that it no longer can consistently and effectively serve its intended function. See Commonwealth v. Bridges, 563 Pa. 1, 47, 757 A.2d 859, 883 (2000) (Saylor, J., concurring).1 This is, perhaps unfortunately, more often than not the experience with bright-line, judge-made rules having salutary underlying purposes, but which cause results in their implementation that are later deemed to be unpalatable.
Nevertheless, I disagree with the majority’s decision to abandon the six-hour rule retrospectively, as the general practice is to apply new procedural rules of non-constitutional dimension prospectively. See Commonwealth v. Freeman, 573 Pa. 532, 562, 827 A.2d 385, 403 (2003) (collecting cases); accord Davenport, 471 Pa. at 288, 370 A.2d at 307 (directing prospective application of the six-hour standard).2 As the Davenport/Duncan rule was in effect at the time of Appellant’s confession, in light of the traditional non-retroactive approach to modification of non-constitutional rules, and since, as the majority acknowledges, the confession in this case was obtained more than six hours after Appellant’s arrest but prior to his arraignment, see Majority Opinion, at 374-77, 845 A.2d at 788-89,3 I believe that Appellant’s confession should have been suppressed.

. Indeed, in this case, the concurring and dissenting opinion authored by Mr. Justice Nigro proposes yet another attenuating alteration to the rule, which would move the starting point for calculation of the six-hour period in single-offense cases from the time of arrest to the time at which interrogation was commenced. See Concurring and Dissenting Opinion, at 791-92 (Nigro, J.).

. The retroactive application of the new rule to the disadvantage of Appellant implicates due process concerns.

. Like Judge Johnson, I would not incorporate a generalized concept of excludable time into the six-hour inquiry pertaining, for example, to delay occurring by virtue of inaccurate information supplied by the defendant. While the police have an obvious interest in obtaining accurate identification and biographical information from defendants, as Judge Johnson explained in his dissenting opinion in the Superior Court, the police did not need Appellant’s name and address in order to take him before a district justice for preliminary arraignment. See Commonwealth v. Perez, 760 A.2d 873, 882 (Pa.Super.2000) (Johnson, J., dissenting) (observing, inter alia, that police can arraign individuals who exercise their right to remain silent, declining to furnish any information). Nor, for purposes of the six-hour rule, do I view the need *383to conduct additional investigation and to process the crime scenes as adequate justifications. See Davenport, 471 Pa. at 285, 370 A.2d at 305 (noting that ‘‘[ajrresting an individual and holding him over an extended period while continuing an investigation constitutes unnecessary pre-arraignment delay”). Indeed, there is no reason why the police could not have simply questioned Appellant following a preliminary arraignment.
In this regard, I would note that, while the six-hour rule had as a concern the coercive influence of custodial interrogation, it also was designed “to ensure that the rights to which an accused is entitled at preliminary arraignment are afforded without unnecessary delay,” Davenport, 471 Pa. at 284, 370 A.2d at 305, in particular, advice from a neutral judicial authority of the nature and cause of the accusation, the right to counsel, and the right to reasonable bail. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 540.