Court Opinion

ID: 9697091
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:05:38.23682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:29.062565
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent. Since the jewelry was taken in a single burglary, and the prosecutions are the result of a single investigation, I cannot agree with the Majority’s characterization that the charges against Appellant either were born from substantially different facts or were the result of separate criminal episodes. I believe that the Majority errs by focusing on the double jeopardy issue without looking at that issue in light of the specific crime Appellant is accused of committing. Additionally, the Majority fails to see that the Commonwealth is not justified in subjecting Appellant to be *540twice placed in jeopardy of her liberty simply because the criminal conduct crossed a county line.
According to the Majority, the reason that the Lycoming County prosecution is not barred under 18 Pa.C.S. § 109 is that “the same facts” requirement is not met. The Majority tests whether the Lycoming County prosecution would show any facts which differed from those involved in the preceding prosecution. However, the statutory language requires a bar when both prosecutions are “based upon the same facts____” 18 Pa.C.S. § 109. I do not agree that the Commonwealth can introduce superfluous facts into either prosecution and thereby evade the clear purpose of this statute. That the criminal conduct occurred in separate counties is not an issue here since the same substantive law applies. A single Pennsylvania State Trooper conducted the investigation into Appellant’s criminal conduct.1 So intertwined is the criminal conduct that the affidavit supporting the search warrant allowing the balance of the jewelry to be recovered in Lycoming County lists the Dauphin County sale as probable cause. Both prosecutions are based on the same facts for the purposes of 18 Pa.C.S. § 109.2
*541The Majority also determines that the Lycoming County prosecution is not barred by 18 Pa.C.S. § 110 because that prosecution is based on a separate criminal episode. This analysis is flawed because it fails to address § 110 in light of the definition of the offense.
(a) Offense defined.—A person is guilty of theft if he intentionally receives, retains, or disposes of movable property of another knowing that it has been stolen, or believing that it has probably been stolen, unless the property is received, retained, or disposed with intent to restore it to the owner.
(b) Definition.—As used in this section the word “receiving” means acquiring possession, control or title, or lending on the security of the property.
18 Pa.C.S. § 3925 (Receiving Stolen Property) (emphasis added).
The suggestion that Appellant should be prosecuted once for retaining part of the jewelry in one county and prosecuted again for selling the rest of the jewelry in another county ignores the intention of this statute. Receiving, possessing, and disposing of stolen property are not separate crimes. Instead, these acts are merely indicia that “[a] person is guilty of theft.” By allowing Appellant to be prosecuted separately for possessing stolen property and disposing of stolen property, the Majority has created three distinct crimes, where there was formerly only one. Now defendants could face separate charges for receiving, possessing, and disposing of the same stolen property. This flies in the face of common sense and the plain meaning of 18 Pa.C.S. § 3925.3
*542This error is compounded by the Majority’s misapplication of Commonwealth v. Hude, 500 Pa. 482, 458 A.2d 177 (1983). It is inconceivable that the possession and the disposal of goods, which were stolen from the same owner at the same time, may somehow not be temporally and logically connected. Not only are they so connected that the legislature included them both in the same statute as indicia of theft, they are the continuation of the same purpose and act. Surely a person cannot dispose of goods without possessing them, and likewise a person seeking to profit from such criminal activity would need to dispose of the goods at some point. Temporally, the existence of a break in time between the possession and the moment when control is relinquished in the act of disposal is impossible.
If, as the Majority expounds, there is no evidence that Appellant possessed the 280 pieces of jewelry that were taken out of her grandfather’s car in April at the same time as she sold the 34 pieces in Dauphin County, then the Commonwealth has failed to maintain its burden in overcoming the motion to dismiss. To find that Appellant must present such evidence is an improper shift of the burden of proof from the Commonwealth to Appellant. The Commonwealth again relies on the fact that the criminal conduct continued over a county line. This does nothing to further the Commonwealth’s argument here, since the Hude test makes no provision for geographic separation. Nor should this Court broaden the Hude test to include such geographic separation, since it would not affect the underlying rationale of Hude, which is to “protect a person accused of crimes from governmental harassment of being forced to undergo successive trials for offenses stemming from *543the same criminal episode,” as well as “a matter of judicial administration and economy, to assure finality without unduly burdening the judicial process by repetitious litigation.” Id. at 489, 458 A.2d at 180.
Finally, underlying the above issues is the mistaken notion that even if the criminal activity consisted of separate criminal episodes, it would fail to be under the jurisdiction of a single common pleas court. This issue was addressed in the opinion announcing the judgment of the Court in Commonwealth v. McPhail, 547 Pa. 519, 692 A.2d 139 (1997). The majority sidesteps this issue. The common pleas courts of both counties had jurisdiction over the theft charges.
Since the issue of Appellant’s guilt was adjudicated and sentence passed in Dauphin County, the Lycoming County common pleas court properly granted Appellant’s motion to dismiss. Accordingly, I would reverse the order of the Superior Court and reinstate the order of the Court of Common Pleas of Lycoming County.
NIGRO, J., joins this Dissenting Opinion.

. In Commonwealth v. Bracalielly, 540 Pa. 460, 475, 658 A.2d 755, 762 (1995), this Court observed that:
The critical factor which distinguishes this case from Hude and mandates the conclusion that the transactions in Butler County and Allegheny County were not part of the same criminal episode is the independent involvement of two distinct law enforcement entities, for it prevents the substantial duplication of issues ... of fact required under Hude for the transactions to be deemed logically related. Such duplication of witnesses and facts would be the exact result in the present case since this investigation was conducted by a single Pennsylvania State Trooper.

. The Commonwealth has brought separate third degree felony charges against Appellant, the most severe grading allowed, based on the fact that the aggregate value of the jewelry found in Lycoming County exceeded $2,000 and the aggregate value of the jewelry in Dauphin County also exceeded $2,000. If the Commonwealth can divide the charges based on the location of the property, then presumably it could also have charged Petitioner separately for the jewelry found in the automobile and that found in Petitioner's closet. Conversely, a wily criminal could avoid felony charges by dividing the stolen property into lots valued at less than $2,000 and storing or disposing of each lot in a different county.
*541The purpose of aggregating the worth of the separate pieces is to create a single charge with an appropriately graded punishment. The Commonwealth, however, does precisely the opposite, doubling the punishment based on what amounts to an arbitrary division of the property.

. The Majority’s analysis would permit Appellant to be tried for multiple crimes, where the original thief may only be charged for one offense. This would be the common law equivalent of making an accessory after the fact even more culpable than the original perpetrator. That of course was not the law in the past, as the accessory after *542the fact was equally culpable to the original perpetrator. This purpose is carried forth in the language of the current codification which makes one guilty of theft despite the means used to that purpose. "Conduct denominated theft in this chapter constitutes a single offense. An accusation of theft may be supported by evidence that it was committed in any manner that would be theft under this chapter,...." 18 Pa.C.S. § 3902. Included in the same chapter are statutes governing theft by unlawful taking, theft by failure to make required disposition of funds received, retail theft, and receiving stolen properly. This codification removes the previous distinctions such as larceny and misappropriation and in their stead unifies them into the single crime of theft.