Court Opinion

ID: 9751346
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:21:27.867061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:43.161540
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice
(dissenting).
Today’s decision rejects the salutory principles announced in Commonwealth v. Wayman, 454 Pa. 79, 309 A.2d 784 (1973), and holds that failure to pursue a remedy at trial that was non-existent at that time constitutes a forfeiture of that claim. Because our jurisprudence does not impose a waiver upon an accused for failure to claim at trial a remedy which was newly announced months after his trial, I dissent.
On April 10, 1971, one John Mikalonis was shot to death on a Philadelphia street. Five days later, at about 11:00 p. m., appellant, a suspect in the slaying, surrendered to the Philadelphia police. For at least the next 24 hours, the police delayed appellant’s preliminary arraignment while appellant was subjected to four interrogation sessions conducted by relays of detectives and to long periods of isolation.
Throughout the first 22 hours, appellant persistently denied complicity in the crime. However, at about 8:00 p. m., April 26, 22 hours after arrest, the police brought appellant’s younger brother, Isaac, into the interrogation room. Isaac told appellant that he had given the police a *132statement implicating appellant in the killing. Following this confrontation, appellant gave the police four statements in which he admitted killing the deceased.
Prior to trial, appellant sought the suppression of his statements on the ground that they were involuntarily given. The suppression court denied this motion. Subsequently, the statements were admitted into evidence at appellant’s jury trial.
At the conclusion of trial, the jury returned a verdict finding appellant guilty of murder in the second degree. Appellant’s post-verdict motions, filed on January 12, 1972, did not raise the admissibility of his confession. These motions were denied on April 10, 1972, 10 days before this Court decided Commonwealth v. Futch, 447 Pa. 389, 290 A.2d 417 (1972). Sentence of 10 to 20 years imprisonment was imposed.
Subsequently, appellant appealed to this Court and claimed that his confession was the product of an unnecessary delay between arrest and preliminary arraignment, and, therefore inadmissible under Futch. Appellate consideration of appellant’s claim is in accordance with Commonwealth v. Wayman, 454 Pa. 79, 82 n. 1, 309 A.2d 784, 786 n. 1 (1972). However, a majority of the Court now opts for an avulsive change in the law by concluding that appellant has waived his Futch claim.
In Wayman, this Court held that an appellant whose judgment of sentence was imposed prior to the date of our decision in Futch and who had never raised the Futch issue prior to appeal might still obtain relief on that claim on appeal. We gave two reasons for this result.
Primarily Wayman was a consistent application of the familiar and the eminently sensible principle that
“ ‘ “it would be manifestly unfair to hold appellant to a waiver when this waiver is alleged to have occurred at a time when neither the defendant nor his attorney *133had any way of knowing that there existed a right to be waived.” [Commonwealth v. Cheeks, 429 Pa. 89, 95, 239 A.2d 793, 796 (1968)] Cheeks and its progeny . . establish the rule that failure to raise an issue in a prior proceeding is not a waiver when the legal principles upon which the issue is premised are newly announced in an appellate decision rendered subsequent to the date of the prior proceeding.’ ”
Commonwealth v. Wayman, supra, at 82 n. 1, 309 A.2d at 786 n. 1, quoting Commonwealth v. Simon, 446 Pa. 215, 218, 285 A.2d 861, 862 (1971) (emphasis supplied in Simon). Accord, Commonwealth v. Baity, 428 Pa. 306, 237 A.2d 172 (1968); Commonwealth v. Jefferson, 423 Pa. 541, 226 A.2d 765 (1967). See also O’Connor v. Ohio, 385 U.S. 92, 87 S.Ct. 252, 17 L.Ed.2d 189 (1966); Kuchinic v. McCrory, 422 Pa. 620, 222 A.2d 897 (1966).
Implicit in our Wayman decision is the view that, although appellant and his counsel could have been aware that Pa.R.Crim.P. 122 and 130 both required prompt preliminary arraignment, they could not be expected to foresee that this Court would later decide that violation of those rules by law enforcement officials rendered inadmissible evidence obtained as a result of the unnecessary delay. Prior to this Court’s decision in Futch, Rules 122 and 130 created a right but announced no remedy for its violation. Thus in cases like Wayman and the present one, the defendant had no reason to raise that issue in the trial court. Therefore, this Court concluded in Way-man that because it is simply unrealistic to expect appellánt to seek at trial a remedy which is first announced in a subsequent appellate decision, Wayman’s failure to raise the Futch issue did not constitute a waiver. One can hardly be said to waive an unknown right.
As an alternative basis for our decision in Wayman, we determined that the Futch issue was properly preserved because Wayman had challenged the admissibility of his confession at every relevant stage in the trial *134court. Although some of the language in this part of Wayman may not seem to be totally consistent with our decision in Kimmel v. Somerset County Commissioners, 460 Pa. 381, 333 A.2d 777 (1975), I find it unnecessary to determine whether Kimmel affects this portion of Wayman. As already indicated, appellant did not raise the validity of his confession in the post-verdict motions he filed three months before Futch. Therefore, appellant is entitled to relief on his F%tch claim, only under the primary rationale for our decision in Wayman. Kimmel does not affect that part of our Wayman decision.
The opinion announcing the result, relying heavily on Commonwealth v. Clair, 458 Pa. 418, 326 A.2d 272 (1974); Dilliplaine v. Lehigh Valley Trust Co., 457 Pa. 255, 322 A.2d 114 (1974), and our cases holding that parties will not on appeal receive relief on grounds not raised at every relevant stage of trial, concludes that the logical support for Wayman has been undermined. As the opinion announcing the result correctly points out the teaching of these cases is that courts should not “accept issues that could have and should have been first presented to the courts below for their consideration.” Ante at 52. This obviously refers to known or existing rights and remedies — not to instances where at the time there was no right or remedy to claim. Our holding in Wayman is that in cases similar to it, the Futch issue is not one that as a practical matter “could have and should have” been raised in the trial court.
The only argument that the opinion announcing the result can muster to support its implicit view that appellant “could have and should have” presented the Futch issue is that it is somehow unfair “to penalize police officials for not anticipating the imposition of a sanction for such a violation and at the same time relieve the defense from the responsibility of timely raising the objection.” In my view this statement is transparently wrong. It *135confuses a right of the accused to assert a procedural protection announced subsequent to the accused’s trial with the responsibility of the police to observe a rule of conduct in existence six years prior to the interrogation in the present case.
Contrary to the assertion of the opinion announcing the result, application of the Futch exclusionary rule does not place upon the police any new requirement relating to their conduct of interrogations. Rule 130 (or its predecessors) has been in effect since 1965. Regardless of the nonexistence of a remedy for violation of the Rule, the police were obligated to adhere to the Rule.* However, Futch did effect a change in the conduct of defense strategy, a change that counsel should not be held to have foreseen. It must therefore be concluded that Wayman does not in fact place unequal burdens upon the police and the defense.
Nor can it be assumed that the need for judicial economy justifies today’s result. While conserving judicial resources and speeding the resolution of litigation are certainly important goals, these desirable objections will not be achieved by exposing the quality of justice to the hazards of arbitrary insistence upon “assembly-line” disposition of cases.
Because in my view, appellant’s Futch claim was not waived, I must reach the merits of appellant’s claim.
In Commonwealth v. Futch, we held that evidence obtained during a period of unnecessary delay between ar*136rest and preliminary arraignment is inadmissible unless it “has no reasonable relationship to the delay whatsoever.” Id., 447 Pa. at 394, 290 A.2d at 417. In the present case, appellant made the incriminating statements after 22 hours of delay before preliminary arraignment. Appellant argues that this delay was unnecessary, that his statement was a product of the delay and, therefore, that his statement was inadmissible.
The Commonwealth does not contend that the delay was not unnecessary. ’ Instead, it maintains that the confession was not a product of the delay but of appellant’s confrontation with his brother.
We have previously held that where a confession obtained during a period of unnecessary delay is triggered by something other than interrogation, the resulting confession is nevertheless a product of the delay. Thus in Commonwealth v. Cherry, 457 Pa. 201, 321 A.2d 611 (1974), an appellant who had initially maintained that he was not involved in the crime for which he was convicted changed his story after more than 12 hours of pre-arraignment delay when he was confronted with the results of a polygraph test that suggested that he was lying. This Court concluded that the statement was a product of the delay:
“Since appellant was originally unwilling to admit his complicity in the crime, and did not do so until after he was told that he had failed the polygraph test, some twelve hours later, during which time he had been subjected to over six hours of questioning and a lengthy period of isolation, we are convinced that appellant would not have changed his mind were it not for the events which transpired during the delay.”
Id. at 204,321 A.2d at 612.
In two cases following Cherry, Commonwealth v. Bey, 462 Pa. 533, 341 A.2d 907 (1975) (per Nix, J., joined by Manderino & Roberts, JJ.), and Commonwealth v. Doamaral, 461 Pa. 517, 337 A.2d 273 (1975) (per Manderi*137no, J., joined by O’Brien & Roberts, JJ.), the opinions announcing the judgment rejected the contention that a statement made during an unnecessary delay after the accused had been informed that a witness had implicated him in the crime was not a product of the delay.
“After determining that a delay existed, our inquiry should focus on whether such delay was unnecessary, whether prejudicial evidence was obtained, and whether such prejudicial evidence was reasonably related to the delay. Commonwealth v. Wayman, 454 Pa. 79, 309 A.2d 784 (1973). In the instant appeal there is no doubt as to the first two points of inquiry. . As to the third consideration, it is true that appellant denied involvement in the incident until informed of the witness’s accusation, however, the fact that the accusation may have combined with the unnecessary delay to induce appellant’s confession does not mean that the confession is admissible. We did not say in Futch that the unnecessary delay must be the sole cause of the confession for the confession to be inadmissible. We said that all evidence obtained during an unnecessary delay, except that which has no reasonable relationship to the delay whatsoever, should be excluded. It cannot be said that the confession in the instant appeal had no relationship whatsoever to the twelve hour delay. The fact that the confession may have also been related to other events which occurred during the delay does not eliminate its relationship with the delay.” (Emphasis in original).
Commonwealth v. Doamaral, 461 Pa. 517, 521-522, 337 A.2d-273, 275-76 (1975).
In my view, the present case is indistinguishable from Bey, Doamaral, and Cherry, and appellant has stated a claim under Futch upon which he is entitled to relief. I would therefore reverse the judgment of sentence and remand this case for a new trial.
MANDERINO, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

 Furthermore I cannot agree that the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to “penalize” the police. The reason for the rule is, instead, to deter illegal conduct by removing an incentive for violation of the accused’s rights.
If the courts permit the admission of the products of illegal policy activity and allow their use as a means of convicting people whom law enforcement officers conceive it to be their job to get convicted, it is not merely tolerating but inducing illegal police conduct. They thus become “government purchasing agents for evidence branded with the stamp of illegality . . .” Amsterdam, Prospectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 Minn.L. Rev. 349, 431-32 (1974).