Court Opinion

ID: 9756998
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:13:42.55959+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:58:04.730840
License: Public Domain

*430POMEROY, Justice
(concurring).
I agree that the trial court should have granted a continuance in this case and that its failure to do so was an abuse of discretion which requires a new trial. My reasons for so concluding however, do not coincide with those of the majority.
Appellant had from the beginning of this case, both at the preliminary hearing held on April 16, 1972, and the arraignment held June 7, 1972, been represented by counsel in the person of the Public Defender. On the day trial was to commence, July 6, 1972, appellant was still represented by the Public Defender (although through a different lawyer attached to that office), who on that day appeared with appellant and requested a continuance so that appellant could retain “private” counsel.*
The trial court determined, and I agree, that a continuance for that purpose was not warranted. As the Superior Court has well observed, “although a defendant has an absolute right to counsel, he has no absolute right to a particular counsel and so a request for additional time to secure a particular counsel may, in the court’s discretion, be denied.” Com. v. Simpson, 222 Pa. Super. 296, 300, 294 A.2d 805, 807 (1972). To hold otherwise would indeed be disruptive of the orderly process of calendar administration, and for no constitutionally required purpose. The court therefore acted properly, in my view, when it directed the Public Defender to continue to represent the appellant.
If this were all there were to the matter, I should be obliged to dissent. But the record indicates that the *431member of the Public Defender’s staff sent to represent appellant on the day of trial was a neophite substitute for another member of the staff, that he “knew nothing about the case at all”, that he was “not ready” to proceed, and that, to quote him again, he had “never even voir dired.” This lack of readiness was not the fault of appellant, and in my view should have caused the court to grant a continuance so that the lawyer from the Defender’s Office who was familiar with the case and should have been on hand could be obtained, or so that the new lawyer could become adequately prepared. Merely to order the inexperienced new lawyer to sit with the defendant through the trial to render such assistance as might be requested was, in these circumstances, not adequate.
NIX, J., joins in this concurring opinion.

 This request was in furtherance of a petition which appellant had filed two weeks earlier, on June 23, 1972, for the appointment of “private” counsel. There is no indication in the record as to why the motion for continuance was not timely filed at least 48 hours before the time set for trial, in accordance with Pa.R.Crim.P. 301(b). I agree, however, that in this case the motion could be entertained in “the interests of justice.”