Court Opinion

ID: 9754268
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:52:56.783968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:51.301594
License: Public Domain

CONCURRING OPINION BY
COLVILLE, J.:
Relying in part on this Court’s decision in Commonwealth v. Williams, 753 A.2d 856 (Pa.Super.2000), Appellant argues that the sentence he received on March 24, 2010, is illegal. I believe that Williams provides us with the necessary guidance for this appeal and, upon its application, I concur with the Majority that Appellant is not entitled to relief.
After he was sentenced, Williams gave the sentencing judge the proverbial “finger” and stated, “F-k You.” Williams, 753 A.2d at 859. The judge found Williams in contempt for the finger gesture and, separately, for the verbal remark. For each of the two contempt convictions, the judge stated his intent to sentence Williams to *874five months and twenty-nine days in prison. The judge also asserted these sentences were to be served consecutively.1
On appeal, Williams argued, inter alia, that the consecutive sentences the trial judge imposed regarding the contempt convictions violated the double jeopardy clauses of the Pennsylvania and United States Constitutions. We agreed.
In support of our decision, we offered the following explanation:
Our Supreme Court has emphatically recognized that these [constitutional] provisions prohibit multiple punishments for the same offense at trial. An individual may be punished only once for a single act which causes a single injury to the Commonwealth.
Our Supreme Court has also acknowledged that impermissible multiple punishments for a single offense can take the form of consecutive sentences. Therefore, in [Williams’] case ..., in order for the Trial Court to have imposed multiple consecutive sentences, [Williams’] conduct must have constituted two separate offenses i.e. two separate contemptuous acts. Clearly [Williams’] conduct, though of a contemptuous nature, did not constitute multiple offenses allowing the imposition of separate punishments.
[Williams’] verbal utterance and hand gesture were contemporaneously executed, and [Appellant’s] hand gesture is universally recognized throughout Western civilization as having the same meaning as his foul utterance. As such, the statement and simultaneous gesture were so inextricably intertwined that they must be considered to have been one unified act of contemptuous misconduct directed toward the Trial Court. Consequently, the unified act constituted but a single violation of 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 4132(3)[, i.e., the criminal contempt statute]. The three consecutive sentences which the trial court imposed for this one contemptuous act were therefore violative of the principles of double jeopardy and they must be vacated. As a result we will remand for resentencing on one count of criminal contempt alone.
Id. at 864-65.
Appellant was convicted of two counts of indirect criminal contempt for violating a protection from abuse order. One of Appellant’s convictions stemmed from his entrance into Ms. Hill’s home; the other conviction resulted from Appellant threatening and assaulting Ms. Hill. In my view, Appellant’s conduct2 in entering into Ms. Hill’s home is easily extricable from Appellant’s conduct of threatening and assaulting Ms. Hill. The acts were separable in time and, more significantly, they violated the court’s order in two different ways, thus causing two separate injuries to the Commonwealth. It was therefore legal to impose two sentences for these two acts of contemptuous conduct.
Accordingly, I agree that Appellant’s judgment of sentence should be affirmed.

. Despite the judge’s stated intent, Williams was given three consecutive sentences for contempt related to his courtroom antics.

. I do not believe it is necessary to characterize this conduct as otherwise criminal or as an act of abuse; it is sufficient that the conduct violated the PFA order.