Court Opinion

ID: 9765943
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:26:00.485249+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:17.022901
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge
(concurring).
I join the President Judge’s opinion but wish to add a comment on the reasonable basis that trial counsel might have had for asking appellant about both of his prior convictions. As the trial judge observed, “the second conviction was obviously introduced to attack his wife’s credibility.” The difficulty is in discerning a reasonable basis for asking about the first conviction, for armed robbery.
In my view, the Commonwealth could not have introduced evidence of the first conviction; it is just the sort of conviction — committed by appellant 16 years before trial and when he was a juvenile — that Commonwealth v. Bighum, 452 Pa. 554, 307 A.2d 255 (1973), holds cannot be proved. The question, therefore, is: How could counsel have thought he was helping his client by nevertheless proving the conviction? New do you help a man by showing that he was a robber?
The first substantive questions counsel asked appellant related to the two prior convictions. As regards the conviction for armed robbery, appellant said he had no weapon. He explained the robbery as follows: He was seventeen, recently married, and his wife was pregnant. On the day his wife went to the hospital, his boss refused to pay him money due him, so he took it.
This testimony was consistent with appellant’s other testimony, which was designed to show that appellant’s wife, not he was the violent person: She had stabbed and shot him. She had made false accusations. He was moderate and concerned mainly with the welfare of the *47children. It was she who was in some way responsible for all his difficulties.
The only reason I can see for introducing the first conviction was to promote a “poor creature” image of appellant, and show how he was even willing to commit a crime for his family. I must say I remain skeptical, but it is not our function to second-guess counsel. The crime was horrible; there were four children sleeping in the house, in addition to appellant’s wife. Counsel evidently concluded that he had to take a chance he ordinarily never would take. I am unwilling to say that he was so plainly wrong we should hold him “ineffective.” Commonwealth ex rel. Washington v. Maroney, 427 Pa. 599, 235 A.2d 349 (1967); Commonwealth v. Hill, 231 Pa.Super. 371, 331 A.2d 777 (1974).