Court Opinion

ID: 9849225
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:36:23.81439+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:08.349696
License: Public Domain

T. G. Kavanagh, P. J.
(dissenting). If we could adopt the theory that the end justifies the means, we could affirm the defendant’s conviction without compunction.
*127Richard Shirk and Gerald McKay killed Carlo Vitale. Gerald McKay confessed the mnrder to the police investigating it. Richard Shirk, in an unusual effort to obtain a new trial after he had been convicted and sentenced to life in prison, admitted it in a letter to the trial judge.
While his admission was in direct contradiction to his sworn testimony at trial, a fact which the trial judge used as the basis for denying the request, a reading of the testimony of the witnesses touching upon the interstate flight of the defendants and the deceased, leads to the inescapable conclusion that-at long last, Richard Shirk told the truth when he admitted the murder.'
So we have a confessed killer jailed for murder. Justice has been served — if the end justifies the means.
But our whole system of administering justice is based on the concept that no man is guilty until his guilt has been established in a fair trial. In Our tradition even Richard Shirk should not be imprisoned without a fair trial.
Among myriad instances of prejudicial' conduct which the record of this trial discloses, one is so blatant that my vote for reversal is based squarely upon it.
After the defendant McKay was permitted to plead guilty to second-degree murder, following the admission of his confession which implicated Shirk, he was called as a rebuttal witness after Shirk had testified that he had not committed the killing. The excerpt from the transcript quoted in the majority opinion discloses how he persisted in his refusal to testify and explained his refusal by his fear of Shirk.
My brothers maintain that to conclude the prosecutor knew, before McKay took the stand, what he would say from his statement:
*128“Was I told to say that? No. What I was told —I was — that is what I told I was going to say”,
is to speculate on the prosecutor’s forewarning. While such indulgence may appear as a more charitable view towards the prosecutor’s position, we cannot practice charity towards the prosecutor if it requires injustice to the defendant.
The prosecutor either knew what McKay would say or he didn’t. If he knew, he should be censured for calling him. If he didn’t know, when McKay’s testimony presented such a surprising affront, since the prosecutor had made it possible by calling McKay, he had a duty to try and correct it, either by requesting that the court compel answers or moving for a mistrial. The fact that he merely said, “Your witness”, persuades me that he was neither surprised nor disappointed.
In my view the necessary effect of this performance was so totally prejudicial to the defendant as to vitiate the whole trial.
I would set aside the conviction and remand for proper prosecution.