Court Opinion

ID: 9712397
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:53:04.502615+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:11.901711
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Eagen :
While I wholeheartedly join in the declaration of policy enunciated in the Majority opinion, I wish to express some views on the constitutional question involved.
I cannot agree with the contention that the presence of counsel at a sanity commission hearing under the Pennsylvania Mental Health Act of 1951 is a constitutional right. A plethora of Pennsylvania case authority bears witness to the nature of a sanity commission hearing; those cases unhesitatingly characterize such hearings as civil in nature, not criminal or even adversary. As was stated by Mr. Justice Chidsey: “The rights of the defendant as an offender on trial for an offense are not here involved. The inquiry is not an adversary proceeding to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant but a collateral proceeding entirely apart therefrom to inform the conscience of the court as to the appellant’s mental condition—not merely whether defendant had a mental illness or disorder in the opinion of psychiatrists or medical witnesses but, assuming that some mental illness existed, whether it so lessened his capacity to use his customary self-control, judgment and discretion in the conduct of his affairs and social relations as to make it necessary or *479advisable for him to be under care.” Commonwealth v. Moon, 386 Pa. 205 (1956).
The nature of sanity commission hearings was also considered in Commonwealth v. Bechtel, 384 Pa. 184 (1956). In writing for the majority of this Court, Mr. Justice (now Chief Justice) Bell said: “This petition for a commission to determine petitioner’s mental health and the proceedings thereunder is not a criminal prosecution but a collateral proceeding to determine the mental health of the person involved for his benefit or for the benefit of the public or both.”
The reliance on In Re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1428 (1967), to support the contention that the appellant had a constitutional right to counsel at his sanity commission hearing is ill-founded. In Gault, the Supreme Court held that a juvenile had a constitutional right to counsel at his juvenile hearing. The obvious reason for that conclusion was that a juvenile hearing determines the juvenile’s guilt of a particular offense. Though not technically criminal, the essential nature and function of a juvenile court is to determine culpability. For that reason, it could not reasonably be maintained that the court could act in a role of parens patriae to protect the rights of the juvenile. In short, a juvenile hearing is adversary in nature. As was stated by Mr. Justice Foktas in Gault: “There is no material difference in this respect between adult and juvenile proceedings of the sort here involved. In adult proceedings, this contention has been foreclosed by decisions of this Court. A proceeding where the issue is whether the child will he found to he *delinquent’ and subjected to the loss of his liberty for years is comparable in seriousness to a felony prosecution.” (Emphasis supplied.)
However, since a sanity hearing is not adversary, but merely inquires into the subject’s mental health, there is no reason why the commission cannot act as *480parens patriae to protect and adequately to represent the subject’s best interests. The presence of counsel is, of course, desirable at such proceedings, but does not, in my opinion, rise to a constitutional right.
Mr. Justice Jones joins in this opinion.