Court Opinion

ID: 9642964
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:13:50.088082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:55.364720
License: Public Domain

*197ZAPPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
I disagree with the majority’s holding today that Commonwealth v. Shaffer, 498 Pa. 342, 446 A.2d 591, abrogated the per se rule in Commonwealth v. Ingram, 455 Pa. 198, 316 A.2d 77 (1974), in favor of a “totality of the circumstances” review of guilty plea colloquys.
In Shaffer, we merely held that because the Appellant, prior to his guilty plea, had the benefit of a full trial in which he viewed the Commonwealth’s case in its entirety, much to the prejudice of the Commonwealth, “a blind adherence to [the] per se rule [in Ingram ] would not, ... comport with any notion of remedying a ‘manifest injustice’ ”. Shaffer, 498 Pa. at 349, 446 A.2d at 594. We thus refused to allow the plea to be withdrawn.
Nowhere does Shaffer indicate the desire of this Court to abrogate the Ingram rule across the board. I see a great difference between allowing flexibility where rigidity would not serve the interests of justice or the purpose of the rule, and total abrogation of the Ingram holding. The majority’s contentions to the contrary notwithstanding, Ingram is still the law in this Commonwealth, and its application in the instant case is distinguishable from the exception we carved in Shaffer.
In Shaffer, we offered reasoning as to why an explanation of the elements need be had on the record and why we would be flexible in this requirement as to Shaffer. We said
“... where the defendant tenders a plea of guilty from a bargaining position which is devoid of finite knowledge of the evidence available against him, concern with an explanation of the elements of the crime is of greater significance than in the case where the defendant, as here, enters the plea after the Commonwealth’s case has been presented. Presumably, an explanation of the elements enables the defendant to assess the Commonwealth’s ability to prove that which he is admitting in pleading guilty by comparing the elements to the evidence he knows or has reason to believe the Common*198wealth has available. Thus, he determines whether the prosecution has the ability to convict should he instead choose to exercise his right to trial. In the instant case, this decision of whether to go to trial and put the Commonwealth to its proof was no longer before the appellant. Trial was accomplished and presumably the defendant knew there was sufficient evidence to convict of murder of the first degree.”
Shaffer, 498 Pa. at 352, 446 A.2d at 596. In the instant case Appellee was entitled to make this assessment. Finding that Appellant had not been fully apprised of the elements constituting the charge against him in the guilty plea colloquy, I would apply Ingram to this case and allow him to withdraw his plea. I therefore dissent.