Court Opinion

ID: 9747590
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:22:19.171666+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:24.811232
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice,
dissenting.
In this case, appellant was convicted of murder of the third degree and possession of an instrument of crime. He was sentenced to a term of five to fifteen years imprisonment on the murder conviction and a concurrent term of one to two years on the weapons conviction. One of the allegations of error below is that the inculpatory statement which he gave to police was improperly admitted at trial.1 Appellant contends that since the police lacked probable cause for his arrest, his subsequent confession was, “tainted” by this illegality under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine. Commonwealth v. Daniels, 455 Pa. 552, 317 A.2d 237 (1974); Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). The majority of this court fails to reach the merits of whether probable cause for the arrest existed. Instead my brethren conclude that even if the arrest was illegal, it was harmless error since essentially the same inculpatory information that was in the “tainted” statement was repeated at trial by the appellant when he took the stand in his own defense. I emphatically disagree that any such illegal arrest was harmless error. For the reasons stated in my dissent in Commonwealth v. Saunders, 459 Pa. 677, 331 A.2d 193 (1975), I would resolve the question of probable cause to determine if the confession was properly admitted.
ROBERTS, J., joins in this dissent.

. Appellant also argues that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction.