Court Opinion

ID: 9730537
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:15:06.408826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:07.298472
License: Public Domain

*578POMEROY, Justice,
dissenting.
I agree that the prosecutor in the instant case exceeded the bounds of proper prosecutorial advocacy and that his comments prejudiced the appellant’s right to a fair trial. Because counsel failed to raise such an issue in post-trial motions, it would appear that appellant has been denied his constitutional right to effective representation.1
My quarrel with the majority is with the relief which it orders. Rather than remand for the filing of supplemental motions, as our decision in Commonwealth v. Hubbard, 472 Pa. 259, 279, n.8, 372 A.2d 687, 696, n.8 (1977) indicates would be the proper course, the Court today reverses the judgment of sentence and grants a new trial. This Court, then, is passing upon the merits of a claim not preserved for appellate review, and is, in effect, acting as a trial court en banc sitting on post-trial motions. Thus have we come full circle, so it seems to me, since our decision in Commonwealth v. Clair, 458 Pa. 418, 326 A.2d 272 (1974) abolished the “basic and fundamental” error exception to the doctrine of waiver.
A reasonable degree of consistency, of course, is essential to the proper functioning of our jurisprudential system. The waiver doctrine of Clair, which Hubbard recognized and sought to effectuate, is itself waived by the Court’s disposition of the case at bar. Notwithstanding my dissent in Clair2 the reasoning of which I still believe to be valid, J am *579obliged to dissent from this so rapid retreat both from the majority’s position in that case and in Hubbard.

. Where counsel fails to object to prosecutorial misconduct during summation, it is conceivable that legitimate trial strategy led to such an omission. For example, counsel may have concluded that to draw attention to such a remark might increase the possibility of prejudice, or that the defense had gone well, acquittal was a good possibility and a mistrial would not be in the defendant’s best interest. In such situations, an appellate court should be slow to invalidate, with the benefit of hindsight, hasty decisions that a lawyer must make in the stress of trial.
Where, however, as here, counsel does object to a trial ruling and thereafter a verdict of guilty is returned against his client, I agree that it is difficult to perceive any reasonable strategy which would dictate that a c!; im of arguable merit be omitted from post-trial motions.

. See 458 Pa. at 423, 326 A.2d at 274 (dissenting opinion of Pomeroy, J., joined by Eagen and O’Brien, JJ.).