Court Opinion

ID: 9770053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:36:05.701355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:12.416549
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice CASTILLE,
concurring.
I join Madame Justice Todd’s Majority Opinion in its entirety. I write separately only to express the following point.
In summarizing appellant’s arguments, the Majority notes the reliance upon secondary sources regarding exonerations across the nation and, specifically, three Pennsylvania state prosecutions involving defendants named Godschalk, Yarns, and Laughman. Majority Op. at 40-41, 14 A.3d at 809-10 & n. 9. The Majority sets forth both appellant’s arguments and the federal decisions in those cases in a descriptive manner, without purporting to endorse the descriptions, which I believe is the proper course. I have no difficulty with the notion of false confessions, or with the reality that there are persons who have confessed, and have been convicted, who were actually innocent. In addition, of course, I see the wisdom in a statute that allows for DNA testing on collateral attack, to support a claim of actual innocence. I am wary, however, of accepting at face value characterizations of cases as represent*56ing determinations of “actual innocence” or “exoneration” when no such judicial finding has been made. Moreover, I am cognizant of the litigation incentive at work, both in defense advocacy and in the persons and organizations providing supporting studies and literature, to exaggerate the significance of what are usually judicial determinations that fall short of a finding of “actual innocence.” A grant of a new trial, like a subsequent prosecutorial determination not to reprosecute, does not necessarily represent a determination of actual innocence.1

. There is authority suggesting that many anti-death penalty studies promoting "exonerations” or "actual innocence” include in their numbers cases where defendants were acquitted, prosecutors chose not to re-tty, some reversible error occurred, or some other type of legal insufficiency led to the defendant’s release. These defendants were not, however, necessarily declared actually innocent. See generally Ward A. Campbell, Exoneration Inflation: Justice Scalia's Concurrence in Kansas v. Marsh, IACJ Journal, Summer 2008, at 49-63.