Court Opinion

ID: 9636870
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:46:22.884945+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:50.475726
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
The. decision of the Court in this case is unnecessary, incongruous, and disruptive of accepted criminal procedure. It shatters, without regard for precedent or legal rationalisation, a rule that is as firmly entrenched in the criminal law of our Commonwealth as the presumption of innocence and the proof beyond a reasonable doubt required to establish guilt. From time immemorial it has been a primary concept in murder cases that the death, which is the subject of the murder indictment, must fall within a year and a day after the striking of the blow to which it is supposedly attached. The Majority of this Court destroys that *186rule and, in doing so, does so, sans reason, sans justice, sans logic, and sans authority,
The defendant, Boy Ladd, is charged with having inflicted blows on Dorothy Pierce on September 18, 1958 who died on November 1, 1959, allegedly, as the result of these alleged blows. The Commonwealth indicted Ladd on a charge of murder. The defendant moved to quash the indictment on the ground that murder cannot be predicated on a battery which occurred more than a year and a day prior to the date of death. The trial court refused the motion, and the defendant appealed. This Court affirmed the action of the lower court.
The year-and-a-day rule in murder cases is an ancient one. As early as 1278 an English statute provided that there could be no abatement of a charge of murder if the party aggrieved “shall sue within the Year and the Day after the Deed done.” (Statute of Gloucester, 6 Edward 1 (1278), Chapter IX).
The great English legal authority, Sir Edwabd Coke, said in Chapter VII of this 3rd Institute, page 47: “Murder is when a man of sound memory, and of the age of discretion, unlawfully killed within any county of the realm any reasonable creature in rerum natura under the king’s peace, with malice forethought, either expressed by the party, or implied by law, so as the party wounded, or hurt, <£c. die of the wound, or hurt, &e. within a year and a day after the same”*
In Halsbury’s Laws of England, Volume 9, 2nd Edition, §734, page 428, the following appears: “If death does not ensue until after the expiration of a year and a day from the date when the injury was inflicted, it is an irrebuttable presumption of law that the death is attributable to some other cause and the person who *187inflicted the injury is not punishable for either murder or manslaughter.”
In Russell’s Law of Crimes, (English) 7th Edition, page 690, the author states: “Time of Death. No person can be convicted of murder or manslaughter of another, who does not die within a year and a day after the stroke received, or cause of death administered in the computation of which the whole day upon which the hurt was done is to be reckoned the first.”
The Pennsylvania General Assembly, by its Act of January 28, 1777, proclaimed that “the common law and such of the statute laws of England, as have heretofore been in force in the said province, except as is hereafter excepted,” would be “in force and binding” on the inhabitants of Pennsylvania. The year-and-a-day rule thus became part of the criminal law of Pennsylvania in the very infancy of our Commonwealth, because it was not excepted in the statute of 1777.
This rule is accepted generally throughout the United States. In Wharton’s American Criminal Law, Yol. 2, §1073, we find: “Indictments upon which it does not appear that the death happened within a year and a day after the wound was given are fatally defective; because, when the death does not ensue within a year and a day after the wound is inflicted, the law presumes that it proceeded from some other cause.”
Warren on Homicide, Vol. 1, §60, carries the statement that: “As a general proposition, criminal homicide is the unlawful taking of the life of one human being by another in such a manner that the death occurs within a year and a day from the time of the dealing of the mortal toound. But if the death does not occur until more than one year and a day has intervened, it is presumed that the wound or injury received was not the cause of the death, and the person who inflicted it cannot be held criminally responsible for the homicide.”
*188That universally accepted authority, Corpus Juris Secundum, says: “At common law, and in the absence of statutes otherwise providing, if more than a year and a day intervene between the injury and the death of the victim, the injury is not legally deemed the cause of death, and the person who inflicted it is not criminally responsible for the homicide” (40 C.J.S. Homicide, §12, p. 856).
The Majority does not attempt to refute these authorities. It does not point to any legislative enactment which puts at naught the Common Law rule which, by enactment of the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1777, has in effect become statutory law in Pennsylvania. It simply dogmatically announces that what has been the law of Pennsylvania ever since there was a Pennsylvania, and what was the law going back into the mists and the fogs of the formation of our basic common law, shall now be law no longer. To be sure, before it announces this drastic decision, the Majority Opinion does take us on a tour, a rather uneven tour, of ancient and modern works and ends up at a station called: “Therefore,” which, as I view it, is not at all the natural and logical terminus of the journey which preceded it.
The Majority Opinion is a parados. It cites authorities which it does not follow, it refers to cases which contradict its main thesis, and directs attention to a United States Supreme Court decision which, to the extent that it is relevant, completely shatters the Majority’s position. It quotes from a paragraph in the case of Louisville E. & St. L. R.R. Co. v. Clarke, 152 U.S. 230, as follows: “In cases of murder the rule at common law undoubtedly was that no person should be adjudged, ‘by any act whatever, to kill another, who does not die by it within a year and a day thereafter, in computation whereof the whole day on which the hurt was done shall be reckoned first.’ 1 Hawk. *189P.C. c. 13; 2 Hawk, P.C. c. 23, §88, 41 Bl. Comm. 197, 306.” but it does not complete the paragraph. The rest of that paragraph contains this vital language: “The reason assigned for that rule was that if the person alleged to have been murdered ‘die after that time, it cannot be discerned, as the law presumes, whether he died of the stroke or poison, etc., or a natural death; and in case of life, a rule of law ought to be certain.’ 3 Inst. 53. And such is the rule in this country in prosecutions for murder, except in jurisdictions where it may he otherwise prescribed by statute. Wharton’s Amer. Cr. L. §1073; State v. Sorrell, 1 Devereux Law (N.C.) 139.”
Thus, we have the pronouncement of the highest court in the land that the year-and-a-day rule is recognized throughout the United States, except where changed by statute; and, of course, we know it has not been changed by statute in Pennsylvania.
I do not see how the Majority can possibly derive any support for its position from the Louisville case. To begin with, it was a civil case and not a criminal case. The plaintiff had brought a trespass action because of the death of one Augustine Clark, allegedly caused through the negligence of the defendant, Louisville & St. Louis Bailroad Co. A statute of Indiana, in which State the accident occurred, provided: “When the death of one is caused by the wrongful act or omission of another, the personal representatives of the former may maintain an action therefor against the latter, if the former might have maintained an action, had he lived, against the latter for an injury for the same act or omission. The action must be commenced ‘within two years.”
The decedent was injured on November 25, 1886, and died February 23, 1888. The railroad contended that since the death occurred more than a year and a day following the injury the action of the executor *190was ill-founded. The Supreme 'Court of the United States said that the common law rule of a year-and-a-day was not applicable because, in the first place, that rule applied to prosecutions for murder, and this action had nothing to do with criminal prosecution. And then, in addition, the Indiana statute, “in express words, gives the personal representative two years within which to sue.”
The Supreme Court emphasized its position in the following diamond-clear language: “The reasons upon which the rule of a year and a day were applied in the above-mentioned cases at common law do not apply with the same force in pure civil proceedings that involve no element of punishment. . . We repeat that, where death was caused by the wrongful act or omission of another, the right of the personal representative, suing for the benefit of the widow and children or next of kin, to recover damages on account of such death, is complete under the statute, and may be asserted by action brought at any time within two years from the death.”
Thus, it must be obvious that the Louisville case cannot under any circumstances be used as a precedent for the facts in the case at bar and that, moreover, to the extent that it treats the year-and-a-day rule in murder cases, it specifically declares, as I have already stated, that the rule is accepted in all of the United States, except where it has been abrogated by statute, which we know, but I must repeat, has not been done in Pennsylvania.
And then the Majority Opinion quotes from the Supreme Court opinion a single sentence in isolation, namely: “In prosecutions for murder the rule was one simply of criminal evidence.” But a reading of the entire United States Supreme Court opinion shows that the Court did not intend by that statement in any way to modify its unambiguous declaration taken from *191Hawkins’ Pleas of the Crown, Bk. 1, c. 13, that “In cases of murder the rule at common law undoubtedly was that no person should be adjudged ‘by any act whatever to kill another who does not die by it within a year and a day thereafter. .
I repeat that the Majority Opinion is a paradox. It quotes at length from the case of Head v. State, 68 Ga. App. 759, 24 S.E. 2d 145, where the Court of Appeals of Georgia said: “The courts of all the States that have dealt with the question . . . have with one accord held that unless death results within a year and a day from the date of the infliction of the mortal wound it is not criminal homicide.”
The Georgia Court then says, as quoted by the Majority Opinion this case that: “The reasoning followed by the courts in the majority of the jurisdictions will be found well expressed in State v. Dailey, 191 Ind. 678, 134 N.E. 481, 20 A.L.R. 1006, supra,” and then it goes on to cite decisions supporting the rule in the States of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiania, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington, not excluding a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.
In this same case, Judge Gardner, writing for the Court, quotes with approval, 13 R.C.L. 903, §208, namely: “If it does not appear that the death of the person charged to have killed happened within a year and a day after the wound was given, the indictment will be deemed fatally defective, since when death does not ensue within such time the law presumes that it proceeded from some other cause.”
Judge Gardner then calls attention to Clark’s Criminal Procedure, ch. 7, p. 239, “to the same effect.”
After citing the Georgia case of Head v. State, with its impressive list of decisions supporting the year-and-a-day rule, the Majority Opinion in the case at bar *192adds the names of other States which accept the rule, namely, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Washington and Tennessee.
One would think that, after a formal acknowledgment of this long and distinguished array of States which have accepted as law the year-and-a-day rule (and the list is by no means complete), the Majority would either accept the rule here in Pennsylvania because of this overwhelming weight of authority, or, if opposed to it, would show why it is opposed. But the Majority does neither. It says, almost in non sequitur, that: “No case within our research has built the rule into the definition of murder beyond the point indicated.”
What does this mean? The Majority says, quoting from a Michigan case (Chapman v. People, 39 Mich. 357 (1878)) : “The injury which causes death is never regarded as constituting the crime of murder or manslaughter. The death of the victim not only within a year and a day, but also within the same jurisdiction was the controlling element which distinguished the guilt of the assailant from a common assault. The time and place of death were always considered as necessary to be averred, and were required to be averred as independent of the averment of assault.” (Emphasis in Majority Opinion.)
But this is simply stating that white is white and black is black. Of course, the “injury which causes death is never regarded as constituting the crime of ihurder or manslaughter.” The injury must be followed by an actual death. The Majority emphasizes that “the time and place of death were always considered as necessary to be averred,” but what is strange about that? Of course, time must be averred. Time is necessary in order to determine whether the death occurred within a year and a day after the assault, and *193the place of death mast be averred in order to show that the Court has jurisdiction.
The Majority attempts to explain why the cases did not more frequently analyze the vear-and-a-day rule. The answer is a simple one. There was no necessity to analyze what stood out as clearly as the thumb on one’s hand. In its attempted explanation the Majority says: “One reason why the nature of the rule was not more frequently analyzed may be suggested by Blackstone’s reference, infra, to Coke’s statement about murder as a descriptive rather than as a definition.”
What, does this mean? The Majority answers the unspoken question: “In a description one may expect to find together but unsorted not only the elements of the crime but the jurisdictional requirements of time and venue and date of death. These latter requirements affect only the right to prosecute, not the structure of the crime.” This answer eludes me. What is the “structure of the crime”?
The Majority Opinion says that: “The following sl ates have statutory requirements: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Utah,” but it does not tell us what those statutory requirements are.
After this nebulous discussion, the Majority finally makes a positive statement, namely: “In Pennsylvania we have no statutory definition but we have taken the Blackstonian definition as our own.”
It quotes the Blackstonian definition as follows: “A felonious homicide (i.e. murder) occurs when a person of sound memory and discretion unlawfully and feloniously kills any human being in the peace of the sovereign with malice prepense or aforethought.”
The Majority then says that in the definition: “there is no mention of the year and a day rule.” But why *194should it be mentioned? A definition cannot contain all possible rules involved in proving murder. There is a rule that a man may not be convicted of murder unless the corpus delicti is proved. In other words, there must be proof that a human being was actually killed. But the definition for murder does not say: “A felonious homicide occurs when a person of sound memory and discretion unlawfully and feloniously kills any human being in the peace of the sovereign with malice prepense or aforethought, express or implied, and there is proof of the existence of the corpse or a satisfactory explanation as to how it disappeared”
There are many terms in the Blackstonian definition which, if questioned, would need themselves to be defined. Should those definitions then be included in the definition of murder? For instance, what is a “person of sound memory and discretion”? There can be a debate on that subject. What is meant by the “peace of the sovereign”? There could be a heated controversy on that topic. What is “prepense”? A volume or two could be written on that query. To me it is untenable to say that because the year-and-a-day rule is not included in a short formal definition of murder, it must therefore not constitute part of the crime of murder.
Even the Majority, after citing the Blackstonian definition of murder and declaring that it makes no reference to the year-and-arday rule, then concedes that Blackstone did say' that: “In. order also to make the killing murder, it is requisite that the party die within a year and a day after the stroke received, or cause of death .administered.”- . •
But the Majority Seems in doubt as to whether to accept this very definitive statement because, it says, Blackstone waited two pages before- he made this statement. But what difference does that make?- I hope *195that anything I may say in this Opinion does not lose cogency because it is separated by a couple of pages from something else. I cannot possibly say everything I want to say on this subject on one page. Neither can the Majority.
The great difficulty in grasping the Majority’s argument in this whole controversy is that it apparently cannot make up its mind whether or not to accept Blackstone as an authority on murder. Certainly nothing could be clearer than Blackstone’s declaration that: “In order also to make the killing murder, it is requisite that the party die within a year and a day after the strolce received, or cause of death administered.”
If Blackstone is an accepted authority on Common Law, and who should doubt it, and if Common Law is part of our law except where specifically changed and who can doubt that, why should we strain over what Blackstone says because it appears on one page instead of another? No subject can be treated in one epigrammatic utterance. The law of murder cannot be condensed into one sentence, or one page, or hundreds of pages. No single definition can possibly embrace the whole area of its all-inclusive significance. Webster’s Dictionary defines man as “a member of the human race,” but that definition certainly does not tell the whole story of man.
I have mentioned non sequitur in this Dissenting Opinion. I believe a perfect illustration of that term occurs in the Majority’s treatment of Blackstone’s statement that there can be no murder unless “the party die within a year and a day after the stroke received or cause of death administered.” Immediately following that quotation the Majority says: “The rule cannot, therefore, be said to be part of the definition of murder, either in Blackstone or in Pennsylvania.”
How does that follow? A “therefore” is supposed logically to succeed a certain premise, but even if the *196Majority showed conclusively that the year-and-a-day rule is not part of the Blaekstone definition, why is it an inevitable sequence that the rule is not part of the law of murder in Pennsylvania?
Still apparently undecided about Blaekstone, after its “therefore” conclusion about Blaekstone, the Majority returns to Blaekstone and says: “Nor do we see any reason in principle for reading Blaekstone’s addendum into the body of his definition.” And as proof of why the addendum should not go into the body of the definition, the Majority says: “Stephen, Yol. 3 History of the Criminal Law of England, page 7, called the year and a day rule ‘an arbitrary rule’, and Perkins, Criminal Law (1957), page 605, called it a ‘purely mechanical test which has been handed down from ancient times.’ Halsbury in his ‘Laws of England’ (Hailsham Ed.), Vol. 9, §734, p. 428, said: ‘It is an irrebuttable presumption of law that the death is attributable to some other cause and the person who inflicted the injury is not punishable for murder or manslaughter.’ ”
Here, again, the Majority cannot be certain whether it wants to accept Blaekstone or not. It first cites him as an authority and then cites others in supposed derogation of what Blaekstone says. But I do not see that what Stephen, Perkins and Halsbury said demolishes the existence of, or the reason for, the year-and-day rule.
To call the rule an arbitrary one, as the Majority reminds us that Stephen so called it, does not reduce its integrity, efficacy, reasonableness or justness. Many of our rules in law are arbitrary and for a good purpose. Statutes of limitation are arbitrary, many of our presumptions of law are arbitrary, but they are founded on the experience of mankind, and, representing as they do, the wisdom of the ages, they make for regularity and responsibility in the law. All statutes *197are arbitrary but no one denounces them lor that reason.
However, with all that the Majority says in derogation of the year-and-day rule, and even though it sets out to demolish the rule, it still cannot help from time to time saying something in favor of the rule. Thus we find in the Majority Opinion this interesting and comforting declaration: “A good reason for the rule appears in Warren on Homicide (1938), Yol. 1, §60, where the author says, quoting Coke: ‘. . . if the person alleged to have been murdered’ die after that time, it cannot be discerned, as the law presumes, whether he died of the stroke, or poison, etc., or a natural death, and in case of life, a rule of law ought to be certain.”
But, after giving this excellent reason for the rule, the Majority still refuses to accept the rule.
But the Majority does not linger long on substantive exposition. After its statement just quoted, it immediately crosses the frontier of substantive presentation and enters once more into the realm of nebulous dissertation: “The rule does not change the legal concept of the facts of the case but only prevents process being had upon them under certain conditions.”
What ai*e those conditions? The Majority does not say.
The Majority goes on: “it is clear, from Coke’s and Warren’s statement above, that the x-eason for the rule lay in the primitive state of medical knowledge at the time . . .”
After this positive statement of what is “clear,” the Majority then adds: “or, it may ham been, as Judge Gordon sxxggests in Evaul, that it was designed to mitigate the rigor of the old law that exacted a life for murder and manslaughter indiscriminately.”
With this alternative “or it may have been” it is apparent that it is not “clear” to the Majority whether *198it should or should not accept Coke’s and Warren’s statement about the rule.
However, despite all vacillation and indecision in discussion, the Majority is determined on one thing. It is adamantly resolved to do what it has no right to do, namely, to change the law on a fundamental right of accused persons.
The Majority does not seem to recognize how fundamental the year-and-day rule is. It says, in attempted mitigation of its drastic action: “We are not dealing with any of the basic and living rights of a defendant, like the right to confront his accuser, the right to be presumed innocent, or the right to due process of law.”
But what could be more basic than the right of a defendant not to be charged with murder for an act which was not within the scope of murder when committed? The Majority absolutely ignores the grave constitutional question involved here, a question which the defendant raises and presses strenuously in his appeal. Article I, section 9 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides that in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall not be deprived of his life, liberty or property “unless by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land.” The law of the land, as written, recognized, interpreted and practiced at the time Boy Ladd was charged with injuring Dorothy Pierce, excluded indictment for murder for a death occurring more than a year and a day after the injury allegedly causing her death. To now charge him with murder for a death which occurred beyond the period of limitation which is part of the law of the land is to prosecute him on an ex post facto basis. It is to designate as murder an act which was not murder when the alleged victim of the defendant’s alleged aggression died.
Wholly ignoring this highly vital constitutional question, the Majority disposes of the whole issue with *199a Latin phrase: cessante ratione legis oessat lex, which it interprets: “A rule becomes dry when its supporting reason evaporates.” But I have seen no evaporation of its supporting reason, nor has the Majority pointed to any evaporation of the supporting reason. The reason which gave birth to the rule is as valid as ever, and the rule is as much a part of the criminal law of the Commonwealth as the assurance of counsel and the need for specification of charges.
The Majority does not speak of the facts in this case. Dorothy Pierce, the alleged victim, died of pneumonia. It is possible, of course, that her weakened condition, due to the alleged hurt received thirteen months before, made her more susceptible to the attack of pneumonia. On the other hand, there is the likely possibility that the pneumonia had no possible connection ivith the injury allegedly inflicted by the defendant.
Suppose that the pneumonia occurred two years after the physical injury, would it still be proper to charge the defendant with murder? If a murder charge can be brought two years after a blow has been struck, will there ever be a time when the Court may declare that the bridge between the blow and death has now been irreparably broken? May the Commonwealth indict a man for murder when the death occurs ten years after the bloiv has fallen? Twenty years? Thirty years? One may search the Majority Opinion through every paragraph, sentence, clause, phrase and comma, and find no answer to this very serious question. The Majority is content to open a Pandora’s box of interrogation and.let it remain unclosed, to the torment and possible persecution of every person who may have at one time or another injured another. I don’t doubt that an “expert” of some kind can be found to testify that a slap, in the face was the cause of a death fifteen years later.
*200If there is one thing which the criminal law must be, if it is to be recognized as just, it must be specific and definitive. To compel a person to go through life with a potential murder charge hanging over his head when he is ready and available to be tried on any immediate charge comes close to violating the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. One of the most important constitutional guarantees to an accused is a speedy trial. Would a delay of ten years be a speedy trial?
I do not see the consistency of the Majority’s argument when it says: “Society is free to prosecute murderers without a statutory limitation, and it is possible that evidence and witnesses may be lost during a long interval between crime and trial. It is therefore not a strange idea to put no restriction of time upon the death of the victim and to require only proof of causation of conventional quality at the trial.” If it is possible that evidence and witnesses may be lost during a long interval between crime and trial, why then should this Court remove all restrictions on such proof so as to extend indefinitely the time between the alleged blow and the death allegedly resulting from that blow?
The Majority has not given one single consistent rule for abolishing & rule which has proved itself, in the crucible of time, to be fair, just, and necessary in the protection of the rights of the accused. The Majority has advanced no historical, legal, or logical reason for destroying a rule which practically the whole-of the United States has accepted as reasonable, fair, and just. The Majority has presented no convincing argument as to why Pennsylvania should make so radical a change in the orderly processes of our criminal law.
And then, aside from the utter lack of justification for changing the rule, it is clear to me. that, this .Court *201absolutely lias no authority to change the rule. If the rule is to be changed, it must be done by the people through their chosen representatives in the General Assembly. The fact that those representatives have not touched the rule in 177 years is rather convincing evidence that they believe the rule to be a good and wholesome one. But by its decision of today, this Court is moving on to Capitol Hill to usurp functions which do not belong to it at all. By this decision of today, this Court is legislating under the guise of judicial interpretation; it is engaging in writing statutes which, under our form of government, is entirely outside the province of the judiciary.
What the Majority is doing in this case is nothing short of despotic untrammeled usurpation of power. It is changing the criminal law, it is taking away constitutional prerogatives, it is making a mockery of the law of cause and effect. It is defying the adjudicated cases, it is spurning the text books of the nation, it is ignoring authoritative treatises and almost the entire library of literature on the subject.
How all this can be done in this age of a supposedly more sensitive appreciation of the rights of the accused is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, enveloped in an enigma, and concealed in a labyrinth of inexplicability. If this Court is going to arbitrarily rewrite criminal law in defiance of the classic separation of governmental powers, the Legislative Department should be made aware of this encroachment on its constitutional prerogatives and exclusive jurisdiction. A
I most vigorously protest what the Majority is doing and emphatically dissent from its Opinion.

 Italics throughout, mine.