Court Opinion

ID: 9760999
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:28:06.969744+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:19.563371
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Bell:
This is still another case where a new trial is granted to a man who committed a cruel murder without the slightest or remotest excuse, provocation or justification. This terrible killing not only occurred during the course of a robbery but in my judgment was willful, deliberate and premeditated. The jury found defendant guilty of murder in the first degree and fixed the penalty at death.
The trial Judge was so incensed by this atrocious crime that he referred to defendant as “a man whose reputation before you is one that is steeped in crime, vicious crime . . .” — an armed robbery in which he beat, struck and ill used his victim. We are all agreed that the trial Judge should not have used such language to describe defendant’s previous record, but the jury had that record before them, namely a single armed robbery and at the commission thereof beating and striking his victim, and even the trial Judge obviously limited his intemperate words to that one previous crime. We note that the Court throughout his charge stated that it was the jury’s recollection and determination of the facts which must govern and not what the Judge’s recollection was or what his view of any part of the evidence was. He emphasized that defendant is “clothed with the presumption of innocence”; and he repeatedly told the jury that it was incumbent upon the Commonwealth to convince them beyond a reasonable doubt of *122defendant’s guilt before he could be convicted of murder or of any crime. That the jury could not have misunderstood the purposes and limitation of defendant’s prior record is clear from the following:
“The Court: Members of the jury, the evidence about to be introduced now is being introduced over the objection of the defendant. It is the sort of evidence you must pay no attention to at all unless you come to a verdict of murder in the first degree* The evidence now has to do with penalty. The Act of 1925 says that the jury by its verdict of first degree fixes the penalty, and because of that situation, if the jury finds a verdict of first degree, it fixes the penalty in succession, without any break in their deliberations. That is the sort of evidence that normally would not be admissible against a person, and I say to you now in as emphatic words as I can command, this evidence must not have any influence on your verdict. It is evidence which has to do with the criminal record of this man. It must not influence you, because this man comes to the bar of the court clothed with the presumption of innocence so far as this case is concerned, and the Commonwealth must overcome that presumption by credible evidence, and this kind of evidence is not the evidence that can overcome that presumption or play any part in overcoming that presumption.
“You may say, then, what is the purpose of this? The purpose of it is so that when you come to the matter of penalty, and only xohen you come to the matter of penalty, if you find a verdict of murder in the first degree, then you will give this evidence consideration, because you must know what kind of person you are dealing with. Our appellate courts take a dim view of this kind of evidence. They believe in good judgment that this evidence has a tendency to induce or make a *123verdict of first degree murder where otherwise there would not he one; and thus it is I say to you now, from the body politic of our people, with good judgment, intelligent citizens, and I must reiterate this again in my charge, perhaps in other language, but with the same import and the same end, you must not give any regard to this testimony unless you find a verdict of murder in the first degree, and then for the first time. In other words, this must have absolutely no bearing with you. This testimony must not enter into your processes of reasoning as to the matter of guilt. You are concerned with this evidence if you do find a verdict of murder in the first degree, and you then come to the matter of penalty.”
In the Court’s charge to the jury the Judge said: “Now, you have before you if you come to that point, the record of this defendant, the record of a conviction for a crime of violence, being armed with an offensive weapon, on a previous occasion; robbery, and at the commission thereof, beating, striking and ill using.
“I say to you, if there is any doubt about this man’s guilt * if there be any reasonable doubt about any fact upon which the ultimate verdict of guilt may rest, give him the benefit of that doubt and send him out that way; but if you have no doubt, and you find from all the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this is first degree murder, in that a decent citizen was brought to his death without a chance perhaps to repent, by a bullet from a gun in the hands of a man whose reputation before you is one that is steeped in crime, vicious crime — and at the commission thereof, beating, striking and ill using, on a previous occasion — you may then give consideration to that, and then, and then only, do you exercise the discretion the law not only *124gives you, but imposes upon you, to say whether or not in your judgment the penalty should be life imprisonment or death.”
It is hornbook law that the fairness of a charge must be considered as a whole and not by one or more isolated excerpts. Commonwealth v. Kloiber, 378 Pa. 412, 106 A. 2d 820; Commonwealth v. Donough, 377 Pa. 46, 103 A. 2d 694; Commonwealth v. Patskin, 372 Pa. 402, 93 A. 2d 704.
Defendant was represented by two experienced counsel. One of them was a member of the bar for over 25 years and the other for over 30 years. They took no exception whatever to the Court’s charge. Even if an exception had been taken to the charge, it reaches only basic and fundamental errors: Commonwealth v. Smith, 374 Pa. 220, 225, 97 A. 2d 25; James v. Ferguson et al., 401 Pa. 92, 162 A. 2d 690; Luterman v. Philadelphia, 396 Pa. 301, 152 A. 2d 464; Lyons v. Wargo, 386 Pa. 482, 126 A. 2d 411; McDonald v. Ferrebee, 366 Pa. 543, 79 A. 2d 232; and Commonwealth v. Greevy, 271 Pa. 95, 114 A. 511; 11 P.L.E., Criminal Law §690.
Language in a cold record sometimes appears to have a different meaning or connotation than it had in the atmosphere of the trial, and if it were as harmful as the majority of this Court believe, experienced counsel would certainly have objected thereto and the Court could have corrected its error. Justice is not a one way street — it should protect the law abiding community as well as the criminal. Substantial justice has been rendered in this case and the trial Judge’s error was not only harmless but was undoubtedly waived.
With reference to the trial Judge’s expression of feeling, I consider it natural and justifiable and certainly no cause for reversal.
For these reasons I would affirm the judgment.

 Italics throughout, ours.

 Erroneous and unfair to the Commonwealth.