Court Opinion

ID: 9697108
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:06:09.956374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:29.209818
License: Public Domain

WIEAND, Judge,
concurring:
The circumstances under which appellant elected to be tried by the court without jury in this case demonstrate clearly that appellant understood his right to trial by jury and that his waiver thereof was a voluntary and intelligent act. Indeed, his first trial on the same charge had been *603aborted when the jury was unable to agree upon a unanimous verdict. Therefore, I agree with the majority that the judgment of sentence should be affirmed. See: Commonwealth v. DeGeorge, 506 Pa. 445, 485 A.2d 1089 (1984) (court may consider circumstances outside record colloquy in determining validity of waiver).
I do not join the majority’s decision that Pa.R.Crim.P. 1123(a) requires, as a general rule, a contemporaneous objection to the absence of a waiver-of-jury trial colloquy or to a defective colloquy in order to preserve the issue for post-trial review. Indeed, in Commonwealth v. Morin, 477 Pa. 80, 383 A.2d 832 (1978), a majority of the Supreme Court suggested otherwise.