Court Opinion

ID: 9693936
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:10:59.808667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:08:26.313088
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
I rejoice in this Court’s rehabilitation of the Act of March 15, 1911, P. L. 20. It was about time. The Act very specifically declares: “Hereafter any person charged with any crime, and called as a witness in his own behalf, shall not be asked, and, if asked, shall not be required to answer, any question tending to show that he has committed, or been charged with, or been convicted of any offense other than the one wherewith he shall then be charged, or tending to show that he has been of bad character or reputation; unless, — One, He shall have at such trial, personally or by his advocate, asked questions of the witness for the prosecution with a view to establish his own good reputation or character, or has given evidence tending to prove his own good character, or reputation; or, Two, He shall have testified at such trial against a co-defendant, charged with the same offense.”
In spite of this prohibition, as clearly spoken as angels trumpeting from mountain tops, this Court has affirmed conviction after conviction where the prosecuting attorney treated the Act of 1911 as if it were written in disappearing ink on non-existent paper.
Prosecuting attorneys Avere. encouraged in this defiant procedure because this Court, in an incomprehen*165sible mis-reading of the Act of May 14, 1925,* practically nullified the Act of 1911. The act of 1925 which, for the first time in Pennsylvania, introduced a substitute for the death penalty in first degree murder convictions, reads: “Every person convicted of the crime of murder of the first degree shall be sentenced to suffer death in the manner provided by law, or to undergo imprisonment for life, at the discretion of the jury trying the case, which shall fix the penalty by its verdict.”
Here again the angels spoke from the summit of a mountain range and here again this Court put on ear mufflers. Chief Justice von Moschzisker, in the case of Commonwealth v. Parker, 294 Pa. 144, said that the Legislature, by the Act of 1925, intended to give the jury the authority to consider the whole history of a defendant charged with murder and, in rendering a verdict, decide, in the event a first degree murder verdict was reached, whether the defendant should suffer death or life imprisonment. If the print in the Act of 1925 were placed under a battery of conflicting lights, the resulting shadows could never possibly be interpreted to read what Chief Justice von Moschzisker read into it. Under the interpretation of Chief Justice von Moschzisker, the jury became a conclave of St. Peters to pass upon every sin, every crime, every peccadillo of the accused, and, from the aggregate, decide whether he should be doomed to an ignominious eternity by a shameful death in the electric chair. Under this interpretation the jury was allowed, and has been allowed ever since, to pass upon offenses not in the remotest manner, associated by subject, time, or geography with the particular offense for which the defendant was being tried.
*166In the ease of Commonwealth v. Kurutz, 312 Pa. 343, Chief Justice Kephart carried the Act of 1925 into further shadows of misinterpretation; and then, Chief Justice Maxey, in the case of Commonwealth v. DePofi, 362 Pa. 229, made a complete shambles of the words of the General Assembly. It would be difficult to find an opinion more peppered with illogicalities, non sequiturs, and casuistries than those found in the Majority Opinion in the DePofi case.
In Commonwealth v. Thompson, 389 Pa. 382, I discuss at length my views on the Act of 1925 and the manner in which it has been misapplied by this Court to defy the obvious intent of the Legislature, to upset the simplest rules of logic, to contradict rudimentary principles of common sense; and thus to permit a conviction which might otherwise not have been attained. I incorporate, by reference, my Dissenting Opinion in that case, into this opinion.
I trust that it may now not be long until this Court applies to the Act of 1925 the same pulmotor with which it has today resuscitated the expressed will of the sovereign power of the Commonwealth in the Act of 1911.

This statute was re-enacted in 1939 (Act of .Tune 24, 1989. P. L. 872, §701).