Court Opinion

ID: 9700102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:10:31.495614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:04.509901
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
Until today, it was axiomatic in this Commonwealth that, under Section 1104 of the Penal Code, where a common law offense includes elements not found in or not included in a legislatively defined offense, there is no bar to prosecution under both the common law and statutory crime. Today, the plurality abrogates, rather than adheres to this established principle. The plurality concludes that it is enough to bar prosecution of the common law offenses of malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance in office that appellant, a Philadelphia city councilman, was convicted of multiple counts of bribery under Section 667 of the Penal Code. The plurality reaches this result even though the common law *495crimes charged include an element not found in or included in the elements of statutory bribery. Today’s disregard of established jurisprudence compels dissent.
Appellant was convicted in the Municipal Court of Philadelphia of eight counts of bribery, eight counts of malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance in office, and one count of violating the Election Code. The Commonwealth’s evidence included proof that on numerous occasions appellant solicited and received cash from private parties to assure that appellant would promote the parties’ interests before various City committees and departments. The Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, on trial de novo, again found appellant guilty on all counts, and the Superior Court upheld the convictions without dissent.
In Commonwealth v. Ackerman, 176 Pa.Super. 80, 106 A.2d 886 (1954), the Superior Court held it was no bar to prosecution for common law misfeasance in office that the same conduct fell within penal provisions of the Motor Vehicle Code. Crucial to Ackerman was the determination that common law misfeasance includes an additional element not found or included in the statutory sanction. Here, as in Ackerman, there is an additional element in the offenses of malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance in office not within the purview of bribery under Section 667 of the Penal Code. As the Superior Court here correctly observed:
“[t]he Commonwealth proved that appellant, a public official, violated § 667 in his capácity as a public official. Since these charges of malfeasance contained an additional element, i. e., that appellant was a public official, they were by definition broader than the statutory offense, and therefore separately indictable and punishable.”
252 Pa.Super. 15, 24-25, 380 A.2d 1258, 1262 (1977).
The plurality fails even to recognize the rationale of the Superior Court. Instead, the plurality purports to find support for its result in Commonwealth v. Peoples, 345 Pa. 576, 28 A.2d 792 (1942). Peoples, however, on any reading, is inapposite. There, the defendants, members of a city council and a municipal authority, allegedly failed to refrain *496from voting upon salary increases for members of a municipal authority, and the Commonwealth brought a prosecution for common law misfeasance in office. Nothing in Peoples suggested, as the plurality states today, that the mere fact that statutory and common law offenses are implicated by particular facts bars common law prosecution, and Peoples in no respect makes incompatible prosecution at common law and under statute here. This Court in Peoples merely agreed with the defendant that the Third Class City Code proscribed failure to refrain from voting, this statutory sanction was fully subsumed by the common law offense, and prosecution at common law was precluded.
I would affirm judgment of sentence, as did the Superior Court.