Court Opinion

ID: 9717341
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:02:01.059531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:52.656942
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
concurring.
I join the majority opinion. Regarding appellant’s specious argument that his sentence of death could not be legally executed because the statute adopting electrocution as the method of execution in this Commonwealth is unconstitutional, I join the majority in rejecting said argument for the reasons set forth in my previously filed dissenting opinion to this Court’s grant of appellant’s application for a stay of execution. I am gratified that the majority has now adopted my views on this issue, albeit belatedly. My previous dissenting opinion is incorporated herein and is set forth below in its entirety, and states as follows:
On June 9, 1988, a majority of the members of this Court, over this writer’s dissent, granted petitioner’s [appellant’s] request to stay his execution that had been scheduled by Governor Casey for June 14, 1988. This stay was granted and oral argument was scheduled for September 26, 1988, in order to allow petitioner [appellant] an opportunity to contest whether the method of execution by electrocution is *356authorized by law, a question this Court left open in our decision of February 17, 1987 in Commonwealth v. Terry, 513 Pa. 381, 408, 521 A.2d 398, 412 (1987). Petitioner [appellant], who did not give the victim in this case — his wife of twenty-three years, and the mother of their three children — an opportunity to contest her method of execution,1 now plays games with the judicial system through his attorneys who waited until the eve of his execution to seek a stay on an issue which he, through his attorneys, was aware existed at least on February 17, 1987, when Terry was decided. I would not allow petitioner [appellant] to play such games and I would not have stayed his execution by electrocution, a method of execution which clearly remains the legal and legislatively authorized method of carrying out a sentence of death in this Commonwealth.
This method of execution was established by the legislature by the Act of June 19, 1913, P.L. 528, §§ 1-12, 61 P.S. § 2121-2129 (Purdon’s Supp.1988). The Act of 1913 changed the method of execution from hanging to electrocution and set forth the procedures to be followed in carrying out an execution. The Act of 1913 provides in relevant portion:
Murder in the first degree to be punished by electrocution
Every person, his aiders, abettors and counsellors, hereafter convicted of the crime of murder of the first degree, shall be sentenced to suffer death in the manner herein provided, and not otherwise. Such punishment, in every case, must be inflicted by causing to pass through the body of the convict a current of electricity of intensity sufficient to cause death, and the application of such current must be continued until such convict is dead.....
*357Section 1, 61 P.S. § 2121 (emphasis added). The final section of the Act of 1913, section 12, provides:
Effect of partial invalidity
This act is intended to furnish a comprehensive and complete method of inflicting the death penalty. If any portion of this act shall be declared invalid or unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the entire act shall thereupon be null and void.
61 P.S. § 2129 (emphasis added).
On a technicality created by these underscored phrases, petitioner [appellant] attempts to “cheat the hangman” (or, in this Commonwealth, the electrocutioner). The first sentence of section 1 requires a sentence of death for “every person ... convicted of the crime of murder of the first degree.” Mandatory sentences of death, i.e., sentences imposed wherein the jury (or judge) has been precluded from considering mitigating circumstances concerning the character and record of the defendant and the nature of the offense, have been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. E.g., Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976) and Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978). Therefore, petitioner [appellant] argues, the mandatory proviso of section 1 of the Act of 1913 requiring the death penalty for all convictions of murder of the first degree has been implicitly “declared invalid or unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania” in our decisions striking down the death penalty in this Commonwealth pursuant to those and other decisions of the United States Supreme Court. See, e.g. Commonwealth v. Moody, 476 Pa. 223, 382 A.2d 442 (1977); Commonwealth v. Bradley, 449 Pa. 19, 295 A.2d 842 (1972); Commonwealth v. McKenna, 476 Pa. 428, 383 A.2d 174 (1978). Alternatively, petitioner [appellant] asserts that if our decisions have not implicitly struck down as unconstitutional the mandatory proviso of section 1 of the Act of 1913, then we must now do so explicitly. In either event, if “any portion of this act [of 1913] shall be declared invalid or unconstitutional by the *358Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the entire act shall thereupon be null and void,” section 12, 61 P.S. § 2129, and there would be, in that case, no statutory authorization establishing a method of execution in this Commonwealth.
Petitioner’s [appellant’s] argument is fatally flawed in its assumption that this Court has declared or must declare the mandatory proviso of section 1 of the Act of 1913 unconstitutional. The Act of May 14, 1925, P.L. 759, gave the jury the authority to determine whether the penalty for a conviction for murder of the first degree should be set at death or life imprisonment. See Commonwealth v. Meyers, 290 Pa. 573, 139 A. 374 (1927) (upholding constitutionality of the “split verdict” Act of 1925). This authority to determine whether the punishment for a conviction of murder of the first degree should be death or life imprisonment has been repeatedly granted the jury or court since that time through subsequent legislative enactments, including the Act of June 24, 1939, P.L. 872, the Act of December 6, 1972, P.L. 1482, No. 334, and the Act of March 26, 1974, P.L. 213, No. 46. These enactments maintained the sentence for murder of the first degree as either death or life imprisonment, and established sentencing procedures for arriving at the appropriate sentence. It was these sentencing procedures that have been declared invalid by this Court. Moody; Bradley; McKenna. The current legislative enactment regarding sentencing procedures for murder of the first degree is set forth at 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9711, and was enacted by the Act of September 13, 1978, P.L. 756, No. 141. In Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer, 500 Pa. 16, 454 A.2d 937 (1982), cert. denied 461 U.S. 970, 103 S.Ct. 2444, 77 L.Ed.2d 1327 (1983), this Court upheld the constitutionality of this enactment which provides, inter alia, that after a verdict of murder of the first degree is recorded, the jury (or judge) shall, in a separate sentencing proceeding, sentence the defendant to death or life imprisonment after consideration of relevant aggravating and mitigating circumstances.
It is clear beyond question that these subsequent legislative enactments, including the current, valid enactment set *359forth in 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9711, are in pari materia with and have in effect deleted the mandatory proviso of section 1 of the Act of 1913. This is made exceedingly clear by the Statutory Construction Act of 1972, 1 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 1501-1991. Legislative intent controls, of course, and the object of all interpretation and construction of statutes is to ascertain and effectuate the intention of the General Assembly. 1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1921(a). Section 12 of the Act of 1913 states that: “This act is intended to furnish a comprehensive and complete method of inflicting the death penalty.” 61 P.S. § 2129.
It is apparent that the Act of 1913 was not intended to fix for all time the penalty for all convictions of murder of the first degree at death, but was rather concerned solely with establishing the manner of execution when a sentence of death was imposed. As this Court stated in upholding the constitutionality of the so-called “split verdict” Act of 1925, the “Act of 1913 did nothing more than provide that, in cases where death was fixed as the penalty, the method of executing the sentence should be electrocution.” Commonwealth v. Meyers, supra at 290 Pa. 585, 139 A. 374. The first sentence of section 1 of the Act of 1913 must therefore be seen for what it unquestionably is — prefatory language which was in line with the prevailing substantive law at the time of enactment which set the punishment for all murders of the first degree at death, and which merely “set the stage” for the remainder of the Act which deals exclusively with the “comprehensive and complete method of inflicting the death penalty.”
In light of the subsequent statutes on death penalty sentencing procedures which must be read in pari materia with the Act of 1913, section 1 of that Act must now be read as if amended to state: “every person convicted of murder of the first degree, and sentenced to death thereon by a jury or judge, shall be executed in the manner herein provided, and not otherwise.” This is made clear through several rules of statutory construction, namely:
*360§ 1922. Presumptions in ascertaining legislative intent
In ascertaining the intention of the General Assembly in the enactment of a statute the following presumptions, among others, may be used:
(1) That the General Assembly does not intend a result that is absurd, impossible of execution or unreasonable.
(2) That the General Assembly intends the entire statute to be effective and certain.
(3) That the General Assembly does not intend to violate the Constitution of the United States or of this Commonwealth____
******
§ 1932. Statutes in pari materia
(a) Statutes or parts of statutes are in pari materia when they relate to the same persons or things or to the same class of persons or things.
(b) Statutes in pari materia shall be construed together, if possible, as one statute.
* * * • * * *
§ 1936. Irreconcilable statutes passed by different General Assemblies
Whenever the provisions of two or more statutes enacted finally by different General Assemblies are irreconcilable, the statute latest in date of final enactment shall prevail.
It would be absurd and unreasonable to suggest that the General Assembly, in enacting statutes setting the penalty for murder of the first degree at death or life imprisonment and establishing elaborate sentencing procedures for making such determination, nevertheless intended that every person convicted of murder of the first degree would be electrocuted pursuant to section 1 of the Act of 1913, although this is the construction which petitioner [appellant] urges upon us. Such a construction would, moreover, require us to find that the General Assembly intended to *361violate the constitutions of this Commonwealth and the federal government by not amending section 1 of the Act of 1913. Obviously, the subsequent legislative enactments setting the penalty for murder of the first degree at death or life imprisonment are irreconcilable with, and have therefore necessarily deleted, the mandatory proviso of section 1 of the Act of 1913.
Furthermore, the non-severability proviso of section 12 of the Act of 1913 has also been repealed by the Statutory Construction Act of 1972, which provides in relevant part:
§ 1925. Constitutional construction of statutes
The provisions of every statute shall be severable. If any provision of any statute or the application thereof to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remainder of the statute, and the application of such provision to other persons or circumstances, shall not be affected thereby, unless the court finds that the valid provisions of the statute are so essentially and inseparably connected with, and so depend upon, the void provision or application, that it cannot be presumed the General Assembly would have enacted the remaining valid provisions without the void one; or unless the court finds that the remaining valid provisions, standing alone, are incomplete and are incapable of being executed in accordance with the legislative intent, (emphasis added).
# # * # * *
§ 1971. Implied repeal by later statute
(a) Whenever a statute purports to be a revision of all statutes upon a particular subject, or sets up a general or exclusive system covering the entire subject matter of a former statute and is intended as a substitute for such former statute, such statute shall be construed to supply and therefore to repeal all former statutes upon the same subject.
(b) Whenever a general statute purports to establish a uniform and mandatory system covering a class of sub*362jects, such statute shall be construed to supply and therefore to repeal pre-existing local or special statutes on the same class of subjects.
(c) In all other cases, a later statute shall not be construed to supply or repeal an earlier statute unless the two statutes are irreconcilable.
Under the Statutory Construction Act of 1972, therefore, even if this Court were to declare the mandatory proviso of section 1 of the Act of 1913 invalid or unconstitutional, that proviso would be severed from the Act, leaving intact the remaining procedures concerning the method of execution.
Finally, I know of no reason why the method of execution would have to be established by the legislature. In the absence of a valid legislative scheme regarding the method of execution, it would seem to me that the judiciary or the executive branches of government would have the inherent, constitutional authority to “fill the gap” and set the method of execution by any means which did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Petitioner’s [appellant’s] argument that he cannot be executed by means of electrocution is, therefore, a meritless, technical argument which evaporates upon scrutiny and it should not take protracted litigation to reach this conclusion. The argument should have been immediately addressed and laid to rest by this Court to eliminate this procedural ploy as a delaying weapon in the arsenal of those who seek to avoid society’s ultimate punishment for their aggravated taking of another’s life through ceaseless frivolous appeals, motions, petitions and writs. I dissent to the majority’s willingness to go along with these delaying tactics by indulging such frivolous petitions — imposition of the death penalty is far too serious a business to tolerate such procedural games.
[End of dissenting opinion]
PAPADAKOS, J., joins in this concurring opinion.

. Petitioner [appellant] "contracted" with two men to murder his wife, Barbara Jean Frey, as his solution to their marital difficulties, i.e. their pending divorce and property distribution. On November 7, 1979, with petitioner’s [appellant's] planning and assistance, the two men ran his wife’s car off of a road, beat her, shot her and set her car on fire, thereby causing her death.