Court Opinion

ID: 9761913
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:59:22.109976+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:48:41.181800
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Nix:
I am pleased to witness today the demise of a doctrine that I have long believed to have been inconsistent *100with practical realities and manifestly unfair. To have held consistently that a direction of a verdict of guilty by a trial judge in a criminal case was improper and yet condone his expression of opinion as to guilt created an anomaly in our law unsupportable in reason or logic. I, therefore, join in the opinion of the majority which has long been overdue.
I regret, however, that in reaching its result the majority did not find it necessary to strike down those decisions where the statement of the trial judge was offensive even under the former standard. The trial judge in the case at bar as in Commonwealth ex rel. Smith v. Rundle, 423 Pa. 93, 223 A. 2d 88 (1966); Commonwealth v. Raymond, 412 Pa. 194, 194 A. 2d 150 (1963); and Commonwealth v. Cisneros, 381 Pa. 447, 113 A. 2d 293 (1955), in addition to expressing an opinion as to the guilt of the defendant, went further and suggested that the jury’s failure to accept his view would have been a “miscarriage of justice.” The former rule, while permitting comment provided “the only restriction being that he must advise the jury that anything he states in that connection is not binding upon them but that it is their sole power and responsibility to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and in cases of murder the degree of the guilt. . . .” Commonwealth v. Simmons, 361 Pa. 391, 407, 65 A. 2d 353, 361 (1949). It was clearly a requirement that the expression of opinion should be done fairly and temperately and at no time should the ultimate decision be removed expressly or implicitly from the province of the jury.
We agree with the observations of the late Justice Mtjsmanno in his dissenting opinion in Commonwealth v. Raymond: “But this rule, even as stated by the Majority, carries within it a very important modification; namely, that the judge must express his opinion ‘fairly *101and temperately’. The judge there did not express himself ‘fairly and temperately’. Metamorphically he held a whip over the heads of the jury. He told them that if they did not agree with him, their contrary view would amount to a ‘miscarriage of justice’. This kind of language, it seems to me, smacks of coercion. A juror may not mind disagreeing with a judge on tactual matters but he would dislike very much placing himself in the category of a person who has participated in a miscarriage of justice, judicially proclaimed.” 412 Pa. 194, 210, 194 A. 2d 150, 158 (1963). This was not an expression of an opinion but rather an indictment of any who would dare to differ.
By abandoning the former rule the majority will avoid many future injustices. However, by failing to reach and overrule Commonwealth ex rel. Smith v. Rundle, supra; Commonwealth v. Raymond, supra; and Commonwealth v. Cisneros, supra, they perpetuate the former inequities permitted allegedly within the ambit of that doctrine. With this I cannot agree.
Mr. Justice Manberino joins.