Court Opinion

ID: 9752978
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:48:37.858394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:08.483695
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result but write separately to suggest that the rationale of Mr. Justice McDermott is unworkable.
Mr. Justice McDermott reasons that:
*348in the context of simultaneous convictions of multiple offenses, pursuant to guilty pleas or trial verdicts, the trial court may sentence separately for each distinct statutory crime of which the defendant is convicted, limited only by express legislative intent to the contrary.
At 377. Although this approach causes no mischief in the case at bar, it would require multiple sentencing in other cases where lesser included offenses are charged in the information and the defendant is convicted of all charges. For example, under such an approach, a defendant who has committed only one criminal act but who is charged with and convicted of theft and robbery or simple assault and aggravated assault, in the absence of legislative direction to the contrary, would be sentenced on all convictions, even though such sentencing violates this Court’s well-established prohibition against multiple sentencing for lesser included offenses.
We had avoided this difficulty in two companion cases which were recently filed, Commonwealth v. Weakland, 521 Pa. 353, 555 A.2d 1228 (1989), and Commonwealth v. Leon Williams, 521 Pa. 556, 559 A.2d 25 (1989), where this Court held that:
where the same facts are used to support convictions for crimes having different elements, the crimes do not merge for sentencing purposes, unless the same facts support convictions of lesser included offenses.1
Weakland 521 Pa. at 363, 555 A.2d 1228.
If we were to apply the Leon Williams holding to this case, as it was articulated above in Weakland, we would get the same result as Mr. Justice McDermott. In this particular case, the crime of possession of an instrument of crime, 18 Pa.C.S. § 907, is not a lesser included offense of attempted murder, 18 Pa.C.S. § 901 and § 2501, and the *349crimes would not, therefore, merge under Leon Williams. Further, were we to rely on the rationale of Weakland and Leon Williams, we would avoid promulgation of a scheme which would permit sentencing for lesser included offenses.
What underlies Mr. Justice McDermott’s view is the concern, articulated in his dissent in Leon Williams, that traditional merger analysis is not adequate to protect society from various criminal enterprises in which multiple harms are inflicted:
If two or more conspire to rob a bank and they do, then according to this theory the conspiracy, burglary, weapons offenses, thefts of cars, holding of hostages and assaultive acts to force the robbery are all subsumed by the accomplished robbery [under the theory of merger articulated in Leon Williams ].
Commonwealth v. Leon Williams, 521 Pa. at 568, 559 A.2d at 31. (Dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice McDermott.) Such a concern has no foundation and seems to be based on the misperception that Leon Williams requires the merger of any criminal act which is part of the same criminal enterprise. That is not the case. Instead, Leon Williams requires merger only where the elements of one crime are subsumed into the elements of another crime. The extent of the criminal enterprise is irrelevant. All of the crimes mentioned in Mr. Justice McDermott’s hypothetical have different elements and would not, therefore merge, under the Leon Williams analysis. The approach taken by Mr. Justice McDermott, therefore, is not required to meet the imagined deficiencies of Leon Williams.
Finally, although Mr. Justice McDermott’s analysis does not present problems in the present case, if a case were to arise in which a criminal defendant were to be sentenced twice for a single criminal act — suppose that he were convicted both of theft and robbery and only one criminal act were involved — and if the legislature had failed to prohibit such punishment, we would then face significant difficulty in applying the rule of this case. On one hand, we would be *350bound by this decision to affirm the judgment of sentence on both convictions, but on the other hand, principles of double jeopardy would seem to require that the sentence be vacated. Presumably, we would then be required to abandon the rule of law which Mr. Justice McDermott wishes to establish in this case.
For the reasons stated above, I would, therefore, retain the analysis of merger as it was articulated in the Weak-land and Leon Williams cases.
This Concurring Opinion is joined by NIX, C.J., and CAPPY, J.

. A lesser included offense we defined as:
a crime the elements of which are a necessary subcomponent but not a sufficient component of elements of another crime, the greater included offense. For example, theft is a lesser included offense of robbery.
Leon Williams, 521 Pa. at 561, n. 2, 559 A.2d 25.