Court Opinion

ID: 9696327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:45:00.201679+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:21.332838
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Bell :
Recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States which overruled and changed well settled law are the real cause of the flood of habeas corpus petitions which, unlimited and unrestricted by that Court, are unrealistically and unnecessarily swamping State *25Courts and, we believe, Federal Courts* also. Those decisions have created new and difficult legal and police problems, and have imposed new Constitutional restrictions on the solution of crime and the conviction of criminals.** Especially when retroactively applied by the mandates of the Supreme Court, they seriously endanger the safety and welfare of all law-abiding citizens.
The Supreme Court of the United States has radically changed the writ of habeas corpus, its functions, its use and its boundaries.*** These decisions of the *26Supreme Court have necessitated a change by State Courts in our consideration and interpretation of the functions of the writ of habeas corpus and our appropriate procedures. For these reasons and in order to protect society from future false claims by prisoners and other persons who had been convicted of a crime or crimes and who many years thereafter challenge the constitutionality or legality of their convictions or sentences — often when witnesses for the Commonwealth have moved or died, or their recollections of the crime or of what the criminal said or did may have become dimmed — I would grant a hearing on the writ in this exceptional case.
Mr. Justice Roberts has written a learned Opinion in which he further extends the writ of habeas corpus to reach every allegedly unlawful detention or restraint or conviction. Although I disagree with this further extension of the writ and with some of the ideas, interpretations, deductions and conclusions of the majority, this case is so unusual that, I repeat, I concur in the result.

 For example, in Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, Mr. Justice Clark said in his dissenting Opinion (page 445) : “First, there can be no question but that a rash of new applications from state prisoners will pour into the federal courts, and 98% of them will be frivolous, if history is any guide.*
“* In the 12-year period from 1946 to 1957 the petitioners were successful in 1.4% of the eases.”

 In Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, Mr. Justice Clark said in a footnote in his dissenting Opinion (page 358) : “Statistics from the office of the Clerk of this Court reveal that in the 1961 Term only 38 of 1,093 in forma pauperis petitions for certiorari were granted (3.4%). Of 44 in forma pauperis appeals, all but one were summarily dismissed (2.3%).” See also Opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 498; also in Darr v. Burford, 339 U.S. 200, 233.

 For instance, in our case of Commonwealth v. Garner, this Court had denied an allocatur from the Superior Court’s decision (196 Pa. Superior Ct. 578) which affirmed a decision of the Quarter Sessions Court of Philadelphia County (May Term, 1944, No. 887 and No. 888) denying Garner’s petition for a rule to show cause (in effect, a habeas corpus proceeding) why a judgment of sentence entered on a guilty plea June 21, 1944, should not be vacated. The Supreme Court of the United States in its October Term 1962, Miscellaneous No. 67, vacated the aforesaid judgment of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and remanded the ease to this Court “for further consideration in light of Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335.” The Supreme Court made this Order in 1063 even though at the time the petitioner filed his aforesaid rule and petition he had fully served his sentence and had been released and discharged in 1950. Garner desired the old Pennsylvania sentence *26to be vacated, in order that he might apply to the appropriate Court in New York for a reduction of his sentence for a crime committed in the State of New York, which sentence had been based on his being a recidivist.