Court Opinion

ID: 9700966
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:55:23.970086+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:16.653463
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. Appellant argues that he is entitled to a new trial because of prejudice caused by photographs introduced into evidence at trial. For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Commonwealth v. Wade, 480 Pa. 160, 389 A.2d 560 (1978), (dissenting opinion of Manderino, J.), I agree. As part of a series of photographs depicting the crime scene, the prosecution introduced two photographs in which the body of the victim was exhibited, and the gunshot wounds causing death were readily visible.
Photographs depicting the lifeless body of the victim of a crime are per se inflammatory and likely to so affect the jury that they should be admitted into evidence only if they are shown by the prosecution to be of essential evidentiary value. Here, the prosecution contends that the photographs were necessary to establish that appellant intended to kill the deceased, (thus establishing one of the elements of murder in the first degree, for which appellant had been charged). The purpose of introducing the photographs was to show the use of a deadly weapon on a vital part of the body, a fact from which the jury, according to the prosecution, could infer intent to kill. Even if we assume that *66intent to kill can be inferred solely from the fact of the use of a deadly weapon on a vital part of the body (an assumption which I make here only for the purposes of analysis), the photographs at issue were not necessary to establish that fact. Obviously, the nature and number of the wounds could have been established equally well through the testimony of the medical examiner who performed the autopsy and determined that the wounds caused the victim’s death. In this way the prosecution could have presented everything it sought to establish without causing the prejudice that introduction of the photographs entailed. I would therefore reverse the judgment of sentence and remand for a new trial.