Court Opinion

ID: 9535452
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:49:40.816182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:15.437881
License: Public Domain

WIEAND, Judge,
concurring:
I concur. I do so only because of the inflexible requirements of on-the-record colloquies demanded by Commonwealth v. Greene, 483 Pa. 195, 394 A.2d 978 (1978) and Commonwealth v. Morin, 477 Pa. 80, 383 A.2d 832 (1978). The absurd result achieved in this case, however, should be reason enough to reconsider the necessity for such rigid requirements.
In the instant case, appellant knew from experience that a jury could not convict except by a unanimous verdict. His counsel was also aware that trial by jury included a right to have a unanimous verdict. The omission of such an instruction by the trial judge during the waiver colloquy, therefore, did not impair in any way the knowing and intelligent nature of appellant’s waiver of trial by jury. To hold that appellant’s waiver was ineffective because the trial judge failed to remind him of a right with which he was already familiar is most certainly to exalt form over substance.
Moreover, appellant, with full knowledge of his rights, elected to remain silent during the colloquy and take his chances on a trial without jury. After having been found guilty, he should not now be heard to complain of deficiencies in the colloquy which, if timely called to the court’s attention, could have been corrected before trial commenced. By permitting appellant to object for the first time after he has been found guilty in a nonjury trial which he knowingly requested, we allow him to toy with the criminal justice system and waste judicial resources in an unnecessary second trial.
*115Thus, although required to follow precedent, I am constrained to voice my dissent from a per se rule which has no compelling reason and which impedes rather than furthers the search for justice.