Court Opinion

ID: 9692266
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:49:17.207946+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:32.678112
License: Public Domain

Justice NIGRO,
Concurring and Dissenting.
As I cannot agree with the majority that the Court should abandon the six-hour rule established by Commonwealth v. Duncan, 514 Pa. 395, 525 A.2d 1177 (1987), and Commonwealth v. Davenport, 471 Pa. 278, 370 A.2d 301 (1977), I must dissent. However, because I ultimately agree that the Duncan-Davenport rule was not violated here, I agree with the majority that Appellant is not entitled to relief.
In Davenport, this Court held that an arrestee must be arraigned within six hours of arrest in order to “guard against the coercive influence of custodial interrogation [and] to ensure that the rights to which an accused is entitled at preliminary arraignment are afforded without unnecessary delay.” 370 A.2d at 305. If an arrestee is not arraigned within six hours of arrest, Davenport held, any statement by the accused obtained between arrest and arraignment is not admissible at trial. Id. at 306. As the majority notes, Duncan then modified the six-hour rule, indicating that the “focus should be upon when the [defendant’s] statement was obtained, i.e. within or beyond the six hour period.” 525 A.2d at 1181. Finding that the Duncan-Davenport rule has essentially become ineffectual, the majority now abandons the rule and instead adopts a “totality of the circumstances” approach to the question of when statements will be deemed admissible. My primary concern with this approach is simply that, in the absence of reasonable and clear time restraints in which police officers are allowed to question suspects, suspects are much *381more likely to be exposed to the coercive effect of prolonged police interrogation, which in turn, will yield a greater pool of unreliable confessions. By using time restrictions to curb police officers’ potential abuse of the interrogation process, the Duncan-DavenpoH rule, in my view, better safeguards the constitutional rights of defendants than the new “totality of the circumstances” approach adopted by the majority today and thus, should not be abandoned.
Applying the Duncan-DavenpoH rule to the instant case, however, I do agree that Appellant is ultimately not entitled to relief. As this Court stated in Commonwealth v. Washington, and as I have reiterated above, the Duncan-DavenpoH rule is premised on a desire to avoid the coercive effect of prolonged police interrogation. 547 Pa. 550, 692 A.2d 1018, 1023 (1998). Consistent with this principle, this Court has found that the Duncan-DavenpoH rule has not been violated when a statement was obtained within six hours of the start of questioning on the offense at issue, even if that statement was obtained after the defendant had been in police custody for more than six hours. See Washington, 692 A.2d at 1023 (no violation of Duncan-DavenpoH rule where period of pre-arraignment interrogation did not exceed six hours); Commonwealth v. Persiano, 555 Pa. 428, 725 A.2d 151, 153-54 (same). Here, Appellant was arrested at 6:30 p.m., but interrogation did not begin until approximately 11:15 p.m. The interrogation ended at 4:35 a.m., less than six hours after it began, and Appellant gave his statement. Under these facts, I would follow the reasoning of this Court in Washington and Persiano, and find that the Duncan-DavenpoH rule has not been violated. As such, I am able to concur in the majority opinion’s denial of relief to Appellant.