Court Opinion

ID: 9650840
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:53:03.83326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:26.458707
License: Public Domain

*635LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
The majority correctly describes the alibi defense:
[ajlibi is a defense that places the defendant at the relevant time in a different place than the scene involved and so removed therefrom as to render it impossible for him to be the guilty party.
Commonwealth v. Whiting, 409 Pa. 492, 498, 187 A.2d 563, 566 (1963) (emphasis supplied). Nevertheless, the majority then proceeds to ignore the latter part of that description and to misapply the law to the testimony in the instant case. According to appellant’s own testimony, during the crucial hour within which the decedent met his fate, appellant was alone, in or near his automobile, and within ten miles (all of which would be traversed on rural roads) of both where the body was found at decedent’s place of employment and the decedent’s home. This is not an alibi because, even if appellant had traveled to and been where he claimed, he was not so far removed from the scene of the crime as to “render it impossible for him to be the guilty party.” If two persons are in a house and one is found dead in the bedroom, the jury should not be instructed on the alibi defense merely because the other claimed that he never left the kitchen. That is precisely the situation in this case, and it is a misnomer to suggest that appellant’s testimony was in the nature of an alibi. In fact, a fair reading of appellant’s testimony shows it was no more than a general denial of guilt. He was not, therefore, entitled to a jury instruction on the alibi defense.1
Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of sentence.
KAUFFMAN, J., joins in this Dissenting Opinion.

. Because of my disposition of this issue, I need not address appellant’s claim that his constitutional rights were transgressed by the 30 month delay in this appeal which was caused by the trial judge’s failure to timely dispose of post-verdict motions and file an opinion, or the internal inconsistency of the majority opinion. (That is, the majority’s simultaneous conclusions that, on the one hand, appellant did not receive a fair trial and, on the other hand, that his rights were *636not infringed while he was incarcerated for the 30 months this appeal was delayed by the trial judge for no good reason, defy both logic and common sense.) Since I find the jury instructions adequate, the trial judge’s delay of this appeal, if error, would be harmless as to appellant who is subject to a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.