Court Opinion

ID: 9820899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 07:40:03.019354+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:46.165544
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice SAYLOR,
dissenting.
Consistent with my dissenting opinion in Commonwealth v. Woodard, 634 Pa. 162, 129 A.3d 480, 2015 WL 7767271 (2015), which I incorporate here by reference, I respectfully dissent. In both Woodard and the present case, I would hold that the trial courts erred in admitting into evidence color photographs of nude, battered, open-eyed, deceased children taken during autopsies, encompassing full body portraits and facial closeups. As I explained at greater length in Woodard, I believe that such graphic, visceral portrayals of dead children create an unacceptable risk of influencing jurors to reach conclusions based on factors other than a strict application of the law to the facts. See id. at 212-15, 129 A.3d at 510-12, 2015 WL 7767271, at *24-26 (Saylor, C.J., dissenting).1 The impact is *720heightened in the present case, given that the trial court apparently permitted the jurors to have unfettered access to these pictures during their deliberations, see N.T., March 11, 2014, at 265. Accord Woodard, 634 Pa. at 187, 129 A.3d at 494-95, 2015 WL 7767271, at *10 (highlighting, as a factor favoring affirmance of the trial court’s decision to admit autopsy photographs, the fact that “the jury was not given the photographs to examine during deliberations!;.]”).

. This case and Woodard suggest the potential for confusion in this area of the law in terms of what this Court means by the word "inflammatory.” The Woodard majority credited a trial court’s finding that one set of autopsy photographs of a naked, battered child were not inflammatory, see Woodard, 634 Pa. at 186-88, 129 A.3d at 494-95, 2015 WL *7207767271, at *10; whereas, the present majority credits another trial court’s finding that similar pictures were inflammatory, See Majority Opinion at 712, 131 A.3d at 37-38. The majority, however, provides no explanation for why the visceral impact of the two sets of photographs upon lay jurors may have been different.
From my own point of view, having reviewed both sets of pictures, I fail to see any material difference in this regard.