Court Opinion

ID: 9785212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 21:10:18.570819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:11.735094
License: Public Domain

*617Justice SAYLOR,
concurring.
I join the majority opinion, except for the final section in which it analyzes whether the trial court’s decision to allow the jury to listen to the audiotape during deliberations was prejudicial. See Majority Opinion, op. at 603, 9 A.3d at 623-24. While I have no doubt that it would be extremely difficult for Appellant to carry his burden of demonstrating actual prejudice under the circumstances (and, indeed, the majority had already found that no prejudice was proved in the context of the Rule 602 claim, see id. at 621), my concern lies with the possibility that the Court may be understood as suggesting that permitting a jury to listen to taped testimony during its deliberations is less inherently problematic than allowing it to review trial transcripts. In my view, it would be best to resist making any pronouncements that could be so construed at this juncture, both because it is a question that may implicate complexities and varied scenarios not reflected in the present case,1 and because doing so is not strictly necessary in any event, given the Court’s holding that Rule 646 was not violated and, hence, that Appellant’s underlying claim lacks arguable merit. See id. at 604, 9 A.3d at 623. See generally Common*618wealth v. Johnson, 538 Pa. 148, 153, 646 A.2d 1170, 1173 (1994) (declining to reach the issues of reasonableness or prejudice where the defendant failed to establish that his underlying claim was of arguable merit); Commonwealth v. Collins, 598 Pa. 397, 410, 957 A.2d 237, 245 (2008) (reciting that a failure to satisfy any of the three ineffectiveness prongs requires rejection of the claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel).

. See, e.g., State v. Morgensen, 148 Wash.App. 81, 197 P.3d 715, 718 (2008) ("While there is no absolute prohibition on playing an audiotape of trial testimony during jury deliberations, the right to a fair and impartial jury ... requires that the trial court balance the need to provide the jury with relevant portions of testimony to answer a specific inquiry against the danger of allowing a witness to testify a second time.”); Shaffer v. State, 449 N.E.2d 1074, 1075 (Ind.1983) (reversing a conviction where the deliberating jury heard lengthy audiotapes of trial testimony, as the state’s procedural rules did not “authorize a virtually complete replay of the trial”); cf. State v. Koontz, 145 Wash.2d 650, 41 P.3d 475, 478 (2002) ("Reviewing videotaped testimony [during deliberations] raises greater concerns than reading from a transcript because videotaped testimony allows the jury to hear and see more than the factual elements contained in a transcript.”); State v. Halsey, 232 Neb. 658, 441 N.W.2d 877, 881-82 (1989) (affirming a trial court's decision not to allow a deliberating jury to listen to an audiotape of trial testimony because of the danger that undue emphasis would be placed upon that part of the evidence if reheard). But cf. Commonwealth v. Peterman, 430 Pa. 627, 632, 244 A.2d 723, 727 (1968) (indicating that the purpose of any requested review of testimony during deliberations is "to dispel any confusion or uncertainty present in the minds of the jurors as to the actual testimony they heard during the course of the trial”).