Court Opinion

ID: 9697607
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:22:56.037237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:34:03.834725
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice
(dissenting).
Today’s result represents a perpetuation of a doctrine which, I believe, was ill-conceived in its inception, Commonwealth v. Thomas, 403 Pa. 553, 170 A.2d 112 (1961), and now unwisely and unnecessarily expanded. For the reasons that follow, I must dissent.
It has been a well-settled principle in this jurisdiction that consolidation or separation of indictments is a matter that is to be left to the sound discretion of the trial judge and this judgment will not be disturbed unless there is a showing of a manifest abuse of discretion which resulted in a clear injustice to the accused. Commonwealth v. Patrick, 416 Pa. 437, 206 A.2d 295 (1965); Commonwealth ex rel. Bolish v. Banmiller, 396 Pa. 129, 151 A.2d 480 (1959); Commonwealth v. Kloiber, 378 Pa. 412, 106 A.2d 820 (1954); Commonwealth ex rel. Spen*340cer v. Ashe, 364 Pa. 442, 446, 71 A.2d 799 (1950), cert. denied 399 U.S. 990, 70 S.Ct. 1015, 94 L.Ed. 1390 (1950); Commonwealth v. Grosso, 192 Pa.Super. 513, 162 A.2d 421 (1960). This principle is consistent with our concept of the role of the jurist in the conduct of the trial. It is his responsibility to attempt to identify, define and clarify the issues to be decided. The trial judge is expected, whenever possible, to minimize the complexities of the cause and not to compound them. It is therefore crucial that his exercise of discretion provide the flexibility in a determination on a request for severance or consolidation of indictments which would permit him to consider the extent to which the request would further complicate the task of the jury and weigh that factor against the benefit sought to be derived by the moving party. The majority opinion would remove this possibility.
I have a serious question as to the validity of the majority’s implicit assumption that the additional instructions to the jury as to the elements of involuntary manslaughter, while they are laboring under the onerous task of attempting to absorb the difficult distinctions between the other grades of homicide, will provide the jurors with an understanding of “the full significance of the law of homicide in Pennsylvania.” It is more likely to make comprehension impossible.1
Commenting upon the evils of the unnecessary joinder of charges the late Mr. Chief Justice Bell, then Mr. Justice Bell, had occasion to observe:
“If there could be a conviction of assault and battery on a murder bill the trial Judge would always have to charge the jury on first-degree murder, second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, and, certainly if requested, on aggravated assault and battery and simple assault and battery. This has never been *341done in the history of the Commonwealth. When we take into consideration the additional points the trial Judge must define in a murder case, such as presumption of innocence, reasonable doubt, and usually several others (depending upon the particular facts of that particular case) the jury would likely become so befogged by legal technicalities and so confused by the maze of the law as to make a clear comprehension, weighing and correlation of the facts exceedingly difficult, and the rendition of a just verdict both difficult and doubtful. Furthermore, the likelihood of a “murderer” escaping his just punishment and being found guilty of aggravated assault and battery or simple assault and battery instead of one of the degrees of murder or manslaughter of which he was actually guilty would be greatly increased to the detriment of society.” Commonwealth v. Comber, 374 Pa. 570, 578-79, 97 A.2d 343, 346 (1953).2
The ruling today is predicated upon our decision in Commonwealth v. Thomas, supra. Thomas represented a radical departure from the prior cases in this jurisdiction and was obviously motivated by the Court’s reluctance to meet forthrightly the issue presented therein. There it was apparent that the majority of the Court believed the verdict returned (murder in the second degree) was sufficiently supported by the record to meet our sufficiency of the evidence test yet believed the weight of the evidence to be otherwise. Attempting to avoid our long respected and salutary principle that the weight of the evidence is best left with the trial court, the Thomas Court contrived this principle to reach the result they desired.3
*342The inconsistency of the Thomas ruling becomes apparent when we attempt to analyze it. It suggests that it is a right of the accused, where there is evidence of involuntary manslaughter, to have a jury consider this charge. However, inexplicably, they conditioned this right upon the existence of an indictment for involuntary manslaughter. If fundamental fairness requires, under a given record, that the finder of fact be allowed to consider the charge of involuntary manslaughter, why is that judgment dependent upon whether a prosecutor has been fit to indict? If there is some validity to the majority’s position they necessarily must overrule the long standing principle that the judge is not entitled to charge as to involuntary manslaughter where there is no indictment therefor. Commonwealth v. Edwards, 481 Pa. 44, 52, 244 A.2d 683 (1968); Commonwealth v. Comber, supra 374 Pa. at 575, 97 A.2d at 345; Commonwealth v. Palermo, 368 Pa. 28, 31-32, 81 A.2d 540 (1951); Commonwealth v. Hardy, 347 Pa. 551, 554, 32 A.2d 767 (1943). Additionally there is no longer a basis for the rule that an involuntary manslaughter verdict may not be returned under a murder indictment. Commonwealth v. Comber, supra 374 Pa. at 575, 97 A.2d 343; Commonwealth v. Palermo, supra; Commonwealth v. Mayberry, 290 Pa. 195, 199, 138 A. 686 (1927).
Not, only has the majority reaffirmed the doctrine which, I believe, is unsound, but it has compounded this error by extending it to a point which, in my judgment, renders it more egregious. In Thomas, the evidence presented in the Commonwealth’s case strongly suggested the propriety of an involuntary manslaughter finding. On that record the holding of Thomas could legitimately have been confined to instances where there is substan*343tial evidence of involuntary manslaughter emanating from the Commonwealth’s case-in-chief. Today, however, not only is the evidence of involuntary manslaughter of such a character that it would stretch the credulity of the most naive, but even more important it was introduced by the defense.
The Commonwealth established that there had been a intense marital disagreement between appellant and the deceased. When the husband attempted to prevent the wife from leaving the household, the wife went upstairs and placed a loaded gun in her pocketbook. The Commonwealth also established that there was no sign of a struggle and that the bullet wound, causing the death, was discharged from the gun appellant had placed in her pocketbook. It was in this setting that the defense attempted to create the phantasm of a struggle for this weapon during which the husband was unintentionally shot. To rule under these circumstances that a court is mandated to permit consolidation upon request and blindly ignore all of the other ramifications created by consolidation, is to me completely without justification and strains the quality of justice in Pennsylvania.

. The complicated nature of the homicide formulation in the New Crimes Code, 18 C.P.S.A. § 2501 et seq. (1973), highlights this problem.

. It is also difficult to understand how we can make it mandatory to join an indictment where the charge may only, in limited circumstances, be a lesser included offense and yet deny this right where the charge is a necessarily constituent offense. Commonwealth v. Comber, supra.

. “If the opinion is penetratingly read it is not difficult to perceive that what it ‘really’ says, is that it believes that a conviction *342of involuntary manslaughter would be more just than a conviction of murder. It is a truism that ‘sympathy’ cases frequently make bad law or create harmful precedents”.
Commonwealth v. Thomas, supra 403 Pa. at 557, 170 A.2d at 113 (Dissenting Opinion, Bell, C. J.)