Court Opinion

ID: 9749486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:47:23.609207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:19.417193
License: Public Domain

WIEAND, Judge,
concurring:
I concur that the order dismissing appellant’s P.C.H.A. petition should be affirmed.
Dale Raymond White entered separate, negotiated pleas of guilty to attempted robbery,1 escape,2 and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.3 The colloquies conducted by the trial judge were sufficient to demonstrate that appellant’s pleas of guilty were entered knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily. He has failed to prove in the instant P.C.H.A. proceedings any prejudice on the order of manifest injustice that would recommend permitting him to withdraw those pleas of guilty after sentences had been imposed. See: Commonwealth v. Stokes, 264 Pa.Superior Ct. 515, 400 A.2d 204 (1979). Therefore, the trial court properly refused to allow appellant to withdraw his pleas of guilty.
The decision in Commonwealth v. Fortune, 289 Pa.Superior Ct. 278, 433 A.2d 65 (1981) is dispositive, as Judge Johnson *27and Judge Spaeth agree, of appellant’s contention that his pleas were not intelligently entered because the trial judge allegedly failed to advise him that the right to be tried by jury meant trial by jurors chosen from members of the community. See also: Commonwealth v. Bouie, 263 Pa.Superior Ct. 556, 398 A.2d 716 (1979).
It is not essential to the entry of a knowing and intelligent guilty plea that the colloquy be further encumbered by requiring an instruction that a jury in a criminal case consists of “twelve” persons. The guilty plea colloquy, as most trial judges know, has already become “so extensive— so all-encompassing—so unrealistic—so dreamlike, as to have become an absurdity.” McClelland, “The Guilty Plea Absurdity,” Pennsylvania Law Journal, September 29, 1980, Vol. Ill, No. 37, p. 10. I perceive no value to a technical addition which elevates form over substance and which assumes that criminal defendants are idiots and their attorneys incompetent.
In Commonwealth v. Williams, 454 Pa. 368, 312 A.2d 597 (1973), the Supreme Court considered the adequacy of the colloquy preceding a waiver of jury trial and an agreement to be tried by a judge sitting without jury. The Court there concluded that “basic to the concept of a jury trial, are the requirements that the jury be chosen from members of the community (a jury of one’s peers), that the verdict be unanimous, and that the accused be allowed to participate in the selection of the jury panel.” Several observations may be in order. First, the Supreme Court did not hold that the number “twelve” was basic to trial by jury. See and compare: Pa.R.Crim.P. 1103. Secondly, the Supreme Court has not superimposed upon a guilty plea colloquy—not by rule and not by decision—the requirement announced in Williams for the colloquy preceding a trial without jury.
The Superior Court, however, has held that Williams is equally applicable to a guilty plea colloquy. Commonwealth v. Washer, 253 Pa.Superior Ct. 209, 384 A.2d 1305 (1978). Despite the absence of a controlling Supreme Court decision, I am bound to apply the holding of the Superior Court, *28sitting en banc in Washer. However, I do not feel constrained to expand that holding and require that a guilty plea colloquy contain advice that a jury consists of twelve persons. There are many aspects of the right to be tried, with or without a jury, which need not be detailed by a court before an accused can enter a knowing and intelligent plea of guilty. To require that a guilty plea colloquy include all the procedural and evidentiary rights which will accrue to a defendant if he elects to go to trial will unnecessarily impose upon guilty pleas a burden that will most certainly become as impossible as it is absurd.
The absence from the guilty plea colloquy of the precise number of jurors who will hear evidence and determine a defendant’s guilt will not render an otherwise intelligent plea of guilty unintelligent. This is readily apparent from the circumstances of the instant case. Appellant was fully aware of the options available to him. He discussed them with his attorney and, because of the favorable terms of plea bargains offered by the Commonwealth, decided to forego trials, whether with or without jury, and enter pleas of guilty. Even appellant did not pretend during the hearing on his P.C.H.A. petition that he was unaware that a jury consisted of twelve persons or that the failure of the trial judge to use that magic number made a difference in his several decisions to plead guilty. On appeal, his counsel has not contended otherwise. Indeed, he has conceded that appellant proved no prejudice from the trial court’s failure to use the word “twelve.” Therefore, I agree with Judge Johnson that there was here no manifest injustice that needs to be corrected by allowing appellant to withdraw his pleas of guilty. To do so under the circumstances of this case would make a mockery of justice and would further erode public confidence in a system perceived as allowing technical rules to interfere with the ascertainment of truth.

. 18 Pa.C.S. §§ 901, 3701.

. 18 Pa.C.S. § 5121.

. 18 Pa.C.S. § 3928. An initial charge of receiving stolen property was reduced to unauthorized use of a vehicle pursuant to plea bargain.