Commonwealth ex rel. Hendrickson, Appellant, v. Myers
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
March 24, 1958
393 Pa. 224 | 144 A.2d 367
The instant agreement definitely and conclusively falls within the purview of the Act, and is enforceable thereunder. Finding as we do, there is no necessity for deciding whether the agreement is enforceable under common law principles.
Order affirmed.
Commonwealth ex rel. Hendrickson, Appellant, v. Myers.
William J. Woolston, for appellant.
Donald W. VanArtsdalen, District Attorney, for appellee.
OPINION BY MR. JUSTICE BELL, March 24, 1958:
The appellant-petitioner, Robert E. Hendrickson, was arrested on August 10, 1946, upon four separate
Within the period of approximately 10 years, the appellant was twice paroled by the Pennsylvania Board of Parole. Each time appellant violated his parole and was returned to prison. The first violation was a technical one; the second involved a violation of the Uniform Firearms Act. The appellant‘s unexpired prison term will terminate in December 1959.
In April of 1956, appellant filed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus; this was denied by both the lower court and a unanimous Superior Court. An allocatur was allowed by this Court. The petition originally raised several issues, but on this appeal appellant presses only one, namely, the sentence imposed in 1946 was illegal and void because the sentencing Judge was informed of and considered the appellant‘s Juvenile Court record in imposing sentence. Appellant had been found delinquent when he was approxi-
Generally speaking, there are several cogent reasons why juvenile records and evidence given in juvenile proceedings should not be used as evidence against a child in any case or proceeding in any other court. Juvenile Court proceedings are normally informal, and many of the important constitutional and statutory guarantees afforded a defendant in a criminal trial do not apply to a juvenile in a hearing before a Juvenile Court: Holmes’ Appeal, 379 Pa. 599, 109 A. 2d 523. For these reasons, it would be unjust and illegal to allow the introduction of juvenile records or evidence given in juvenile cases to be later introduced as competent evidence in criminal cases or proceedings in any other court, in the same manner as criminal convictions or evidence taken in criminal proceedings may in certain instances be competent evidence in other criminal proceedings.
The statutory prohibition, however, was not transgressed by the lower Court. Section 19 does not pro-
Bouvier‘s Law Dictionary, Third Revision, accurately states: “Testimony is not synonymous with evidence; Harvey v. Smith, 17 Ind. 272; the latter is the more comprehensive term; Whart. Cr. L. §783; and includes all that may be submitted to the jury whether it be the statement of witnesses, or the contents of papers, documents, or records, or the inspection of whatever the jury may be permitted to examine and consider during the trial; Will, Cir. Ev. 2; Jones v. Gregory, 48 Ill. App. 230.”
Black‘s Law Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines “evidence” as “Any species of proof, or probative matter, legally presented at the trial of an issue, by the act of the parties and through the medium of witnesses, records, documents, concrete objects, etc., for the purpose of inducing belief in the minds of the court or jury as to their contention.”
The Juvenile Court record was not introduced or presented as evidence in the trial. Moreover, the Juvenile Court record was not considered, even after the trial, to determine a factual issue, i.e., his guilt or innocence of the crimes with which he was charged; on the contrary, the juvenile record was taken into consideration by the trial Judge after the appellant had pleaded guilty and then only for the purpose of imposing a fair, proper and just sentence.
As Judge HIRT said in his able opinion (182 Pa. Superior Ct. 169, 173): “The judge was entitled to all of the material facts to inform him as to what kind of an offender he was dealing with in determining the appropriate penalty. Commonwealth v. Petrillo, 340 Pa. 33, 47, 16 A. 2d 50.”
Commonwealth v. Johnson, 348 Pa. 349, 35 A. 2d 312, reaffirmed the above quoted principle of law enunciated in the Petrillo case, and added the following (page 354): “Any other rule than the one thus enunciated would be an impracticable one for courts to apply in exercising their discretionary power, within statutory limits, to impose appropriate sentences on convicted defendants, in the vast majority of criminal cases. A judge whose duty it is to determine the proper sentence imposed on those convicted of crime cannot be expected to limit himself to only that which appears in the record of the trial of the prisoner. It is to the benefit of society and it may be of benefit to the prisoner, to have the sentencing judge consider facts other than those adduced at the trial. Such facts might militate in a prisoner‘s favor, or they might militate against him.”*
In Commonwealth ex rel. Czarnecki v. Stitzel, 179 Pa. Superior Ct. 80, 115 A. 2d 805, the Court said (pages 82-83): “A judge faces a grave responsibility in sentencing boys in their middle and late teens. On
To deprive the courts of the right to be informed of and to consider the history and background of the person subject to sentence may result in sentences which are unjust and unfair to both society and defendants.
The judgment of the Superior Court is affirmed.
DISSENTING OPINION BY MR. JUSTICE MUSMANNO:
Four courts have passed upon this case and each one in its turn has treated an Act of the Legislature as if it were written on water instead of on stiff durable pages of a statute book representing the will of the people of Pennsylvania.
Prior to 1933 there was no separate court in Pennsylvania with exclusive jurisdiction over children charged with violating law. Minors accused of crime were prosecuted in the quarter sessions courts equally with adults. A movement was launched to take youthful defendants out of the criminal courts. It was said that persons of tender years should not be tried with all the formalities and rigidities of a court procedure geared for older people. It was said that children who got into trouble innocently or otherwise should be brought for judgment before a judge who would not be bound by rules of evidence. It was said that a relaxation of these rules would enable the judge to obtain a better picture of the child‘s background, environ-
There were many, of course, who opposed this wholesale breakage of constitutional guarantees which were synonymous with a fair trial as we understand fair trials in America. These persons pointed out that if hearsay testimony would be permitted, and confrontation abolished, a child could be convicted on mere rumors and his liberty taken from him on unsubstantiated gossip. The proponents of the change replied that the object of a juvenile court proceeding would not be to find a child guilty or not guilty, as those terms are understood in criminal proceedings. The opponents of the change countered with: “Yes, but if you allow this type of unreliable evidence to be used and the court concludes that the child is delinquent, the Juvenile Court record may be introduced against him in the criminal courts if he should be charged with crime after he reaches adulthood.” The proponents laughed at this spoken fear. “Perish the thought!” they replied. “Since a juvenile court proceeding is not a trial, it follows naturally that any adverse finding against the child is not to be regarded as a conviction, and certainly it could never be used against him later on in any way, shape, manner, form, size, guise or contour.”
The opponents, being thoroughly aware of the sad fact that once a constitutional breach is effected the repair is difficult, demanded to be assured with statutory solemnity that if unconstitutional methods were to be employed in adjudicating a child in the juvenile
And so, from this debate which was heard in all sections of the Commonwealth, and particularly in the legislative halls in Harrisburg, was born that provision in the Juvenile Court Act which three other courts and this Court have treated as if it were inscribed on the surface of a lazy summer, stagnant pond instead of on living parchment in the statute books and in the hearts and minds of all children-loving people in this great Commonwealth of ours.
The provision to which I refer reads as follows: “No order made by any juvenile court shall operate to impose any of the civil disabilities ordinarily imposed by the criminal laws of the Commonwealth, nor shall any child be deemed to be a criminal by reason of any such order or be deemed to have been convicted of crime. The disposition of a child or any evidence given in a juvenile court shall not be admissible as evidence against the child in any case or proceeding in any other court.”
Let us see how this specific mandate of the people has been respected in this case before us for review. On April 30, 1942, Robert Hendrickson was brought before the Juvenile Court of Bucks County in connection with an alleged burglary. The court entered the following order: “The Court orders and directs that
According to the
It emphasized: “No suggestion or taint of criminality attaches to any finding of delinquency by a Juvenile Court.”
Thus, with the solemn guarantee of a statute and the equally earnest assurances of the Supreme Court, Robert Hendrickson had reason to believe that his juvenile mistakes had fallen into the sea of forgetfulness never to be dredged up to haunt him in the event he should, as an adult, run afoul of the law. He was to have a sad awakening.
Four years after his appearance in juvenile court, that is, on September 4, 1946, he was brought before Judge BOYER of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Bucks County to answer to various criminal charges—and the very first thing the Quarter Sessions Judge turned to was Robert‘s juvenile court record! The assurances made prior to 1933 about the non-judicial use of juvenile court records were treated as if they had never been spoken. What the statute of 1933 peremptorily ordered was ignored; what the appellate courts of this
Was this an adjudication of law or was it the eruption of a volcano? The judicial Jupiter fulminated: “Everybody that knows you will now despise you.” Was that part of the sentence? He ended his fiery outburst with: “Can you think of anything that could be said in your own favor? I can‘t think of anything.” It is easy to understand why he could not think of any-
When the court finally got around to imposing punishment, Robert Hendrickson received a sentence of from 4 to 12 years in the Eastern State Penitentiary. He was paroled on February 12, 1951. Later he got into some further difficulties with the law and was recommitted to the penitentiary. On April 13, 1956, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging the proceedings of 1946 on two grounds: (1) that he was denied counsel at this hearing, and (2) that it was illegal to introduce against him the juvenile court records of 1942.
The Court of Quarter Sessions of Bucks County dismissed the writ with the blithesome utterance that the petitioner was not entitled to a lawyer. But the
The court said further that even if Robert had had a lawyer at the hearing in 1946, this would not have helped him. It is interesting to observe how the Judge responded to Robert‘s insistence that he should have had the legal counsel guaranteed to him by the Constitution: “By the Court:... Q. All right, would you care to spell out just in what way you were denied anything by that? How were you prejudiced by that?
It can happen and it does happen that a doctor called to treat a severely injured or ill person may not be able to save the patient‘s life, but it can happen and does happen that a doctor will draw the sufferer up out of the well of doom and restore a life which might otherwise have been forfeited. If a lawyer had been present at the hearing in 1946 he would have called to the Judge‘s attention the impropriety and illegality of using Hendrickson‘s juvenile court record in a quarter sessions proceeding. For illegality it was, if statutes are not to be treated simply as printing trivia.
The lower Court said: “It is incomprehensible that the Legislature intended a judge sitting in the Court of Quarter Sessions to ignore and entirely put out of his mind that which he knows or at one time did know
Hendrickson appealed to the Superior Court, assigning the action of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Bucks County as error. The Superior Court affirmed the sentence and declared that the lower court was entitled to consider the juvenile court record of the defendant in sentencing him, namely, “The judge was entitled to all of the material facts to inform him as to what kind of an offender he was dealing with to assist him in determining the appropriate penalty.”
The defendant has now appealed to this Court, and the Majority of this Court also says that the lower court was without error in using Hendrickson‘s juvenile court record as the platform upon which to build the eventual disposition of the case. But the repetition of this affirmance lends no legality to the procedure. What is wrong is wrong, even if repeated a hundred times. The statute prohibits the use of a juvenile court record in the criminal courts of the Commonwealth, and, in the parade of citizens who obey, respect, and salute the law of the land, the judges should head the procession.
In attempted support of its statute-violating proposition that a juvenile court record is properly before a criminal court judge, the lower court cited the case of Commonwealth v. Petrillo, 340 Pa. 33. The Petrillo case is as remote from the situation under discussion as Cuba is from China. The Petrillo case had nothing to do with minors, it made no reference to juvenile court records, it did not involve a defiance of statute.
In that case, the defendant Paul Petrillo, a grown man, after the Commonwealth had presented its evi-
The Majority Opinion in the case at bar only quotes part of the above quotation and thus conveys an idea wholly different from what the case holds. It is about time, in the interests of consistency, relevancy, and correctness, that courts cease citing the Petrillo case as authority for nullifying the plain mandate of the
The proceedings of September 4, 1946, occurred in the court of quarter sessions, obviously a different court from the juvenile court. The District Attorney of Bucks County says in his brief that since the Court of Quarter Sessions in Bucks County “sits as a Juvenile Court,” it is “strictly speaking,” “the same Court that imposed sentence upon Relator in 1946 as held the juvenile hearing in 1942 when Relator was placed on probation for an occurrence which, had he been over the juvenile age, would have constituted burglary.” This, I am constrained to say, amounts to quibbling in the lowermost cellar of subterfuge.
The fact that the robed figure sitting on two different courts happens to be the same individual does not make the courts interchangeable. If what counsel says were true there would be no distinction between common pleas courts and equity courts; common pleas courts and quarter sessions courts would blend into one tribunal; and orphans’ courts, in the non-metropolitan counties, would cease to exist. We know that in Pennsylvania the common pleas judges periodically sit in the criminal courts. It would be ridiculous in the extreme, to say nothing of its being monumentally unjust, to declare that when a judge sits in a common pleas trial he should hold against the plaintiff or de-
The Majority Opinion of this Court says that Robert Hendrickson‘s juvenile court record was not really used against him because it was only considered after he had pleaded guilty. But what difference does it make whether a person is struck with a club in the afternoon or in the evening, if he is not entitled to be clubbed at all? The Majority says that the record was considered only for the purpose of “imposing a fair, proper, and just sentence.” But if a record is to be used for the purpose of imposing a sentence, it should be a reliable record, it should be a just record. Suppose that at the termination of a criminal trial which found the defendant guilty, some unknown person appeared in court and said to the judge: “I would like you to double this defendant‘s sentence because ten years ago he committed a robbery on me.” The judge would, of course, decline with thanks the gratuitous recommendation, for it would obviously be hearsay, it would obviously not be authentic.
The Majority says that when Robert Hendrickson was 17 years of age he was punished “as the result of a burglary then committed by him.” The Majority has no evidence that Hendrickson committed a burglary when he was 17. For a court to declare that anyone committed a burglary, there must be proof that he was tried under constitutional guarantees, that he had counsel, that he was confronted by his accusers, that only sworn evidence was used against him. These are guarantees which are unknown in juvenile court proceedings. The Majority may feel justified in saying that Hendrickson committed a burglary, but there is no authoritative court record to substantiate such a conclusion.
Moreover, we have no way at all of knowing that Robert actually committed a burglary when he was a boy. There was no trial, there was no verdict, there was no conviction. There was, as this Court denominated it in the Holmes case, a “civil inquiry.” In that civil inquiry the judge may have listened to hearsay, he may have been impressed with ex parte statements, he may have been deceived by testimony which was not subjected to cross-examination, he may have read secret reports, he may, for many reasons, have been persuaded to place the boy on probation which reasons had nothing to do with any conclusion that the boy had actually committed a burglary.
This Court takes a position in this case which is indefensible in logic, insupportable in reason, inexcusable in law, and contrary to statute. It says that in juvenile court the Commonwealth is not bound by the rules of evidence because the youth is not under indictment, and yet, should he come into criminal court years later, the record made in juvenile court is treated as sacrosanct although it may be only a basket into which have been gathered, as I have heretofore indicated, hearsay, rumor, gossip, ex parte statements, secret reports, and all the other defective, unreliable bricabrac which are condemned in criminal
The Majority Opinion enumerates the offenses committed by the defendant, in order to demonstrate that he has been a several times offender. There is no doubt that Hendrickson has not made a fetish of respecting the law, but that is no reason why the law should be disrespectful of his rights. No human being in America, regardless of what he has done or has been accused of doing, may be stripped of his constitutional prerogatives without endangering the liberties of the citizenry of the nation. For the courts to treat lightly a solemn promise made by the Commonwealth, through the medium of a statute, is scarcely the best way in which to win the respect and loyalty of potential lawbreakers.
The Majority concedes that “It would be unjust and illegal to allow the introduction of juvenile records or evidence given in juvenile cases to be later introduced as competent evidence in criminal cases or proceedings in any other court, in the same manner as criminal convictions or evidence taken in criminal proceedings may in certain instances be competent evidence in other criminal proceedings.”
It argues, however, that Hendrickson‘s juvenile court record was not introduced as “evidence” because it was not used against him in a “trial.” But the statute does not ban the record only in trials. It says that the record shall not be used “in any case or proceeding.” Nor is the argument valid that a record is not evidence unless it is introduced for the purpose of ascertaining guilt. We all know that in first degree
The Majority cites a New York case (Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241) to the effect that a sentencing judge should be supplied with “the fullest information possible concerning the defendant‘s life and characteristics.” This is all well and good. It is indeed desirable that a judge should have before him all reliable information obtainable on the convicted defendant before he sentences him. But the Majority overlooks that in Pennsylvania our General Assembly has specifically said that it does not regard a juvenile court record of sufficient probative value to be introduced against a minor in subsequent proceedings and it has accordingly prohibited the use of such a record in any subsequent proceeding in any other court. The statute does not differentiate between what is to be produced during a trial and what is to be presented after a trial. If the Legislature had intended to exclude the record only from trials it could easily have said so, namely, “The disposition of a child or any evidence given against him in juvenile court shall not be admitted against the child in any trial in any other court.” But it did not say that. It said that the record shall not be used in any “case or proceeding.” The continuing indifference of this Court to this express mandate of the Legislature makes reference to that neglect necessary, and a repeated flying of the flag of distress imperative.
I would like to see this Court say definitely that it will not follow the wording of the statute or cease stating, as it said in the Holmes case, that: “No suggestion or taint of criminality attaches to any finding of delinquency by a Juvenile Court.”
It is this kind of reasoning which makes law so mysterious to the uninitiated and it is inevitable that with this kind of reasoning supporting the sentence in this case, I must
Dissent.
Altman, Appellant, v. Philadelphia.
Argued April 28, 1958. Before JONES, C. J., MUSMANNO, ARNOLD, JONES and COHEN, JJ.