COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. William GILMORE, Appellant.
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
Decided Oct. 30, 1975.
347 A.2d 305
Submitted June 23, 1975.
F. Emmett Fitzpatrick, Dist. Atty., Steven H. Goldblatt, Asst. Dist. Atty., Chief, Appeals Div., Philadelphia, for appellee.
Before JONES, C. J., and EAGEN, O‘BRIEN, ROBERTS, POMEROY and MANDERINO, JJ.
OPINION
JONES, Chief Justice.
Appellant, William Gilmore, was convicted by a jury of murder in the first degree. On March 20, 1972, this Court affirmed his conviction. Commonwealth v. Gilmore, 447 Pa. 21, 288 A.2d 757 (1972). Subsequently, appellant filed a petition for relief under the Post Conviction Hearing Act.
In this appeal, appellant asserts two grounds for reversal of the order of the lower court. He first argues that he was denied effective assistance of counsel at trial by counsel‘s failure to raise unnecessary delay in arraignment as a ground for the suppression of appellant‘s confession.
In Commonwealth v. Wayman, 454 Pa. 79, 82 n. 1, 309 A.2d 784, 786 n. 1 (1973), a majority of this Court held that a motion to suppress a confession on the grounds of involuntariness was sufficient to preserve the issue of erroneous introduction of the confession due to unnecessary delay in arraignment after arrest without warrant. Today, however, this Court has abandoned Wayman in favor of the more traditional appellate procedure which requires the preservation of the specific argument in support of the ground for reversal. Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 1975, 464 Pa. 117, 346 A.2d 48. Under that traditional procedure, “appellate courts will not review issues and arguments not raised in the court below.” Commonwealth ex rel. Bell v. Rundle, 420 Pa. 127, 131, 216 A.2d 57, 60, cert. denied, 384 U.S. 966, 86 S.Ct. 1599, 16 L.Ed.2d 678 (1966), quoted in Commonwealth v. Wayman, 454 Pa. at 87 n. 1, 309 A.2d at 789 n. 1 (dissenting opinion) (emphasis added). To allow appellant to raise such arguments on collateral attack “would virtually emasculate
Appellant‘s claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel is founded on counsel‘s failure to raise the issue of unnecessary delay in the pre-trial motion to suppress. Of course, if his counsel‘s conduct amounted to ineffective assistance, no waiver of that issue, as discussed previously, would have occurred. Commonwealth v. Wideman, 453 Pa. 119, 306 A.2d 894 (1973).
Before our decision in Commonwealth v. Futch, supra, violations of
Here, appellant was arrested on April 27, 1969, at 8:30 p. m. and immediately given his Miranda warnings, which were repeated to him before questioning began at 12:25 a. m. He was questioned for approximately one-half hour, denied any involvement and agreed to take a polygraph exam, after which he was again questioned for one-half hour. Thereafter he was left alone until 4:20 when he ate a meal provided by the police. After eating, he was read his Miranda rights for a third time and advised of his co-defendant‘s statement implicating appellant. At this point appellant orally confessed. The oral confession was completed some time prior to 7:00 a. m. It was then reduced to typewritten form by 9:00 a. m.
At the suppression hearing, appellant, through his counsel, alleged that his confession was involuntary because the police had threatened him during questioning although appellant made no allegations of lengthy continuous questioning or physical abuse.
In Commonwealth v. Boyd, 461 Pa. 17, 334 A.2d 610 (1974), the appellant raised the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel for failure to file a motion to suppress his confession on the grounds of involuntariness. The confession followed an intensive interrogation conducted over a period of ten to twelve hours. We held that counsel had not been ineffective, reasoning that a lengthy period of interrogation “would be insufficient without more to establish that appellant‘s statements were not freely given.” Commonwealth v. Boyd, 461 Pa. at 32, 334 A.2d at 617-18. Since the confession was not suppressible, any decision by counsel to file a motion to suppress would have been futile.
Implicit in the Boyd decision is that the prolonged confession, in combination with the simultaneous delay in arraignment, was also insufficient to establish
Since the addition of the factor of unnecessary delay would not have resulted in the suppression of appellant‘s confession, counsel‘s failure to assert the delay was harmless to appellant‘s cause.
Order affirmed.
NIX, J., did not participate in the consideration or decision of this case.
EAGEN, O‘BRIEN and POMEROY, JJ., concur in the result.
ROBERTS, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
MANDERINO, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
ROBERTS, Justice (dissenting).
Today the Court uses the reasoning of the opinion announcing the judgment of the Court in Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 464 Pa. 117, 346 A.2d 48 (1975),1 [1975] to reject appellant‘s first claim, and then repudiates that reasoning to reject appellant‘s second claim. Because I believe that the law should remain constant at least within the same opinion, I must dissent.
The majority finds that appellant has waived the claim that his confession should have been suppressed as the product of unnecessary delay between arrest and prelimi-
The theory of Mitchell was that defense counsel should have anticipated our decision in Commonwealth v. Futch, 447 Pa. 389, 290 A.2d 417 (1972), and that failure so to anticipate waived the claim.
“Defense counsel should have been aware that our rules of procedure required a prompt arraignment without an unnecessary delay. If it was ascertained that this direction had been ignored and his client prejudiced thereby, the fact that the penalty for such a violation had not been announced fails to provide an excuse for failing to raise the objection.”
Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 464 Pa. 117, 346 A.2d 48 (1975). I cannot agree that a failure to object to a theretofore remediless violation of a procedural rule results in a waiver for all time of all rights under the rule.4 What I consider to be the correct analysis was adopted by the Court in Commonwealth v. Wayman, 454 Pa. 79, 309 A.2d 784 (1973).5 I still do not understand how a
As stated above, the majority finds a waiver of a defendant‘s rights in his counsel‘s failure to raise an objection to the violation of a rule of procedure which was at that time without remedy. If the majority believed its own reasoning, it would be forced to conclude that the failure to raise an objection which counsel, because of his predictive ability, “knows” to be of crucial importance to his client is ineffective assistance of counsel. See Commonwealth ex rel. Washington v. Maroney, 427 Pa. 599, 235 A.2d 349 (1967).
In Washington, we said:
“We cannot emphasize strongly enough, however, that our inquiry ceases and counsel‘s assistance is deemed constitutionally effective once we are able to conclude that the particular course chosen by counsel had some reasonable basis designed to effectuate his client‘s interests. The test is not whether other alternatives were more reasonable, employing a hindsight evaluation of the record.”
427 Pa. 599, 604, 235 A.2d 349, 352 (1967) (emphasis in original).
Although the above result would appear to be compelled by the reasoning in Mitchell, it is not the result the majority reaches here. On the contrary, the majority finds that counsel was not ineffective in failing to raise the Futch claim because such a claim was not likely to succeed.7 The majority relies on counsel‘s ability to predict the Futch result to find that counsel waived the defendant‘s Futch claim, yet find that the claim would not have succeeded, apparently because this Court could not have predicated Futch. This result confounds both logic and law.
This situation could rationally be resolved without torturing logic or reality. Defense counsel cannot be expected to predict the decisions of this Court. As a result, the failure to assert such a remediless claim at the time cannot operate as a waiver of the defendant‘s rights under that claim when a remedy is developed. Nor is the failure to present such a claim ineffective assistance of counsel. Thus, the claim is not waived and is preserved for direct appeal.
I believe that this resolution conforms with both law and reality. It is distressing that the majority finds it
It is ironic that the reasoning used by the majority to find waiver of appellant‘s Futch claim should permit him to raise it on PCHA as the basis for a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.
MANDERINO, Justice (dissenting).
I dissent. The majority opinion attempts to do two things to which I must voice my opposition. In Commonwealth v. Wayman, 454 Pa. 79, 309 A.2d 784 (1973), this Court held that a motion to suppress an accused‘s confession on involuntariness grounds was sufficient to preserve the issue of “unnecessary delay” in arraignment after arrest without a warrant where the length of the period of questioning was a factor to be considered in determining the voluntariness of the confession. The majority opinion attempts to lay Wayman to rest without a proper burial. In his motion to suppress, appellant raised the issue of the voluntariness of his out-of-court statement, and alleged that police threats made during continuous questioning caused his statement to be involuntarily given. He now raises the issue of unnecessary delay prior to arraignment. The issue has thus been properly preserved under Wayman.
Secondly, the majority opinion attempts to establish a new test to answer the allegation of ineffective assistance of trial counsel by saying that if the action—or inaction—complained of would not have required the opposite result at trial, then trial counsel cannot be said to
“counsel‘s assistance is deemed constitutionally effective once we are able to conclude that the particular course chosen by counsel had some reasonable basis designed to effectuate his client‘s interests.” (Emphasis in original.)
Commonwealth ex rel. Washington v. Maroney, 427 Pa. 599, 604, 235 A.2d 349, 352 (1967).
I cannot subscribe to the majority‘s attempt to, sub silentio, overrule that test.