15 A.2d 481 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1940
Argued March 12, 1940. This is an appeal by Richard B. Palms from an order of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Berks County refusing to allow an appeal from the judgment of a justice of the peace, upon a summary conviction for disorderly conduct.
Article V, section 14 of the Constitution of Pennsylvania provides with respect to summary convictions: "In all cases of summary conviction in this Commonwealth, . . . . . . either party may appeal to such court of record as may be prescribed by law,upon allowance of the appellate court or judge thereof upon causeshown." (Italics supplied).
By the Act of April 17, 1876, P.L. 29, the court of quarter sessions1 of the county in which such magistrate resides, or court not of record is held, is prescribed as the court of record to which appeals from summary convictions may be taken, upon allowance of said court, or any judge thereof, upon cause shown.
A statute which attempts to grant an appeal from a summary conviction without allowance by the prescribed court of record upon cause shown violates the provision of the Constitution above quoted and is unconstitutional: Com. v. Luckey,
An appeal from a summary conviction is not a matter of right(Com. v. Eichenberg,
We said in Thompson v. Preston,
It follows that if the matter in dispute was one of fact, as to which the party desiring the appeal had full opportunity to present his side, and he received fair treatment from the magistrate and was not the victim of oppression, bias or corruption at the latter's hands, an appeal should ordinarily not be allowed, unless the losing party in his petition for appeal shows evidence, discovered since the trial, which could not by the use of reasonable diligence have been obtained at the trial, which is not merely corroborative or cumulative, or merely impeaching the credibility of a witness, and is of such a character as would likely result in a different finding if an appeal were granted (Com. v. Mellon,
On the other hand, if a legal question is presented as the point in issue, as to which there is reasonable doubt *434 as to its solution, and especially if a constitutional question is involved, then an appeal should be allowed; for a magistrate, or justice of the peace, is not usually learned in the law and has not had the training or legal education requisite to pass upon doubtful legal and constitutional questions.
On careful consideration, we are of opinion that the present case falls within the latter category and that an appeal should have been allowed by the learned President Judge of the Court of Quarter Sessions; not that we accept or follow the extreme views presented by counsel for appellant, but we feel that a legal controversy which, along related lines, was worthy of the consideration of the Supreme Court of the United States might properly be heard on appeal by the court of quarter sessions.
Article I of the amendments to the Federal Constitution provides: "Freedom of Religion, Speech and Press. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; . . . . . ." The provisions of the 14th Amendment: "Privileges of Citizenship. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," have been extended far beyond the purposes in view at the time of its submission (1866) and adoption (1868) and, in effect, have been held to make the provisions of the first ten amendments, which constitute a sort of Bill of Rights, applicable to the States. (Italics supplied).
Our State Constitution provides, in Article I, Declaration of Rights — section 3. Rights of Conscience. Freedom of Religious Worship — "All men have a natural *435 and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship"; and in section 7 of Article I: "Freedom of the Press. . . . . . The printing press shall be free to every person who may undertake to examine the proceedings of the Legislature or any branch of government, and no law shall ever be made to restrain the right thereof. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of thatliberty." (Italics supplied).
It seems clear to us that what the founders of the Republic — and also the framers of our State Constitution — had chiefly in mind, as respects freedom of religion, was the prohibition of a State or Established Church or Religion, and any interference with the right of freedom of conscience and religious belief — the right to attend or to stay away from places of worship, to support or to refrain from supporting any church or ministry, and to have all religious establishments or modes of worship treated on an equality and without any preference of one over another.
This does not mean that under the shield or protection of alleged religious belief or worship, a sectarian may escape punishment for acts or conduct declared by the legislature to be inimical to the peace, good order and morals of society. A crime is none the less so, nor less odious, because sanctioned by what some particular sect may designate as religion: Davis v. Beason,
If some sectarian should carry his religious belief in the community of property to such an extent as to disregard all distinction between `meum and tuum', and appropriate to his own use his neighbor's property, he would be punishable in our criminal courts; and if some modern hierarchal judge should emulate Jephthah, Judge of Israel, and vow the sacrifice of whatsoever came forth from the doors of his house to meet him in the event of the successful outcome of one of his religious battles, if he carried the vow into effect by a burnt offering of his daughter, and was found sane, he would be punished for his criminal act, and his reliance upon his religious oath would not avail him.
To phrase it another way, while freedom of religious belief is a constitutional right, freedom in the mode of expressing that belief is not a constitutional right. It *437
is subject to the condition that such expression shall not be by way of acts inimical to the peace, good order and morals of society, as determined by the legislature and the courts. SeeMinersville School District v. Gobitis,
This may seem to be a digression but it leads up to the facts in this case.
At 8:30 o'clock in the morning of Sunday, October 29, 1939, a crowd numbering well over one hundred men and women, collected from various surrounding districts, calling themselves Jehovah's Witnesses, came to Kutztown, Berks County, a borough having less than 3000 inhabitants. They had come there on several prior occasions, the last one the evening before — October 28th — and the burgess and chief of police had received complaints of their annoying the people of the borough by their noisy conduct and persistent attempts to enter the homes of citizens of the borough. On this occasion they staged a parade on the sidewalk of the principal street, carrying placards and sandwich boards, bearing the words, "Religion is a Snare and a Racket" and were accompanied by a truck with a sound device and magnifier, which caused an unseemly racket. They rang door-bells, and when denied admittance at the front door, went around to the back and entered there; in some instances, they forced their way into houses and would not leave although requested to do so, and at one home a young woman had to call her father before the intruder would leave. They were trying to sell literature of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and to play phonograph records attacking other religious beliefs. They came around as many as five times to certain homes. When the burgess and chief of police requested this appellant, who seemed to be directing the movement, to stop these practices, he refused and said he would continue to `molest' the people; that he obeyed no law but that of Jehovah. *438
On November 1, complaint was made charging the appellant, Richard B. Palms, and three others with disorderly conduct (Act of June 24, 1939, P.L. 872, sec. 406),2 and following separate hearings before the justice of the peace, as requested by Palms, he was convicted and the others were discharged. He was sentenced to pay a fine of $10, and costs of prosecution, and in default thereof to undergo imprisonment in the Berks County Prison for a period of ten days. He applied by petition to the court of quarter sessions for an appeal, which was refused. This appeal followed.
It will be noted that the defendant did not proceed by way of certiorari to the court of common pleas; hence we are not concerned with alleged errors in the form of the complaint or the transcript of the justice. He chose the remedy by appeal to the court of quarter sessions, which constituted a waiver of formal defects in the proceedings before the justice.
We are of opinion that if it had been proved before the justice of the peace that the appellant had been guilty of the conduct just recited in the foregoing abstract, or that he had directed and ordered the doing of the acts above recited, or if it had appeared, as it did in the case of Com. (Borough of Homestead) v.Hessler,
But the difficulty with this transcript is that it does not show that these highly objectionable and disorderly matters were done or directed by this appellant. The fault may lie with the justice's lack of knowledge of what was essential to be proved for a conviction. Had the appellant gone into the common pleas by certiorari, we would have been obliged to set aside the conviction. As it is, we are of opinion that an appeal should have been allowed.
The order of the court below refusing to allow an appeal is reversed and the record is remitted with directions to allow an appeal and proceed to a hearing.