Com. ex rel. Hough v. Maroney
| Decision Date | 16 January 1961 |
| Citation | 402 Pa. 371,167 A.2d 303 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania ex rel. Edward J. HOUGH v. James F. MARONEY, Warden, State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Marjorie Hanson Matson, Pittsburgh, for appellant.
Domenick Vitullo, Asst. Dist. Atty., Paul M. Chalfin, First Asst. Dist Atty., Victor H. Blanc, Arlen Specter, William H. Wolf, Jr. Asst. Dist. Attys., Philadelphia, for appellee.
Before CHARLES ALVIN JONES, C. J., and BELL, MUSMANNO BENJAMIN R. JONES, COHEN, BOK, and EAGEN, JJ.
Appellant, by this appeal, challenges the legal correctness of the lower court's action in summarily dismissing his petition for writs of habeas corpus and coram nobis. He is presently under sentence of life imprisonment, after conviction by his own plea of guilty to the charge of murder and the determination by the court that his guilt was that of murder in the first degree.
The crime grew out of an armed robbery in which the appellant and two others, David Almeida and James Smith, actively participated. As they attempted to escape from the scene, an off-duty policeman was shot and killed.
Appellant was apprehended almost immediately and later entered a plea of guilty generally to an indictment charging murder. After a hearing before the court, he was adjudged guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. Upon appeal, the judgment of conviction and sentence was affirmed Commonwealth v. Hough, 1948, 358 Pa. 247, 56 A.2d 84.
Almeida and Smith were apprehended about a year later in another state and returned to Pennsylvania. After trial by jury, the first mentioned was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and the penalty was fixed at death. This Court affirmed: Commonwealth v. Almeida, 1949, 362 Pa. 596, 598, 68 A.2d 595, 12 A.L.R.2d 183. Smith, tried two weeks later, was found guilty by the jury of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. No appeal followed.
Subsequently, Almeida instituted a habeas corpus action in a federal court, alleging for the first time deliberate suppression of material evidence by the Commonwealth. The writ was granted: United States ex rel. Almeida v. Baldi, D.C.E.D.Pa.1951, 104 F.Supp. 321, affirmed 3 Cir., 1951, 195 F.2d 815, 33 A.L.R.2d 1407, certiorari denied 345 U.S. 904, 73 S.Ct. 639, 97 L.Ed. 1341, rehearing denied 345 U.S. 946, 73 S.Ct. 828, 97 L.Ed. 1371. The circuit court of appeals stated that, although the question as to who fired the fatal shot was irrelevant to the issue of whether Almeida was or was not guilty of first degree murder, it was relevant as to the penalty to be imposed by the jury at the trial, and that the suppression of evidence, in so far as it bore on this question, violated due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. Almeida then entered a guilty plea, was adjudged guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. Appellant's death sentence was commuted to that of life imprisonment on February 24, 1955.
The facts incident to the crime may be summarized as follows: On January 30, 1947, the appellant Hough, with Smith and Almeida, entered a public parking garage in the City of Philadelphia, cowed the attendant with loaded revolvers and threats and stole an automobile, the appellant, for his part, having hit the attendant on the side of the head with a revolver. They then drove in the stolen car to an Acme public super-service market. After parking the car at an angle against the curb, Almeida and Hough entered the market. Both drew loaded revolvers and held everyone at bay while they rifled the cash registers and grabbed money from the hand of a one-armed customer. When the manager of the store became excited, yelled 'hold up,' and started to run toward the rear of the store, Almeida fired in his direction, at least one shot which missed and lodged in the ceiling. They ran from the store and jumped into the car, wherein Smith kept vigil at the wheel. There was a crowd of people in the street and Almeida fired a shot into the air as he and Hough ran from the store entrance.
At or about the time the robbers arrived at the supermarket, one Cecil Ingling, employed as a patrolman by the police department of the City of Philadelphia, but on the occasion involved garbed in civilian clothing and off-duty, arrived in his automobile with his family. He also parked his car against the curb in front of the supermarket before alighting to attend to some personal business in the neighborhood. By coincidence, the robbers' car was parked immediately to the left of the Ingling car and in such close proximity thereto that, when the robbers jumped into their car in an effort to...
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