Com. v. Johnson

• Decision Date: 03 October 1968
• Citation: 246 A.2d 345,431 Pa. 522
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. William John JOHNSON, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 345

246 A.2d 345

431 Pa. 522

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. William John JOHNSON, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Oct. 3, 1968.

Thomas DeWitt, Public Defender, Tunkhannock, for appellant

Roy A. Gardner, Tunkhannock, for appellee.

Before BELL, C.J., and MUSMANNO, JONES, COHEN, EAGEN, O'BRIEN and ROBERTS, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

ROBERTS, Justice.

In 1954 appellant William John Johnson went to trial before a judge and jury on an indictment charging him with murder in the first degree. Near the close of the Commonwealth's case, the prosecution introduced into evidence two confessions whose existence was unknown to both of appellant's counsel until that very moment. Defense counsel thereupon requested a recess, conferred with their client briefly in the court ante-room, then returned to announce that the plea would be changed to guilty. Subsequently, appellant was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and sentenced to life imprisonment. No direct appeal was taken.

Once in prison, Johnson began flooding the Court of Oyer and Terminer of Wyoming County with hand drawn habeas corpus petitions. He filed a total of eight, all of which were dismissed without hearing. Finally, in 1965 appellant filed his ninth pro se petition. This one went undecided for over a year, before it was finally dismissed; in its stead was substituted a petition under the Post Conviction Hearing Act. Counsel was appointed, and an evidentiary hearing held. Appellant contended that his guilty plea was motivated by an involuntary confession, and that the plea itself was not knowingly and intelligently entered. Relief was denied and appellant appealed to this Court.

Apparently not content to await the outcome of his appeal, while it was pending before us Johnson inundated the lower court with four more habeas petitions all of which were dismissed without hearing. When the fourth one was dismissed, however, appellant requested counsel (the same one who filed his previous appeal to this Court) and instructed him to prosecute a second appeal. This was done, resulting in appellant having two cases before us at the same time. Accordingly, counsel petitioned this Court to have Johnson's first appeal continued, alleging that the second one, involving solely an alleged violation of appellate rights under Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963), required our immediate attention. When the Commonwealth did not oppose this request, a continuance was granted.

Subsequently, however, the Commonwealth petitioned to have the continuance vacated and the two appeals consolidated. This petition was opposed by appellant who continued to insist that the Douglas claim should be heard first. On February 22, 1968, this Court, believing that no prejudice would attend the consolidation, granted the Commonwealth's motion. Accordingly, both of Johnson's appeals are before us at this time. We shall discuss them in chronological order.

At the evidentiary hearing on the first of Johnson's two petitions under the Post Conviction Hearing Act, appellant testified that the confessions obtained by the police resulted from a combination of drugged food and appellant's own mental condition. The court below quite permissibly rejected Johnson's tale of drugged hamburgers and coffee, especially given the testimony of one of the original interrogating officers, who stated at the collateral hearing that he had purchased all the food consumed during the interrogation session, that he observed it being prepared, and that no drugs were placed in any of the hamburgers or cups of coffee. In fact, the officer testified that he himself was going to eat the food which appellant eventually ate, but that Johnson took it when the officer briefly left the room.

Appellant also contended that his own mental condition rendered his uncounseled confession inadmissible. There is no doubt that Johnson has had a long history of mental examinations. However, until 1966 none of these revealed any substantial evidence of mental disease or retardation. ¹ Appellant's argument rests largely upon the following statement made by the trial judge at the time of sentencing: 'It must be plain to the counsel and to the jury and to those who are here in attendance that this defendant was as plastic as a child in the hands of those who obtained these confessions. He, apparently to me has no conception of the danger which has been hanging over him during the past few days. He seems to me to be in that state of mind that he can be of little help to counsel in his defense. This man is not legally insane, but in our judgment he is a mental case of low, confused mind.' (Trial Record at 277.)

In Commonwealth ex rel. Hilberry v. Maroney, 417 Pa. 534, 207 A.2d 794 (1965) we were faced with a similar statement by the trial judge. Although we indicated that this statement, together with the reports of four examining physicians, could be enough to vitiate a guilty plea, Hilberry in no way controls this case. Hilberry's marginal mental condition was verified by four different medical doctors, all of whom placed the defendant's mental age between 8 and 12 years. One of the four, the only psychiatrist in the group, even reported that Hilberry was unable to tell right from wrong. ² By contrast, the present appellant was the subject of a sanity commission report dated only a month before his trial. It was the unanimous opinion of this commission, composed of two doctors and a lawyer, that Johnson was sane, responsible for his own behavior, and of average intelligence. ³ When it is considered that this report was Accepted by the same judge who made the quoted statement, supra, we find little reason to accord much weight to this statement. Finally, we note that the remarks of the trial judge were made primarily to justify his 'merciful' life sentence in the face of an atrocious crime (victim was a 94 year old woman who was strangled during an apparent robbery attempt) which was the subject of great public attention in the small community where it occurred.

Absent proof that appellant's confessions were the product of either drugs or mental deficiency, there is nothing left to support an involuntariness claim. Johnson was interrogated only twice, for periods of twenty minutes and fifty-three minutes respectively, no threats were made, no violence was used, and the confession had been reduced to writing less than two hours after appellant arrived at the police station. These facts do not even approach coercion, let alone the Degree of coercion needed to render a confession involuntary. Compare Commonwealth ex rel. Butler v. Rundle, 429 Pa. 141, 239 A.2d 426 (1968) with Commonwealth ex rel. Joyner v. Brierley, 429 Pa. 156, 239 A.2d 434 (1968). See also Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 602, 81 S.Ct. 1860, 1879, 6 L.Ed.2d 1037 (1961); Commonwealth v. Baity, 428 Pa. 306, 237 A.2d 172 (1968) and cases discussed therein.

Merely deciding that appellant's confessions were voluntary does not, however, dispose of his guilty plea contention; for in addition to arguing that the plea was primarily motivated by inadmissible confessions, Johnson also takes issue with the voluntariness of the plea itself. According to appellant, the conference in the ante-room lasted only a few minutes. Both counsel expressed the strong view that unless appellant changed his plea, he would receive the death sentence. Although Johnson admits that the thought of a death penalty frightened him, he steadfastly maintains that he never consented to the entry of a plea. When he was asked at the hearing below why he did not object when counsel formally entered the plea for him, appellant testified that because he misunderstood the nature of a guilty plea, he mistakenly believed that his lawyers had the right to enter the plea even against his will in light of the confessions, and further that the plea could result in a conviction of only murder in the second degree.

Although appellant's testimony, if believed, would certainly entitle him to relief, the court below stated in its opinion that Johnson's story was not acceptable. Given the fact that the burden of proof is on appellant to show that his guilty plea was improper, Commonwealth v. Grays, 428 Pa. 109, 237 A.2d 198 (1968); Commonwealth v. Hill, 427 Pa. 614, 235 A.2d 347 (1967), relief could be denied even if the only testimony introduced at the hearing came from petitioner, and even if that testimony bespake the most grievous of errors. ⁴ Quite simply, collateral relief in a case such as this requires either that the petitioner's testimony be believed, or that it be corroborated by some other source which is accepted as truthful.

Moreover, in the present case we need not rely solely on the decision of the hearing judge to disbelieve appellant's version of the plea, since the record also contains several damaging admissions by Johnson during cross-examination, as well as the testimony of one of appellant's trial counsel. Although appellant testified on direct examination that he did not comprehend the meaning or nature of a guilty plea, he admitted on cross-examination that he had previously pled guilty in 1940 to crimes of larceny and burglary. Johnson confessed that in 1940 he Did understand the plea of guilty to mean that the pleader was telling the court that he had in fact committed the crime charged. Furthermore, Johnson told of having had past experiences in pleading not guilty. (Post Conviction Hearing Record at 266--69.) We find it difficult to believe, just as the court below found it difficult, that appellant could know so much about guilty pleas in 1940, yet forget it all 14 years later, especially given the fact that 12 of those 14 years were spent in custody, where talk of legal phrases and concepts so permeates the atmosphere.

Trial counsel also testified below. As he recalled appellant's trial, after the initial shock of...