Com. v. Singh
| Decision Date | 13 December 1990 |
| Citation | 582 A.2d 1312,525 Pa. 552 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Girlie SINGH, Appellant. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
On Appeal No. 9 E.D. Appeal Dkt. 1989, from Judgment of Sentence of Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County, 372 Pa.Super. 512, 539 A.2d 1314 (1988), Criminal No. 1255-85, wherein Appellant was Convicted of Voluntary Manslaughter and Possession of Instrument of Crime and Sentenced on February 9, 1987 by the Honorable Rita E. Prescott, Common Pleas Court Judge and where Superior Court affirmed on February 26, 1988 and further denied reargument on April 26, 1988; Rita E. Prescott, Judge.
A. Charles Peruto, Sr., Burton A. Rose, Philadelphia, for appellant.
William H. Ryan, Jr., Dist. Atty., Anne Osborne, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.
Appeal dismissed as having been improvidently granted.
LARSEN, J., did not participate in the consideration or decision of this case.
I must dissent from the decision of this Court to dismiss this matter as improvidently granted. Appellant Girlie Singh was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and possession of an instrument of crime following the shooting death of her husband, Frankie Singh. Throughout the trial of the case, the Appellant had maintained that the killing was done in self-defense after the deceased threatened to harm her with a knife.
We granted allocatur to address the Appellant's contention that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to request an instruction to the jury advising that prior acts of spousal violence could be considered by the jury in support of her claim of self-defense. The Superior Court had rejected the Appellant's ineffectiveness claim on the basis that she was permitted to present evidence regarding the husband's history of alcohol abuse and prior acts of violence against her. Indeed, a portion of this evidence involved testimony of two of the children of the Appellant and deceased that gave an accounting of a turbulent and violent relationship between their parents which escalated during the last year of marriage to weekly episodes of physical abuse by the husband.
The Superior Court addressed the relationship as follows:
Likewise the appellant's recitation of her marriage depicted a woman locked into a verbally and physically offensive relationship which heightened in intensity when the victim became intoxicated and this occurred every day during the last year of marriage and culminated in the appellant retrieving a gun to protect herself. We read the appellant's marriage to be one held together out of fear of reprisal from the victim if she left, the need to have financial assistance in raising...
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