Com. v. Snyder
| Decision Date | 19 May 1998 |
| Citation | 713 A.2d 596,552 Pa. 44 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Keith E. SNYDER, Appellant. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Before FLAHERTY, C.J., and ZAPPALA, CAPPY, CASTILLE, NIGRO, NEWMAN and SAYLOR, JJ.
Keith E. Snyder (Appellant) appeals from the Order of the Superior Court that affirmed the Judgment of Sentence of the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County (trial court) following his conviction for two counts of murder in the first degree.
The Commonwealth filed a criminal complaint charging the Appellant with two counts of murder eleven years and two months subsequent to the date of the alleged crimes and seven years after the conclusion of its investigation. Based on the limited record before us, it appears the only reason the Commonwealth arrested the Appellant was because the policies of the Luzerne County District Attorney's Office changed when a newly elected district attorney took office. This Court granted the Appellant's Petition for Allowance of Appeal to decide whether the extraordinary pre-arrest delay denied the Appellant due process of law. We reverse the Superior Court's Order and remand this case to the trial court.
On July 2, 1982, Appellant's wife and six-week-old son died in a fire inside their home in Wright Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. The Appellant was scheduled to work from 1:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. on the day of the fire. Earlier that day, a neighbor saw the Appellant leave the house between 12:15 and 12:20 p.m. Later, two young boys, ages nine and twelve, were playing in a neighbor's yard when they saw the Snyder house was on fire and ran to the house. Unable to enter the house because the front door was locked, they told a neighbor who notified the fire department at 1:31 p.m. Fire fighters arrived within approximately four minutes and found the Appellant's wife and child in the master bedroom, both dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Autopsy tests revealed barbiturates and alcohol in Mrs. Snyder's blood, with a blood alcohol content of .046%. The Commonwealth's expert witness opined that the fire was incendiary in nature, and that it was deprived of oxygen, which caused it to smolder for approximately one hour, filling the house with smoke.
Immediately after this incident, the Wright Township Police Department, Pennsylvania State Police, and the Luzerne County District Attorney's Office commenced an investigation, which did not yield any arrests after two years. In 1984, the Luzerne County District Attorney empaneled a special investigating grand jury to probe the deaths of Mrs. Snyder and her child. The grand jury investigation continued until some time in 1986, when it ended without returning any indictments.
The Appellant continued to live and work in Luzerne County, and the investigation remained dormant throughout the administrations of several District Attorneys. No new or additional evidence became known after the grand jury concluded its investigation in 1986. During 1993, the newly elected District Attorney of Luzerne County, Peter Paul Olszewski, Jr., reopened the case. The Commonwealth filed a criminal complaint charging the Appellant with two counts of murder on September 8, 1993.
A pretrial Motion to Dismiss the charges was filed in the trial court by the Appellant due to pre-arrest delay. He claimed that the passing of more than eleven years violated his due process rights pursuant to the Constitutions of the United States and Pennsylvania. The Appellant claimed that evidence rendered unavailable to him due to the passing of time was exculpatory and substantially prejudiced him in presenting his defense that his wife committed suicide. The Honorable Joseph M. Augello held evidentiary hearings at which the Appellant introduced evidence establishing that certain witnesses close to the decedent were dead or otherwise unavailable, and that other witnesses could not remember many facts because their memories had dimmed. The Appellant argued that these unavailable witnesses would have testified that Mrs. Snyder was severely depressed after the birth of her son and that their testimony would have proven that she committed suicide.
Specifically, Appellant presented the testimony of Matthew Berger, M.D., a psychiatrist with some experience in performing psychiatric autopsies. 1 He explained that a Other witnesses presented by the defense testified that with the passing of so much time rendered certain defense evidence unavailable at trial because people had died or could no longer remember relevant facts. The Appellant contends that these witnesses would have testified that Mrs. Snyder was severely depressed after the birth of her son. Specifically, Monsignor Nolan, who was the Snyders' family friend and parish priest, died before the Appellant's arrest. Monsignor Nolan had many contacts with Mrs. Snyder before her death because he was working with her to prepare for the baby's baptism, which was scheduled for the day after the fire. According to Margaret Krupa, who drove the Monsignor to the Snyder home to administer the last rites, the Monsignor told her that after seeing the bodies in the house, he believed that Mrs. Snyder committed suicide. Because Monsignor Nolan died before the Commonwealth filed these charges, the Appellant could not present evidence concerning the basis for the Monsignor's opinion that Mrs. Snyder committed suicide.
psychiatric autopsy is an assessment of the decedent's mental state immediately before death, and that the lapse of more than eleven years prevented him from performing a psychiatric autopsy to ascertain Diane Snyder's mental condition at the time of her death. Dr. Berger testified that because of the passage of time, he could not discover from close friends and family members who knew Mrs. Snyder pertinent facts to enable him to determine whether she suffered from psychiatric problems including post partum depression.
The Appellant's father, George Snyder, was also deceased at the time of the trial. The Appellant's brother said that Mrs. Snyder's co-workers told George Snyder that she said goodbye to her co-workers the day before the fire. Appellant's brother also testified that Monsignor Nolan told the Appellant's father that he believed that Mrs. Snyder had committed suicide. Emil Howrath, Diane Snyder's father, also died before the trial. Amy Kochanski, a family friend, testified that the day after his daughter's death, Mr. Howrath told her that he had wished that his daughter did not watch "Midnight Offerings," a television movie, immediately before the fire. 2
Mrs. Snyder's obstetrician, Walter Horan, M.D., was also unavailable to testify at trial. Dr. Horan's wife explained that he suffered from severe Alzheimer's disease that resulted in his inability to understand or answer questions. Mrs. Snyder's medical records reflect that she lost the weight from her pregnancy very quickly. 3
The Commonwealth did not offer any evidence or present any witnesses at the pre-trial hearing. At the conclusion of the evidentiary Following trial, a jury convicted Appellant of arson and two counts of first-degree murder. The jury returned sentences of life imprisonment for each charge of first degree murder, and the trial court sentenced the Appellant to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment, with a concurrent five year prison term for the arson conviction. The Superior Court affirmed the judgment of sentence on September 13, 1995, in a Memorandum Opinion.
hearing, Judge Augello denied the Appellant's motion to dismiss the charges based on pre-arrest delay. The Honorable Hugh F. Mundy was assigned the trial. Judge Mundy also entertained oral argument on the issue of pre-arrest delay, and he agreed that the Appellant was not entitled to a dismissal of the charges. In his Opinion, Judge Mundy held that the passing of time did not cause the Appellant substantial prejudice. Although he acknowledged that some witnesses had died, and the memories of others had faded, Judge Mundy held that the evidence Appellant sought to present "was either not exculpatory, or was capable of being presented through other witnesses." Trial Court Opinion, p. 7. Judge Mundy concluded that because the Appellant did not sustain his burden of proving substantial prejudice, "there was neither reason nor requirement to determine whether the investigatory delay was intentional or proper." 4 Trial Court Opinion, p. 9
This Court granted the Appellant's Petition for Allowance of Appeal to decide whether pre-arrest delay of more than eleven years denied him due process of law. 5 Because the trial court erred when it held that there was no requirement to consider the Commonwealth's reasons for postponing the filing of charges, we reverse the Order of the Superior Court and remand this case to the trial court.
In Pennsylvania, there is no statute of limitations that applies to murder prosecutions. 42 Pa.C.S. § 5551. Our appellate courts have affirmed convictions in numerous cases in which defendants were arrested and convicted of homicide charges many years after the commission of a crime due to lengthy investigations and/or recently discovered evidence. See Commonwealth v. Clayton, 516 Pa. 263, 532 A.2d 385 (1987) (four years); Commonwealth v. Sneed, 514 Pa. 597, 526 A.2d 749 (1987) (); Commonwealth v. Colson, 507 Pa. 440, 490 A.2d 811 (1985), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1140, 106 S.Ct. 2245, 90 L.Ed.2d 692 (1986) (); Commonwealth v. Daniels, 480 Pa. 340, 390 A.2d 172 (1978) (); Commonwealth v. Crawford, 468 Pa. 565, 364 A.2d 660 (1976) (almost four years); Commonwealth v. Rico, 443 Pa.Super. 507, 662 A.2d 1076 (1...
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