Com. v. Starr

• Decision Date: 29 August 1995
• Citation: 664 A.2d 1326,541 Pa. 564
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Gary Lee STARR, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 1326

664 A.2d 1326

541 Pa. 564

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Gary Lee STARR, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued March 7, 1994.

Decided Aug. 29, 1995.

Samuel M. Pontier, Lester G. Nauhaus, Public Defender, Shelley Stark, Chief-Appellate Division, for appellant.

Robert E. Colville, District Attorney, Claire C. Capristo, Deputy District Attorney, Kemal A. Mericli, Assistant District Attorney, James R. Gilmore, Robert A. Graci, Deputy Attorney General, (For Attorney General).

Before NIX, C.J., FLAHERTY, ZAPPALA, PAPADAKOS, CAPPY, CASTILLE and MONTEMURO, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

CASTILLE, Justice.

This is an automatic direct appeal to the Supreme Court from the judgment of sentence of death imposed upon appellant, ¹ Gary Lee Starr, by the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, Criminal Division. For the reasons set forth below, we vacate the trial court's judgment of sentence and remand the matter to the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas for a new trial.

Before appellant's trial in this matter, Dr. Robert Wettstein of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic conducted three psychiatric interviews with appellant and interviews with his family and friends. After a battery of neuropsychological and neurolaboratory testing, Dr. Wettstein determined that appellant was mentally competent to stand trial. Later, motions were filed with the Honorable Robert E. Dauer of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas in which appellant waived his right to the assistance of counsel at trial and asserted his right to represent himself at trial. Following a hearing and a thoroughly probing colloquy, the trial court permitted appellant to proceed pro se and the Allegheny County Public Defender's Office was directed to act as standby counsel.

Later, the case was transferred to the Honorable Jeffrey A. Manning, also of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, and further pre-trial motions were filed. Following a hearing, each motion was denied. However, in addition to denying these motions, Judge Manning revoked Judge Dauer's earlier order granting appellant the right to self-representation and the court then ordered the Public Defender's Office to assume control of appellant's defense at trial and at sentencing. Defense counsel then moved for a continuance, which the court denied. In accordance with the second trial court's order, the Public Defender's Office proceeded with representation of appellant at trial.

Following a two-day trial before Judge Manning, the jury found appellant guilty of first-degree murder. ² The trial court conducted a brief death penalty hearing on August 23, 1988, after which the jury found two mitigating circumstances ³ and one aggravating circumstance. ⁴ After weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the jury set the penalty at death. On September 27, 1988, the second trial court formally imposed the death penalty. On October 17, 1991, the trial court denied all outstanding post-trial motions and post-sentencing motions. A timely notice of appeal was filed with this Court with subsequent amended notices of appeal and this Court heard oral argument on March 7, 1994.

The sole issue for our consideration is whether the second trial court erred when it revoked appellant's right to represent himself by rescinding the first trial court's June 22, 1988, ruling accepting appellant's waiver of counsel. ⁵ At the outset, this Court has long recognized that judges of coordinate jurisdiction sitting in the same case should not overrule each others' decisions. See, e.g., Okkerse v. Howe, 521 Pa. 509, 516-517, 556 A.2d 827, 831 (1989). This rule, known as the "coordinate jurisdiction rule," is a rule of sound jurisprudence based on a policy of fostering the finality of pre-trial applications in an effort to maintain judicial economy and efficiency. Id. See also Golden v. Dion & Rosenau, 410 Pa.Super. 506, 510, 600 A.2d 568, 570 (1991) (once a matter has been decided by a trial judge the decision should remain undisturbed, unless the order is appealable and an appeal therefrom is successfully prosecuted).

In our view, this coordinate jurisdiction rule falls squarely within the ambit of a generalized expression of the "law of the case" doctrine. This doctrine refers to a family of rules which embody the concept that a court involved in the later phases of a litigated matter should not reopen questions decided by another judge of that same court or by a higher court in the earlier phases of the matter. See 21 C.J.S. Courts § 149a; 5 Am.Jur.2d Appeal and Error § 744. Among the related but distinct rules which make up the law of the case doctrine are that: (1) upon remand for further proceedings, a trial court may not alter the resolution of a legal question previously decided by the appellate court in the matter; (2) upon a second appeal, an appellate court may not alter the resolution of a legal question previously decided by the same appellate court; and (3) upon transfer of a matter between trial judges of coordinate jurisdiction, the transferee trial court may not alter the resolution of a legal question previously decided by the transferor trial court. See Joan Steinman, Law of the Case: A Judicial Puzzle in Consolidated and Transferred Cases and in Multidistrict Litigation, 135 U.Pa.L.Rev. 595, 602 (1987) (citing A. Vestal, Law of the Case: Single-Suit Preclusion, 12 Utah L.Rev. 1, 1-4 (1967)) (hereinafter "Judicial Puzzle ").

The various rules which make up the law of the case doctrine serve not only to promote the goal of judicial economy (as does the coordinate jurisdiction rule) but also operate (1) to protect the settled expectations of the parties; (2) to insure uniformity of decisions; (3) to maintain consistency during the course of a single case; (4) to effectuate the proper and streamlined administration of justice; and (5) to bring litigation to an end. 21 C.J.S. Courts § 149a; Judicial Puzzle at 604-605. In our view, these considerations should have weighed heavily on the second trial court's reconsideration of the first trial court's order which granted appellant's right to represent himself. The various policies which motivated the development of these rules and which continue to motivate the enduring existence of both the coordinate jurisdiction rule and the law of the case doctrine are of paramount importance in the context of a criminal proceeding where the criminal defendant and his counsel must be allowed to proceed to trial with an established trial strategy and with the security of knowing, for example, that he either will or will not be permitted to represent himself or that his pre-trial statements either will or will not be introduced against him at trial. In this regard, these rules seek to ensure fundamental fairness in the justice system by preventing a party aggrieved by one judge's interlocutory order to attack that decision by seeking and securing relief from a different judge of the same court, thereby forcing one's opponent to shift the focus of his trial strategy in the matter. See Commonwealth v. Washington, 428 Pa. 131, 133 n. 2, 236 A.2d 772, 773 n. 2 (1968) (citation omitted) (a trial judge cannot reverse on the same record at trial the decision made after the pretrial suppression hearing that defendant's statement need not be suppressed). See also Golden, supra, at 506, 600 A.2d 568, 410 Pa.Super. at 511, 600 A.2d at 570 (once an interlocutory pretrial decision has been rendered, the party in whose favor that decision was rendered must be allowed to rely on it and proceed in accordance with it). Accordingly, our consideration of the second trial court's order within the context of the law of the case doctrine and the coordinate jurisdiction rule weighs heavily against a finding that the second trial court properly rescinded the first trial court's order permitting appellant's pro se representation. See Lipchik v. Erie County, 126 Pa.Commw. 347, 351, 559 A.2d 988, 990 (1989) (trial judge's denial of continuance which was ordered by previous judge constituted reversible error).

Further, the limitations on the law of the case doctrine and on the coordinate jurisdiction rule are virtually identical, thereby again suggesting that the Pennsylvania coordinate jurisdiction rule may be properly considered as part of the family of rules making up the law of the case doctrine. Departure from either of these principles is allowed only in exceptional circumstances such as where there has been an intervening change in the controlling law, a substantial change in the facts or evidence giving rise to the dispute in the matter, or where the prior holding was clearly erroneous and would create a manifest injustice if followed. Compare Musumeci v. Penn's Landing Corporation, 433 Pa.Super. 146, 151-152, 640 A.2d 416, 419 (1994), appeal denied, 539 Pa. 653, 651 A.2d 540 (1994) (the coordinate jurisdiction rule applies in all cases except where newly-discovered evidence or newly-developed legal authority compel a result different than that reached by the first judge) and Commonwealth v. Brown, 485 Pa. 368, 371, 402 A.2d 1007, 1008 (1979) (where the evidence is substantially the same as that originally ruled upon by the first judge, a second judge commits a per se abuse of discretion in overruling or vacating the prior order) (citations omitted) with 21 C.J.S. Courts § 149b (same).

However, notwithstanding the numerous similarities between the law of the case doctrine and the coordinate jurisdiction rule, the traditional application of the law of the case doctrine in Pennsylvania jurisprudence has been limited to only those cases in which an appellate court has considered and decided a question submitted to it upon appeal (see, e.g., Brown's Estate, 408 Pa. 214, 230, 183 A.2d 307, 315 (1962) and Reamer's Estate, 331 Pa. 117, 122, 200 A. 35, 37 (1938)). The law of the case doctrine was not fully and definitively...