Com. v. Tumolo

• Decision Date: 25 March 1974
• Citation: 455 Pa. 424,317 A.2d 295
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Alfred TUMOLO, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 295

317 A.2d 295

455 Pa. 424

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Alfred TUMOLO, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

March 25, 1974.

Barry H. Denker, Labron K. Shuman, Philadelphia, for appellant

Arlen Specter, Dist. Atty., Richard A. Sprague, First. Asst. Dist. Atty., Milton M. Stein, Asst. Dist. Atty., Chief, Appeals Div., David Richman, Asst. Dist. Atty., Chief, Appeals Div., Philadelphia, for appellee.

Before JONES, C.J., and EAGEN, O'BRIEN, ROBERTS, POMEROY, NIX and MANDERINO, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

O'BRIEN, Justice.

Appellant, Alfred Tumolo, was indicted in Philadelphia County for conspiracy, forgery, cheating by false pretenses and fraudulent conversion, all of which grew out of certain fraudulent automobile liability insurance claims made by appellant and his co-conspirators. A motion to quash these indictments was sustained by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. The Commonwealth appealed to the Superior Court, which reversed the order of the Court of Common Pleas, in an opinion by Judge Packel, with a dissenting opinion filed by Judge Spaulding in which Judges Jacobs and Hoffman joined. We granted allocatur to examine appellant's contention that the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County was without jurisdiction over appellant to try him for the offenses contained in the bills of indictment.

The facts surrounding this appeal are as follows: On November 25, 1969, an agent for State Farm Insurance Company, with his office in Delaware County, issued an insurance policy covering a vehicle owned by appellant, who was a Delaware County resident. On December 17, 1969, appellant notified his agent that he had been involved in an accident in Delaware County with two other vehicles owned by Philadelphia County residents. Appellant stated that he was at fault in the accident and after the alleged claimants' vehicles were inspected in Delaware County, State Farm Insurance Company issued payment checks to the alleged claimants. The record does not indicate whether the checks had been delivered to the claimants, or their agents, or had been mailed to the claimants in Philadelphia. Later, a person identifying himself as appellant, reported to State Farm that he was involved in a second accident on January 20, 1970, which was alleged to have occurred on the Schuykill Expressway in Philadelphia County. The owners of the other vehicles in this 'accident' were again listed as Philadelphia residents, to whom checks were issued after the other vehicles had been inspected at a Philadelphia garage. Again, there was no evidence whether the checks had been delivered to claimants or their agents in Delaware County or had been mailed to Philadelphia County. When appellant was later asked about these alleged accidents, he stated that he remembered them. However, police officers in the two counties involved testified that they had no record that either 'accident' had occurred.

For a county to take jurisdiction over a criminal case, some overt act involved in that crime must have occurred within that county. As we explained in Commonwealth v. Thomas, 410 Pa. 160, 164, 189 A.2d 255, 258 (1963):

'It is well settled that within the Commonwealth '. . . prosecution for criminal conspiracy may be brought in the county where the unlawful combination or confederacy was formed, or in...