Com. v. Weakland

• Decision Date: 07 March 1989
• Citation: 521 Pa. 353,555 A.2d 1228
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. James WEAKLAND, Appellee.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 1228

555 A.2d 1228

521 Pa. 353

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. James WEAKLAND, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued Oct. 28, 1988.

Decided March 7, 1989.^*

[521 Pa. 355] Stuart Suss, Director of Appeals, for appellant.

Joseph S. Nescio, West Chester, for appellee.

John W. Packel, Jules Epstein, Elaine Demasse, Benjamin Lerner, Philadelphia, for amicus-defender Association of Philadelphia.

Before NIX, C.J., and LARSEN, FLAHERTY, McDERMOTT, ZAPPALA, PAPADAKOS and STOUT, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

FLAHERTY, Justice.

James Weakland, appellee herein, pled guilty or nolo contendere to various crimes arising from the murder of Cecil Rash and the robbery of the gas station owned by Cecil and Florence Rash in Chester County. Specifically Weakland pled guilty to two counts of robbery and one count of criminal conspiracy, and nolo contendere to one count of kidnapping, four counts of aggravated assault, one count of theft, and a general charge of homicide. Following a degree of guilt hearing, conducted on April 11 and 12, 1977, a three judge panel ruled that he was guilty of first degree murder. On November 29, 1977, following denial of post-trial motions, Weakland was sentenced to life imprisonment on the murder conviction. On April 24, 1978, he was sentenced to fifty-three and one-half to one hundred seven years on the remaining charges, consecutive to the life sentence. Superior Court affirmed the judgments of sentence on appeal, and this Court denied a petition for allowance of appeal. Weakland then filed a P.C.H.A. petition, which the trial court denied, but on appeal, Superior Court vacated two of the judgments of sentence, ruling that one assault against Mrs. Rash merged with another, and that another assault against a witness, one Mr. Wilson, merged into the crime of kidnapping, 365 Pa.Super. 648, 526 A.2d 817. (table) Both the Commonwealth and Weakland petitioned for allowance of appeal. We denied Weakland's petition, but granted the Commonwealth's petition in order to address the question of whether Superior Court treated the merger questions properly.

The Commonwealth's first claim is that Superior Court was in error in determining that its review of the validity of Weakland's sentences must be circumscribed by an examination of evidence presented at the guilty plea colloquy, but not at the degree of guilt hearing. Superior Court's reasoning was:

We do not feel it is appropriate to consider these facts [those presented at the degree of guilt hearing] as they were not presented as part of the factual basis for the plea.

Slip Op. at 4, n. 2. The question, thus, is whether facts presented at a degree of guilt hearing, but not at a guilty plea colloquy, may serve as the basis for a conviction.

At the time of this trial, Pa.R.C.P. 352 (rescinded April 2, 1978) provided:

(b) When a defendant charged with murder enters a plea of guilty and the attorney for the Commonwealth does not certify that the case does not rise higher than murder of the second degree, the judge before whom the plea is entered shall hold a hearing to determine whether the case may constitute murder of the first degree. If, after the Commonwealth's presentation of its evidence, the judge is of the opinion that the case does not rise higher than murder of the second degree, the judge shall proceed to hear all the evidence, determine the crime and impose sentence.

(c) If, after presentation of the Commonwealth's evidence, the judge is of the opinion that the case may constitute murder of the first degree, the judge shall secure the assignment of two other judges of like jurisdiction and power to sit with him as a panel to hear the evidence and decide all issues of law and fact. A decision that the offense is murder of the first degree shall be by unanimous vote. If the panel does not find murder of the first degree, the panel shall determine the degree of the crime by majority vote. If the panel determines that the crime is less than murder of the first degree, the judge before whom the plea was entered shall alone determine and impose sentence.

Pursuant to this rule, a degree of guilt hearing was conducted at which evidence of other crimes in addition to murder was admitted. Weakland would have us decide that this other-crimes evidence should not be considered at sentencing.

We are concerned here with a sentencing question, not with the determination of guilt, and in a guilty plea case prior to sentencing, a court always hears, usually at a sentencing hearing, additional evidence which will aid the court in imposing a sentence. If that evidence is properly admitted, if the defendant has the right to participate with counsel in a contested proceeding during which disputed issues of fact are resolved, it matters not whether the evidence is admitted at a hearing during which the plea is accepted, at another hearing at which degree of guilt is determined, or just prior to sentencing at the sentencing hearing. So long as the evidence is properly admitted by the court prior to sentencing, and so long as the defendant has the right to challenge it, it may be considered for sentencing purposes.

Furthermore, defendants who plead guilty are always advised of the nature of the charges and of the sentences which may be imposed. In this case, Weakland was advised that "the Court may if it chooses impose the maximum sentences upon each of the offenses to which you plead guilty or nolo contendere, and may further have those sentences run consecutively, that is, one after another." Knowing this, Weakland chose to plead guilty, and in fact now claims not that the evidence on which his sentencing was based is false or inadmissible, but that it was admitted at one hearing rather than another. We agree with the Commonwealth that Superior Court was in error in failing to consider, for sentencing purposes, evidence that was introduced at the degree of guilt hearing as well as at the guilty plea hearing.

We next must consider whether the evidence introduced at the degree of guilt hearing requires a merger of two of the four assault charges, one into another assault charge and the other into a kidnapping charge.

The facts in this case are that James Weakland, the appellee, and his brother Robert conspired to rob a service station owned by Cecil and Florence Rash. James Weakland entered the repair bay of the station, where Cecil Rash was working on a car, struck him with a wrench, knocking him to the ground, and removed $51.00 from his wallet. He then entered the office of the station, where his brother Robert was holding Mrs. Rash. One of the brothers then tore the telephone from the wall, and Robert assaulted Mrs. Rash. Both brothers took money and other items from the service station, and placed them in their car. The two robbers were approaching their car when Mrs. Rash, who had been thrown to the ground outside the station, got up and shouted to an approaching customer that the station was being robbed and that the customer should leave and call the police. James, who was apparently not far from Mrs. Rash when she warned the customer, started to pick up a cinder block which was used to anchor an air hose. At that point, Mr. Rash, covered with blood, and without his glasses, emerged from the garage, armed with a .22 caliber nine-shot revolver. He ordered James not to hurt his wife, and then fired at him, wounding him in the leg. James fell to the ground and crawled a short distance away. Robert began throwing bottles at the Rashes from behind the Weaklands' car, and Mr. Rash fired at least once at Robert, but to no avail. James also began throwing items at the Rashes, and after he hit Mr. Rash with a trashcan, he rushed him and the two men wrestled for the gun. While the two men wrestled, Mrs. Rash repeatedly struck James on the head with a large tire gauge until it broke, and then turned to wave for help from passing motorists. James finally got the gun from Mr. Rash and fired at Mrs. Rash, striking her in the fingers and arm. He then fired twice at Mr. Rash, striking him in the heart and killing him.

By the time James Weakland shot Mr. Rash, a witness, Edwin Wilson, had pulled his car into the service station, and was standing in front of his car, three or four paces from James, when the shooting occurred. James then rushed the Mr. Wilson, striking him in the head with the gun. The two struggled, and then stopped when James told the witness that he did not want to have to kill him. Mr. Wilson said that he did not want to be killed, but then James struck him again in the face with the gun and forced him into Mr. Wilson's car. Mr. Wilson was then required to push the Weaklands' car with his car to start it and to drive his own car from the station with James as a passenger. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Wilson was forced from the car and James used it to perfect his escape.

The first of the merger questions at issue in this case concern the assault upon Mrs. Rash when James ripped the telephone off the wall and his assault upon her when he shot her. James Weakland was charged with violations of 18 Pa.C.S. § 2702(a)(1), causing or attempting to cause serious bodily injury to another, and § 2702(a)(4), causing or attempting to cause bodily injury with a deadly weapon. Because Superior Court declined to consider evidence presented at the degree of guilt hearing, and the only evidence of assault presented at the guilty plea hearing concerned Weakland's shooting of Mrs. Rash, that court concluded that the two assault charges must merge. As we have discussed earlier, however, Superior Court's decision not to consider evidence presented at the degree of guilt hearing was error. At that hearing Mrs. Rash testified that during the time Robert Weakland was demanding her money and James Weakland was attacking her husband in another part of the station, she responded:

"Let me call my granddaughter" which had just gone to the house,...