Commonwealth v. Abrams

• Citation: 443 Pa. 295,278 A.2d 902
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Thomas E. ABRAMS, Appellant.
• Decision Date: 28 June 1971
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

278 A.2d 902

443 Pa. 295

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania
v.
Thomas E. ABRAMS, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

June 28, 1971.

[278 A.2d 903]

[443 Pa. 296] Dennis E. Haggerty, Hyman Lovitz, Briscoe & Haggerty, Philadelphia, for appellant.

Arlen Specter, Dist. Atty., James D. Crawford, Deputy Dist. Atty., Philadelphia, Michael Mather, Asst. Dist. Atty., Richard A. Sprague, First Asst. Dist. Atty., Philadelphia, for appellee.

Before BELL, C.J. and COHEN, EAGEN, O'BRIEN, ROBERTS and POMEROY, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

POMEROY, Justice.

This is an appeal from judgment of sentence following a jury verdict finding Thomas Abrams guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the death of one George Welhof. Briefly stated, the facts are as follows.

During the early morning hours of August 3, 1967, appellant Abrams called the police to the ramshackle residence of Welhof, a seventy year old derelict. Abrams met the police and directed them to the third floor of the building where the police found Welhof, filthy, disheveled and unconscious. With Abrams at the time was one Dorothy Lorimer, the second floor tenant of the dwelling, whom Abrams had [278 A.2d 904] been visiting. The [443 Pa. 297] police wagon crew treated the case as an ordinary hospital case, interviewing Abrams and Mrs. Lorimer briefly before taking Welhof to the hospital. Welhof was pronounced dead shortly after arrival at the hospital.

A post-mortem examination revealed that Welhof had died as a result of multiple injuries to his head, neck and thorax. Upon determining that a homicide had been committed and receiving a statement from Mrs. Lorimer that tended to implicate Abrams, the police took Abrams into custody for questioning at 8:20 A.M. on the following day, August 4, 1967. Upon his arrival at police headquarters Abrams was given something to eat. At approximately 11:30 A.M., the warnings prescribed by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) were read to Abrams, and he was interviewed for the first time. After approximately two hours of oral questioning, Abrams gave an oral exculpatory statement; the burden of that statement was that he had been visiting Mrs. Lorimer in her apartment on the evening in question; that they heard a moan from Welhof's apartment on the third floor; and that upon investigation, they found Welhof, bloody and unconscious, and summoned the police.

After he had given this statement, Abrams requested and was given permission to telephone a lawyer whom he ahd retained on a prior occasion. ^[1] Following this telephone conversation, Abrams rested for a period of [443 Pa. 298] time and at approximately 3:30 P.M. asked to take a lie detector test. The test was given, and following its conclusion, Abrams was questioned for a second time beginning at 7:30 P.M. The Miranda warnings were not repeated immediately prior to this...