Commonwealth v. Haggerty
| Decision Date | 08 October 1981 |
| Citation | 435 A.2d 174,495 Pa. 612 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. Larry E. HAGGERTY. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Argued Sept. 14, 1981.
F. Walter Bloom, Dist. Atty., William G. Martin Jr., Asst. Dist. Atty., Franklin, for appellant.
John J. Morgan, Butler, for appellee.
Before O'BRIEN, C. J., and ROBERTS, NIX, LARSEN, FLAHERTY KAUFFMAN and WILKINSON, JJ.
Appellee Larry E. Haggerty was charged with burglary and arson. A first trial ended in a mistrial on January 24, 1978. Subsequently, appellee was convicted by a jury of burglary. Post-verdict motions were denied and appellee was sentenced to a prison term of seven and one-half to fifteen years.
On appeal the Superior Court reversed, holding that appellee's confession should not have been admitted into evidence because appellee had not been arraigned within six hours of his arrest as required by Commonwealth v Davenport, 471 Pa. 278, 370 A.2d 301 (1977). Commonwealth v. Haggerty, --- Pa.Super. ---, 422 A.2d 1336 (1980). We granted the Commonwealth's petition for allowance of appeal and this appeal followed.
The instant appeal involves only the factual determination of when appellee was arrested. The facts are as follows. Following a fire at Franklin High School, appellee was questioned by police at his home for approximately fifteen minutes on October 5, 1977. Appellee denied any knowledge of or involvement in the incident. Five days later, on October 20 1977, two plainclothes policemen went to appellee's house at 11:00 a. m. Appellee's wife woke him and the police asked appellee if he would come to the State Police barracks to discuss his earlier statement concerning the fire. Appellee agreed. Upon arrival at the barracks, appellee waived his Miranda rights. He was questioned for ninety minutes but he denied any involvement in the incident. Appellee then agreed to take a polygraph examination. Since the polygraph examiner was administering a test to another individual, appellee and a police officer remained in the investigator's room.
The polygraph test began at 2:30 p. m. About an hour later, the polygraph examiner informed one of the original interviewing officers that appellee had admitted his involvement in the fire. Appellee was arraigned at 5:55 p. m.
Appellee claims that he was arrested at 11:00 a. m., thus making his arraignment almost seven hours after arrest and outside the six hour period mandated by Commonwealth v. Davenport, supra. The Commonwealth, on the other hand, argues that appellee was not arrested until immediately after his initial admission of involvement at some time between 2:30 p. m. and 3:30 p. m.
In Commonwealth v. Bosurgi, 411 Pa. 56, 68, 190 A.2d 304, (1963), we stated:
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