Commonwealth v. Leslie
| Decision Date | 14 March 1967 |
| Citation | 424 Pa. 331,227 A.2d 900 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Warren Asher LESLIE, Appellant. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Arnold Sousa, Palmerton, for appellant.
John Deutsch, First Asst. Dist. Atty., George Kerestes, Dist Atty., Jim Thorpe, for appellee.
Before BELL, C.J., and MUSMANNO, JONES, COHEN, EAGEN O'BRIEN and ROBERTS, JJ.
On January 31, 1964, a two story summer cottage, located in Penn Forest Township, Carbon County, burned to the ground. Corporal Komosinsky, of the Pennsylvania State Police, stationed at Hazleton, having been assigned special duty as Assistant Deputy Fire Marshal, Troop N, investigated the fire. (At the time Corporal Komosinsky conducted this investigation, he had held that post of Assistant Deputy Fire Marshal for approximately one year, and had handled a total of 35 to 45 investigations.) On the day of the fire, Corporal Komosinsky was on another investigation and was not able to investigate this fire until the following day, February 1, 1964.
Corporal Komosinsky related that he found a mass rubble of charred remains at the building, and that nothing on the premises indicated that the fire was caused deliberately; however, that 'I couldn't find any way where the building could have gone spontaneously and in my investigation I felt it was other than an accidental fire, and I pursued it further.' His investigation was temporarily halted while Corporal Komosinsky went to Hershey for a one week course of in-service training; however, upon his return, the minor defendant, Leslie, was in prison, and because his description was similar to the description of a person seen near the area of the fire, Corporal Komosinsky went to the prison to interview the minor defendant. After interviewing Leslie, he obtained a statement from him [1] and, after obtaining this statement, again visited the scene of the fire where he thoroughly examined the debris again for any evidence to indicate that the fire had been deliberately caused, and again failed to find any evidence to establish this.
On April 2, 1964, an arson charge was filed against the defendant and a trial was held on January 14th and 15th, 1965. Four witnesses appeared for the Commonwealth: Corporal Komosinsky, Harold Turner, the owner of the premises which had been burned, Martin Schoch, and Captolia Sayuk, the latter two having testified that they saw the defendant going toward the cabin before the fire started; However, only Mr. Schoch claims to have seen him returning at about the time of the fire. [2]
The only direct evidence of the guilt of the defendant, Leslie, was his confession. The Commonwealth, through Corporal Komosinsky, attempted to establish the corpus delicti and have the confession properly authenticated and to get it into the record. On the basis of this confession, and the testimony of the aforementioned witnesses, the court below allowed the case to go to the jury, which found the minor defendant guilty.
On January 19, 1965, the minor defendant filed a motion in arrest of judgment and/or a new trial, raising in issue the questions of whether there was sufficient opinion evidence to establish a corpus delicti; whether the confession was voluntary and therefore properly admitted into evidence; whether he, the defendant, was properly afforded an opportunity to obtain counsel; and if he was advised of his rights to remain silent before he confessed. The lower court refused to grant defendant's motion and sentenced him to a term of 9 to 18 months. Defendant then appealed to the Superior Court, said appeal being heard by six Judges, and they, being equally divided in opinion, affirmed the order of the court below, 207 Pa.Super. 747, 216 A.2d 341. We subsequently granted allocatur.
As we said in Com. v. Nasuti, 385 Pa. 436, 123 A.2d 435 (1956): 'For a conviction in an arson case three facts must be established: (1) that there was a fire; (2) that it was of incendiary origin; (3) that the defendant was the guilty party.' We went on to say that the corpus delicti in an arson case By its very nature, arson is very rarely committed in the presence of others. Ordinarily, it is committed by someone alone and in secret, and the absence of direct evidence is no bar to conviction. State v. Crosby, 182 Kan. 677, 324 P.2d 197, 76 A.L.R.2d 514 (1958). The opportunity for committing arson may be proven by circumstantial evidence, such as testimony that the accused was seen in close proximity to the building in question at the time of the fire, or a short time prior thereto. Com. v. Nasuti, supra.
Com. v. Natusi, supra; See also Pozil v. State, 104 Tex.Cr.R. 244, 283 S.W. 846 (1926). In the instant case, the testimony of the expert, Corporal Komosinsky, reveals that he had only mere suspicion that the fire was caused by other than accidental or natural causes. The issue, then, presented for our decision is whether or not the Commonwealth has established the corpus delicti as we set out in Com. v. Nasuti, supra, that is, that a fire occurred and that it was a fire of incendiary origin.
This does not mean that the Commonwealth is required to primarily and independently establish all elements of the charge, i.e., (1) the occurrence of an injury or loss--in arson, the burning of a building; (2) the criminality of someone as the source of the injury or loss--in an arson case,...
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