Commonwealth v. Stewart
| Citation | 425 A.2d 346,493 Pa. 24 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Walter Lee Jefferson STEWART, Appellant. |
| Decision Date | 30 January 1981 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania |
Submitted Oct. 20, 1980.
Thomas G. Klingensmith, Asst. Public Defender Lancaster County, for appellant.
Joseph C. Madenspacher, Asst. Dist. Atty., Lancaster County, for appellee.
Before O'BRIEN, C. J., and ROBERTS, NIX, LARSEN, FLAHERTY and KAUFFMAN, JJ.
At approximately 9:20 p. m. April 25, 1974, appellant Walter Stewart was stopped and frisked by two police officers on a public street in Lancaster. After finding a pistol on appellant's person and ten glassine packets containing what later proved to be heroin lying near him on the street the police placed appellant under arrest.
At issue is whether the Commonwealth's prosecution of appellant in separate trials, over two months apart, on charges arising from this incident violated the mandate of 18 Pa.C.S. § 110 (effective June 6, 1973), Commonwealth v. Campana (I), 452 Pa. 233, 304 A.2d 432 (1973), vacated and remanded, 414 U.S. 808, 94 S.Ct. 73, 38 L.Ed.2d 44 (1973), on remand, (Campana I ), 455 Pa. 622, 314 A.2d 854 (1974), cert. denied, 417 U.S. 969, 94 S.Ct. 3172 41 L.Ed.2d 1193 (1974), and Commonwealth v. Holmes, 480 Pa. 536, 391 A.2d 1015 (1978), that all charges arising from the same criminal episode and known to the prosecution at the time of trial be brought in a single trial. The Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster County and the Superior Court, 257 Pa.Super. 334, 390 A.2d 1264, on appeal held that the indictment and trial of appellant on a charge of possession of heroin were not barred by his previous conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm. We disagree and reverse. [1]
On the day of the arrest, the police filed a criminal complaint charging appellant with carrying a firearm on his person without a license, 18 Pa.C.S. § 6106(a). On May 30, 1974, after laboratory tests had established the contents of the packets, a complaint was filing charging appellant with possession of heroin, 35 P.S. § 780-113(a)(16). On June 5, 1974, appellant was indicted on the firearms charge. Two days later, appellant was given a preliminary arraignment on the heroin charge. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for August 1, but the record contains no indication that appellant ever received notice of that hearing until he was arrested pursuant to a bench warrant on September 16 for his failure to appear. Another preliminary hearing was then scheduled for November 4. Although notice of this hearing was mailed to appellant, he did not appear on that day. He claimed to have received the notice only after the hearing date, having moved temporarily to another address in Lancaster after a disagreement with his wife. Finally, on December 18, 1974, a preliminary hearing was held on the heroin charge, at which the Commonwealth established a prima facie case against appellant.
On January 24, 1975, the Commonwealth brought appellant to trial on the firearms charge. Appellant entered a plea of guilty to this charge, after which the court sentenced him to one year's probation and ordered him to pay a fine of two hundred dollars plus the cost of prosecution.
On February 6, following this conviction, the Commonwealth filed a petition for an extension of time for the commencement of appellant's trial on the heroin charge. On March 3, appellant was indicted for that offense, after which he immediately entered pleas of double jeopardy and autrefois convict and filed an application to suppress evidence. At a hearing on March 13, the court granted the Commonwealth's extension request over defense objection, and after another hearing on April 1, the court denied all of appellant's pretrial motions. Appellant was tried on the same day and convicted by a jury of possession of heroin. Post-verdict motions were filed and dismissed, and appellant was sentenced to a term of three to twelve months' imprisonment.
A direct appeal to the Superior Court followed, in which appellant claimed that the trial court had erred in refusing to suppress evidence, in granting the Commonwealth's petition for an extension of time, and in failing to hold that appellant's trial on the heroin charge was barred under 18 Pa.C.S. § 110 by the failure of the Commonwealth to consolidate that charge with the firearms charge.
The Superior Court rejected all three contentions and affirmed appellant's conviction, holding, inter alia, that appellant had waived his rights under section 110 by failing to move for consolidation of the charges himself. Commonwealth v. Stewart, 257 Pa.Super. 334, 390 A.2d 1264 (1978). Judge Spaeth dissented, joined by Judge Hoffman, and would have held that appellant's trial on the heroin charge was barred by the express terms of section 110. We granted allowance of appeal.
Section 110 of our Crimes Code sets forth, in pertinent part, the following standards:
There can be no dispute that the Court's imposition of sentence after the acceptance of appellant's plea of guilty to the firearms charge constitutes a conviction. See 18 Pa.C.S. § 109(3). Moreover, the two offenses with which appellant was charged were clearly part of the same "episode": appellant's crimes consisted of the possession of heroin and a gun at precisely the same time, 9:20 p. m. on April 25, 1974. The Commonwealth's sole argument for the inapplicability of section 110 to appellant's case is the theory of waiver advanced by the majority opinion of the Superior Court, a theory which that court has since recognized as erroneous in light of this Court's subsequent decision in Commonwealth v. Holmes, 480 Pa. 536, 391 A.2d 1015 (1978). See Commonwealth v. Edwards, 264 Pa.Super. 223, 227 n. 3, 399 A.2d 747, 749 n. 3 (1979).
In Holmes, this Court noted that both "(o)ur decisions in Campana I and II and Section 110 expressly bar a subsequent prosecution for any offense arising from the same criminal episode, where the offense was known to the prosecuting authorities at the time of the commencement of the first trial," 480 Pa. at 540, 391 A.2d at 1017. See Commonwealth v. Campana (II), supra, 455 Pa. at 626, 314 A.2d at 845 (). The Court then made the following observation:
" "
480 Pa. at 541, 391 A.2d at 1017, quoting Commonwealth v. Tarver, 467 Pa. 401, 408, 357 A.2d 539, 542 (1976).
The Commonwealth contends that the burden should be on the defendant to move for consolidation in cases like appellant's, where multiple charges arise from a single episode. Yet to place this burden on the defendant would be to ignore the duty of the Commonwealth to advance the societal interests underlying section 110. "Compulsory joinder of all offenses arising from a single 'transaction' avoids piecemeal litigation and thus conserves precious judicial and professional manpower as well as the time of jurors, witnesses, and the use of public resources." Commonwealth v. Campana (I), 452 Pa. at 252, 304 A.2d at 441. And as Mr. Justice Brennan observed, joined by Justices Douglas and Marshall, "(C)onsolidation in one lawsuit of all issues arising out of a single transaction or occurrence best promotes justice, economy, and convenience." Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 454, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 1199, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970) (concurring opinion) (footnote omitted).
Both the need for protection of the accused from governmental harassment and the need for judicial economy mandate prosecutorial consolidation of the charges in appellant's case. The testimony of the same officers as to the same occurrences was necessary to convict appellant on both of the charges. Moreover, appellant's challenges as to the legality of the stop and arrest, as well as to the credibility of the arresting officers, were as relevant to one charge as to the other. Furthermore, in appellant's case, as in Holmes, appellant could not have moved for consolidation prior to his conviction on the first charge since a grand jury had...
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