Commonwealth v. Tassone

Citation246 Pa. 543,92 A. 713
PartiesCOMMONWEALTH v. TASSONE.
Decision Date26 October 1914
CourtPennsylvania Supreme Court
92 A. 713
246 Pa. 543

COMMONWEALTH
v.
TASSONE.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Oct. 26, 1914.


92 A. 714

Appeal from Court of Oyer and Terminer, Lancaster County; Landis, Judge.

Rocco Tassone was convicted of murder of the first degree, and appeals. Affirmed.

Argued before FELL, C. J., and BROWN, MESTREZAT, POTTER, ELKIN, and STEWART, JJ.

Benjamin C. Atlee, of Lancaster, for appellant.

John M. Croff, Dist. Atty., and Chas. W. Eaby, both of Lancaster, for the Commonwealth.

BROWN, J. Tony Collata, an Italian fruit dealer, while driving along a public highway leading to the city of Lancaster was murdered on October 31, 1913. A jury found that the appellant had murdered him. On this appeal no question is raised as to the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict returned, and there is no complaint of any error committed by the learned court below in the course of the trial.

In the indictment returned by the grand jury April 20, 1914, the date of the commission of the crime is laid as October 31, 1914. On April 27, 1914, six days after the prisoner had been found guilty of murder of the first degree, his counsel made a motion in arrest of judgment on the ground that the indictment upon which he had been found guilty charged the offense as having been committed more than six months after the trial. On May 20, 1914, on motion of the district attorney, the court permitted the indictment to be amended by changing the date of the commission of the offense to October 31, 1913, and subsequently the judgment appealed from was entered on the verdict. The allowance after verdict of the amendment and the dismissal of the motion in arrest of judgment are two of the three grounds upon which this appeal is pressed.

Whether, under the common law, the amendment of the indictment ought not to have been allowed and the judgment should have been arrested are not questions to be considered on this appeal. The amendment was allowed in the exercise of what the learned court below believed to be power conferred upon it by our Criminal Procedure Act of March 31, 1860 (P. L. 427), and, if that act confers the power which was exercised, the judgment that followed the amendment was properly pronounced and cannot be disturbed. As the sole question before us is whether, under our statute, the court had the power to do what it did, we need not consider the rulings of courts in other jurisdictions cited by learned counsel for the prisoner in support of his contention of the...

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