Commonwealth v. Turner

• Decision Date: 23 May 1951
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. TURNER.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

80 A.2d 708

367 Pa. 403

COMMONWEALTH v. TURNER.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

May 23, 1951

Aaron Turner was convicted in the Court of Quarter Sessions for the County of Philadelphia, as of June Session, 1946, No. 646 Frank Smith, P. J., of murder in the first degree, committed during the perpetration of a robbery and he appealed. The Supreme Court, No. 257, January Term, 1950, Drew, C. J., held that as the confession given by defendant had previously been held inadmissible, testimony of defendant and his accomplices at a preliminary hearing admitting their guilt, prior to execution of condemned confessions, was tainted by same infirmity of inherent coercion.

Judgment reversed and a venire facias de novo awarded.

Clinton B. Palmer, Easton, Edwin P. Rome Philadelphia, for appellant.

Colbert C. McClain, Asst. Dist. Atty., John H. Maurer, Dist. Atty., Philadelphia, for appellee.

Before DREW, C. J., and STEARNE, JONES, BELL, LADNER and CHIDSEY, JJ.

DREW Chief Justice.

This is an appeal by Aaron Turner from his second conviction of murder in the first degree, committed during the perpetration of a robbery, with sentence of death fixed by the jury. From a similar sentence following his first conviction an appeal was taken to this Court and the judgment affirmed. Commonwealth v. Turner, 358 Pa. 350, 58 A.2d 61. Judgment of this Court was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, 338 U.S. 62, 69 S.Ct. 1352, 93 L.Ed. 1810, on the ground that a confession by Turner was improperly admitted into evidence because obtained under coercive circumstances.

Turner and two accomplices, Jasper Johnson and Clarence Lofton, were jointly indicted for the murder of one Frank Endres. Lofton who was the ‘ lookout’ during the commission of the robbery, eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Johnson, on a plea of not guilty, was separately tried and convicted of murder in the first degree, with sentence of death. On appeal to this Court the judgment was affirmed, Commonwealth v. Johnson, 365 Pa. 303, 74 A.2d 144, but the judgment of this Court was reversed by the United States Supreme Court on November 13, 1950 in an order without opinion, citing its decision in the Turner case, 338 U.S. 62, 69 S.Ct. 1352, supra.

It is unnecessary to recite the facts of the brutal killing of the deceased. They are fully set forth in the opinion of Mr. Chief Justice Maxey in Commonwealth v. Turner, 358 Pa. 350, 351 et seq., 58 A.2d 61.

At the second trial of Turner now here for review, the objectionable confession was not introduced into evidence but the testimony of Turner and of Johnson and Lofton given at a preliminary hearing admitting their guilt was received into evidence and it is contended that this testimony at least in so far as Turner is concerned, was the product of the same coercion that produced his written confession. Under the opinion of the United States Supreme Court in the Turner case and its disposition of the Johnson case, we are compelled to so find.

The crime was committed on December 15, 1945. Lofton was arrested on May 24, 1946; and Turner and Johnson on June 3, 1946. Turner and Johnson were immediately taken to City Hall, Philadelphia, and there held continuously in the custody of the police from June 3rd until sometime after June 8th, under circumstances which the United States Supreme Court held were inherently coercive. During this period they were repeatedly questioned by one or more of seven police officers. On the sixth day of their detention, June 8, 1946, their interview by the police officers was resumed and continued until 10:30 or 11:00 a.m., when they, together with Lofton, were taken before a magistrate in another room in City Hall for a preliminary hearing. The only persons present at this hearing were the same police officers who had engaged in their questioning, the magistrate and an assistant district attorney. After one of the police officers testified, the three defendants were sworn, and Johnson testified in detail as to how the crime was committed and of the participation of each of the three men. Lofton and Turner then without the same detail affirmed Johnson's account of the commission of the crime.

Although the magistrate thereupon held the defendants ‘ without bail for court’, they were not committed to the county prison but turned over to the same police officers and detained in the latter's custody. Lofton, who appeared at the trial as a witness for the Commonwealth, testified that he remained in the custody of the police until June 12th before being taken to the county prison and couldn't remember whether Turner arrived there ‘ the same day or the following day.’ Detective O'Mahoney admitted that Turner was not committed to the county prison until sometime after June 8th.

This Court in upholding the first Turner conviction and the Johnson conviction was not pursuaded that the police officers had acted in an improper manner or that the confessions of Turner and Johnson were involuntary, but we are bound by the decisions of the United States Supreme Court and their clear import. In setting aside Turner's first conviction, Mr. Justice Frankfurter, speaking for the majority of the Court, in reviewing the circumstances of Turner's detention by the police from the time of his arrest on June 3, 1946, said, 338 U.S. 62, at page 64, 69 S.Ct. 1352 at page 1352:‘ On June 7, the day when a confession was finally obtained, questioning began in the afternoon and continued for three hours. Later that day the officers who had been present during the afternoon returned with others to resume the examination of petitioner. Despite the fact that he was falsely told that other suspects had ‘ opened up’ on him, petitioner repeatedly denied guilt. But finally, at about eleven o'clock, petitioner stated that he had killed the person for whose murder he was later arraigned. At nine o'clock the following morning the same police officers started to reduce his statement to writing, interrupted this process to bring him for a preliminary hearing before a magistrate sitting in the same building, and returned to the transcript of his statement which was completed by about noon.'

Turner's signed written confession has been deemed the result of inherent coercion. Certainly statements or admissions which he made at the preliminary hearing held during the coercive period and prior to his execution of the condemned confession must be considered tainted by the same infirmity. It is evident that the United States Supreme Court did not regard the interlude of the preliminary hearing as having purged the coercion. We are constrained to hold, therefore, that the testimony taken at the magistrate's hearing was inadmissible as evidence against Turner as was his confession.

Appellant also complains that the trial judge in effect gave binding instructions to the jury to find defendant guilty of murder in the first...