Commonwealth v. Williams
| Decision Date | 06 January 1984 |
| Docket Number | 149. |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Allen Wayne WILLIAMS, Appellant. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Superior Court |
Argued July 12, 1983. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
David G. Petonic, Greensburg, for appellant.
Judith Karns Ciszek, Asst. Dist. Atty., Greensburg, for Commonwealth, appellee.
Before CERCONE, President Judge, and HESTER, CAVANAUGH, WICKERSHAM ROWLEY, WIEAND and POPOVICH, JJ.
This is a direct appeal from the judgment of sentence imposed by the Court of Common Pleas of Westmoreland County on December 29 1980 following appellant's conviction in a jury trial of Criminal Attempt to Falsely Imprison. [1]
The evidence adduced by the Commonwealth at trial established that on October 23, 1979 at approximately 7:45 a.m., Vonda Ortuglio drove her automobile into the parking lot of her place of employment, the Shop N Save supermarket located on Lowry Street in Jeannette. She locked her car and began walking toward the entrance of the store when she was accosted by a black male who, upon alighting from a passing vehicle, seized her shoulder and attempted to pull her into his automobile. Mrs. Ortuglio struggled with her assailant for a few minutes and then, having finally freed herself from his grasp, ran into the supermarket to safety. She then placed a telephone call to the State Police and reported the incident.
Investigating troopers arrived on the scene a short while later to interview the victim. Mrs. Ortuglio was asked to review eight photographs carried at the time by one of the troopers. [2] She was unable to identify any of the men contained in those pictures as her attacker. Later the same day, however, Mrs. Ortuglio was shown a second array consisting of thirteen photographs. In this array appeared a photograph of appellant in which he wore a sign around his neck that bore the inscription "Police Dept. Jeannette, Pa.." Appellant's photograph was selected by Mrs. Ortuglio as depicting the man who set upon her in the Shop N Save parking lot that morning. Appellant was subsequently arrested and charged by complaint with criminal attempt.
On November 20, 1979, the District Attorney of Westmoreland County filed an information against appellant with the clerk of courts. The District Attorney's signature was not manually subscribed on the information. Instead, the information was "signed" with a rubber stamp facsimile signature which was then initialed by the First Assistant District Attorney of Westmoreland County, Henry A. Martin. Appellant filed an omnibus pretrial motion requesting (1) that the information be quashed (a) for jurisdictional deficiencies deriving from the failure of the District Attorney to sign the information in the manner required by Pa.R.Crim.P. 225(b) and 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 8931; and (b) because it fails to allege an essential element of the crime charged, viz., that the actions of the perpetrator were unlawful and/or committed against the will of the victim; and (2) that any identification of appellant by the victim, based upon a photograph of appellant taken by the Jeannette police in connection with their investigation of a crime for which appellant was eventually discharged, together with the photograph itself, be suppressed by reason of the photograph's suggestiveness. The lower court denied these motions but nevertheless ordered the Commonwealth to conceal the police department caption on appellant's photograph when it displayed the array to the jury during trial.
Appellant proceeded to a trial by jury on April 11, 1980 and on April 15, 1980 he was convicted of Criminal Attempt to Falsely Imprison. Post-verdict motions were filed, argued and denied by opinion and order dated December 3, 1980. On December 29, 1980, appellant appeared for sentencing and was ordered to undergo confinement in a state correctional facility for a period of not less than eleven and one half months nor more than twenty-three months. This direct appeal, which presents several issues [3] for our disposition, then followed.
The question of whether a criminal information, which bears a rubber stamp facsimile signature of a district attorney together with the manually-inscribed initials of an assistant district attorney, has been properly "signed" within the meaning of Pa.R.Crim.P. 225(b) [4] and the Judicial Code [5] was definitely resolved by our Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Contakos, 492 Pa. 465, 424 A.2d 1284 (1981). Therein, the Court ruled that
... the approval and initialing of the information by an assistant district attorney, along with the stamped signature of the district attorney, complies with our Rules [and] the Judicial Code... [6] Id. at 470, 424 A.2d at 1287.
However, the Contakos opinion makes clear that where a rubber stamp is employed to represent a district attorney's signature and an assistant district attorney initials the information near the stamped signature, the signature will be valid only if the requisite designation of authority for the assistant district attorney to so act has been filed with the clerk of courts pursuant to the mandate of 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 8931(i). [7] In the instant case, the Commonwealth apparently concedes that the proper designation of authority had not been filed at the time the information was stamped and initialed by the assistant district attorney. Appellant argues that because the designation of authority had not been filed prior to the filing of the information, but was instead filed only after the pretrial hearing which was conducted pursuant to appellant's motion to quash the information, [8] the information should now be quashed for alleged jurisdictional deficiencies and he discharged. We disagree.
The signature requirement of the Judicial Code, supra, is designed to assure the authenticity of an information and to guarantee that the district attorney has inquired fully into all facts and circumstances attendant to a particular case and has made a reasoned evaluation of the propriety of initiating criminal proceedings against a defendant. Commonwealth v. Levenson, supra. See also Commonwealth v. Emanuel, 501 Pa. 581, 462 A.2d 653 (1983). We fail to perceive how these goals would be furthered in the instant case by quashing the information and discharging appellant simply because the Commonwealth filed the required designation of authority in a tardy manner. The designation of authority was filed with the clerk of courts prior to the rendering of a decision by the lower court on appellant's motion to quash the information and well in advance of the commencement of trial. Consequently, we reject appellant's argument that the filing of the designation of authority in this fashion denied the public "an official showing of the proper exercise of discretion by the District Attorney on whether or not there was sufficient evidence of the commission of a crime for which to prosecute the Defendant."
Moreover, we regard as equally untenable appellant's assertion that the actions of the district attorney in the case at bar unlawfully erodes the accountability of prosecuting officials to the public by cloaking the identity of those persons responsible for the institution of criminal actions. [9] Under the holding of Commonwealth v. Emanuel, supra, it is now clear that so long as the name of the government official authorizing the prosecution appears on the face of the information, whether in the form of a manually-subscribed signature or rubber stamp facsimile signature, [10] there arises a rebuttable presumption that the information is valid. Commonwealth v. Emanuel at [470 A.2d 1381] ---, 462 A.2d at 656. The instantly-challenged information which bears the rubber stamp signature of the District Attorney of Westmoreland County as well as the initials of an assistant district attorney, thus complies fully with the signature requirements set forth in Rule 225(b) and Commonwealth v. Emanuel.
Appellant also assigns as trial error the failure of the lower court, to adequately explain to the jury that the maxim "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" may be applied only to "material" misstatements of fact [11] made by a witness. Although it is true that the court in fact omitted the word "material" in presenting the maxim to the jury, we find no cause for reversal. First, as the quoted portion of the transcript makes clear, the trial judge admonished the jury that it, as the ultimate judge of credibility, was free to accept or reject all or any portion of a witness's testimony after assessing such testimony in light of the various factors cited previously by the court in its general charge on credibility which immediately preceded the instantly-challenged reference to the maxim. Moreover, the court emphasized that the maxim was only one of the many considerations that should enter into the jury's decision as to whether it should attach any credence to a certain portion of a witness's testimony. Taking the charge as a whole as we must, it is clear that if in fact the court's omission is this regard had any tendency to prejudice appellant's case, such prejudice was obviated by the remainder of the court's charge which was more than adequate on the question of the credibility of witnesses. Mount v. Bulifant, 438 Pa. 265, 265 A.2d 627 (1970). [12]
Appellant's contention that the Commonwealth failed to plead and prove an essential element of the offense of false imprisonment, viz., that the victim was "unlawfully" restrained, is specious. First, an information will be regarded as sufficient in law so long as it serves to notify the accused of the charges filed against him or her. [13] The information in the case at bar provided as follows:
The District Attorney of Westmoreland County, by this...
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