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464 Pa. 292

346 A.2d 746

Commonwealth v. Jackson

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided October 30, 1975

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1975-10-30

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“‘(i) At the conclusion of the [suppression] hearing, the judge shall enter on the record a statement of findings of fact and conclusions of law as to whether the evidence was obtained in violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights, and shall make an order granting or denying the relief sought.’”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including Commonwealth v. Jackson, 2003 Pa. Super. 79 - Commonwealth v. Grundza

““I must respectfully dissent from the Court’s order remanding the instant case for an evidentiary hearing in order to effectuate literal compliance with Rule 323(i) of our Rules of Criminal Procedure. The asserted non-compliance consists of the fact that the ‘record before us contains no findings of fact or conclusions of law, only a statement of the suppression court’s conclusion that there was no coercion.’ Opinion, ante at 748. In my view, the duplicative proceeding which the court orders is unnecessary and useless, wasteful of judicial time and energy, and without prospect of benefit to the appellant.” Id., 464 Pa. at 298-299 , 346 A.2d at 749 . (footnote omitted).”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Commonwealth v. Jackson

Relies on Geiger Appeal · Commonwealth v. McDonald

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1975-10-30

How this case has been cited

Cited by 44 later decisions — most recently November 2018 · most notably Commonwealth v. Kichline (1976), Commonwealth v. Musi (1979)

44 state decisions

18019751980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

POMEROY, Justice

¶1(dissenting).

¶2I must respectfully dissent from the Court’s order remanding the instant case for an evidentiary hearing in order to effectuate literal compliance with Rule 323 (i) of our Rules of Criminal Procedure.1 The asserted noncompliance consists of the fact that the “record before us contains no findings of fact or conclusions of law, only a *299statement of the suppression court’s conclusion that there was no coercion.” Opinion, ante at 748. In my view, the duplicative proceeding which the court orders is unnecessary and useless, wasteful of judicial time and energy, and without prospect of benefit to the appellant.

¶3While it is true that the trial court made no detailed findings of fact, I do not find its ruling to have been so conclusory as to warrant a remand.2 See In re Geiger, 454 Pa. 51, 54 n. 3, 309 A.2d 559, 561 n. 3 (1973). Moreover, any omission of the suppression hearing judge as to findings of fact was effectively supplied, as I read the record, by the opinion of the court en banc in support of its denial of post trial motions.3 That court made the following findings, based on the trial evidence at which the defendant, taking the stand on his own behalf, had challenged the voluntariness of his confession:4 “Instantly, the defendant was warned of his constitutional prerogatives, afforded all the amenities, including conferring with his mother while reading over the typed *300formal statement. … [H]is confession was sufficiently an act of informed free will, free of any element of coerciveness due to his arrest. . . .” The existence of these findings, although in part pertaining to the related question as to whether appellant’s confession was tainted by an illegal arrest, seems to me to render moot any deficiency in the suppression court record.

¶4Finally, I must point out that appellant has not complained that the directions of Rule 323 (i) were not observed by the suppression judge; this court is acting sua, sponte in finding non-compliance. Cf. Commonwealth v. McDonald, 459 Pa. 17, 326 A.2d 324 (1974). While it is no doubt within our power so to do, there is no warrant for such action in this case, where the record is ample to allow us to determine whether it supports the trial court’s conclusion that there was no coercion.

JONES, C. J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

¶5. Rule 323 provides as follows: “At the conclusion of the hearing [on the application to suppress evidence], the judge shall enter on the record a statement of findings of fact and conclusions of law as to whether the evidence was obtained in violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights, and shall make an order granting or denying the relief sought.”

¶6. The suppression hearing was held in two stages. The first portion of the hearing took place on September 23, 1970, at which the testimony of three police officers was taken. The second portion of the hearing was held on November 2, 1970, immediately prior to arraignment and selection of a jury. At this hearing the testimony of the arresting officer was heard. The defendant did not testify at either hearing and offered no evidence in support of the application to suppress. At the conclusion of the hearing the trial judge ruled as follows: “The Court finds nothing in the transactions as recited here that in themselves are coercive, or the passage of time in itself to be coercive, and from what the court can garner from witnesses that were offered here, there was nothing in itself or combined together which would have obliged the defendant to act other than according to his own will. Your motion to suppress is denied.”

¶7. It is to be noted that the Honorable James T. McDermott, the suppression judge, was also the trial judge and as such a member of the court en banc.

¶8. The basic attack on the confession was that it was coerced by physical beatings inflicted by the police, not by psychological coercion as argued on this appeal. The jury was properly instructed as to the requirement of voluntariness, and that the statement should be “disregarded entirely” if the jury found it to be involuntary.

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