Commonwealth v. Brady

69 Pa. D. & C.2d 146
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Bucks County
DecidedMay 24, 1973
Docketnos. 2540, 2540-01
StatusPublished

This text of 69 Pa. D. & C.2d 146 (Commonwealth v. Brady) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Bucks County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. Brady, 69 Pa. D. & C.2d 146 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1973).

Opinion

LUDWIG, J.,

This is a Superior Court Rule 46 opinion, the Commonwealth having appealed from our denial of its petition under the Witness Immunity Act of November 22, 1968, P. L. 1080 (No. 333), 19 PS §640.1, et seq.

Defendants are Warren Brady and Henry George, supervisors of Bensalem Township, Bucks County, each of whom was bound over to court on charges of extortion and prohibited acts by a public officer. A conspiracy charge against both was withdrawn by the district attorney at the preliminary hearing.

On February 16, 1973, separate bills of indictment against each defendant were presented to the Bucks County Grand Jury convened for the January 1973 term of court. At this proceeding, two witnesses, both of whom are named in the indictments as the givers of the rewards, Joseph D’Egidio and John Carmerlengo, refused to answer certain questions on the ground of the privilege against self-incrimination.1 Following this, we sustained their refusals, and in an effort to compel them to testify, the Commonwealth, acting through the Attorney General, joined in by the Bucks County District Attorney, petitioned to have these witnesses immunized against prosecution.

At hearing held March 16,1973, the Commonwealth [148]*148offered proof of the need for the requested immunity petition, as required by sections 1 and 2 of the above-cited act, 19 PS §§640.1 and 640.2: Riccobene Appeal, 439 Pa. 404, 418 (1970). Defendants are alleged to have extorted and received money and other valuable rewards from these witnesses in return for favorable voting action on zoning changes and subdivision proposals. It was our opinion, however, that the Immunity Act does not, in the circumstances, empower the granting of immunity to these witnesses, despite the vital prosecutorial need for their testimony. In so concluding, we considered two principal reasons.

First, the act is couched in language suggesting that as to grand juries it pertains only to those engaged in conducting an investigation, not to those the function of which, as here, is the finding of indictments. The title of the act speaks of “certain grand juries, investigating committees or commissions and courts of record.” Section 2 provides that the petition of the Attorney General “shall set forth the nature of the investigation and the need for immunization of the witness”: 19 PS §640.2. (Emphasis supplied.)

However, we need not become embroiled in these distinctions.2 This is so because we found dispositive a second set of objections to the granting of immunity. Section 1 of the act restricts its scope to “a proceeding relating to organized crime or racketeering”: 19 PS §640.1. It specifies, in section 6, that “[a]s used in this act — ‘organized crime’ and ‘racketeering’ shall include, but not be limited to, conspiracy to commit murder, bribery or extortion, narcotic or dangerous [149]*149drug violations, prostitution, usury, subornation of perjury and lottery, bookmaking or other forms of organized gambling”: 19 PS §640.6. The Commonwealth contended that the act thus equates “organized crime and racketeering” with each of the subsequently enumerated crimes and, further, that one of these is the substantive crime of “extortion,” not “conspiracy to commit... extortion.” We disagreed, on both points.

A common-sense reading of section 6 impels the conclusion that the enumerated crimes were not intended to be co-extensive with the more abstract terms, “organized crime and racketeering.” It is obvious that in a given instance such crimes may or may not be the product of underworld criminality, and frequently they are not. In this sense, “organized crime and racketeering” appear in the act as words of limitation, and the particular crimes set forth are simply illustrative of such a classification or category and, as such, are ejusdem generis.

Nor does the use of the word “include” impart equality of meaning. Instead, there are two entirely different consequences, either restrictive or enlarging depending on the context: Penn Dairies, Inc. v. Milk Control Commission of Pennsylvania, 148 Pa. Superior Ct. 261, 265-266 (1942); Weller & Weller v. The Grange Mutual Casualty Insurance Co., 105 Pa. Superior Ct. 547, 551 (1932). Clearly “organized crime and racketeering” does not “include” each section 6 crime in the sense of enlargement, but in the dictionary sense of “the containment of something as a constituent, component, or subordinate part of a larger whole”: Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1967).

The history of the act adds support to the belief that to avail itself of the immunity exception to the privilege against self-incrimination, the Commonwealth [150]*150must show more than the bare elements of a section 6 crime. Immediately before its enactment, there was no such immunity law in the Commonwealth. Article III, sec. 32, of the Pennsylvania Constitution, repealed in 1967, had provided for “use” immunity in order to control “any person ... to testify in any lawful investigation or judicial proceeding against any person . . . charged with . . . bribery or corrupt solicitation, or practices of solicitation . . . .” By comparison, the immunity legislation of 1968, as introduced, enabled the granting of immunity “. . .in any proceedings ... to any person”: Senate Bill 1507, 1968 Session, May 22, 1968. However, upon the third and final consideration by the House of Representatives on July 17, 1968, later concurred in by the Senate, immunity was strictly confined, by the amendment of section 1, to “a proceeding relating to organized crime or racketeering”; and section 6 was also added to the bill. If the legislature had intended the result now urged by the Commonwealth it could have accomplished it directly via the model of the former constitutional provision, which simply limited itself to proceedings relating to particular criminal acts.

Our interpretation of section 6 is in accord with Commonwealth v. Kolakowski, 55 Erie 21, 24 (1972), which appears to be the only authority to have previously reported its consideration of the question. Referring to section 6, Judge McClelland’s dictum poignantly observed: “I do not. . . believe that our Legislature intended to separate these specific changes from an equally specific relationship to ‘organized crime’ and ‘racketeering’ ... I cannot believe that ‘prostitution,’ for example, in this context would include the sad soul who attempts to earn some money for herself alone but. . . only include ‘prostitution’ when it is an integral part of ‘organized crime’ and ‘racketeering’.” [151]*151Many other examples of implausible results from a contrary reading of section 6 are readily apparent.

Kolakowski, a prosecution for blackmail, refused immunity to a witness appearing at a preliminary hearing on the narrow ground that this particular criminal charge is not expressly designated in section 6. The opinion notes, however, that immunity was granted a witness in Erie County in a case of bribery, a section 6 crime. Riccobene, supra, also concerned a bribery but as part of a grand jury investigation of organized crime and governmental corruption. In Garber Immunity Petition, 5 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 544 (1972), the witness had declined to testify in an investigation of a similar nature before the Pennsylvania Crime Commission.

Subsequent legislation touching on the subject matter of organized crime and racketeering, The Pennsylvania Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970, December 8, 1970, P. L. 874 (No.

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Related

Commonwealth v. Kilgallen
108 A.2d 780 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1954)
Riccobene Appeal
268 A.2d 104 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1970)
Smith v. Gallagher
185 A.2d 135 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1962)
Commonwealth v. MARMON
232 A.2d 236 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1967)
Commonwealth v. Wilson
296 A.2d 719 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1972)
Penn Dairies, Inc. v. Milk Control Commission
24 A.2d 717 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1941)
Weller v. Grange Mutual Casualty Ins.
161 A. 615 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1932)
Commonwealth v. Richardson
79 A. 222 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1911)
In re Attorney General for Grant of Immunity & Order to Testify to Garber
5 Pa. Commw. 544 (Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, 1972)
United States v. McGlone
19 F. Supp. 285 (E.D. Pennsylvania, 1937)

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Bluebook (online)
69 Pa. D. & C.2d 146, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-brady-pactcomplbucks-1973.