Commonwealth v. Cox

10 Pa. D. & C. 678, 1927 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 270
CourtMontgomery County Court of Quarter Sessions
DecidedOctober 28, 1927
DocketNo. 26
StatusPublished

This text of 10 Pa. D. & C. 678 (Commonwealth v. Cox) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Montgomery County Court of Quarter Sessions primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. Cox, 10 Pa. D. & C. 678, 1927 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 270 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1927).

Opinion

Williams, P. J.,

Jesse Cox, the defendant, having appealed from the order of the first day of last July overruling his motion in arrest of judgment and for a new trial, dismissing all the reasons supporting the motion, refusing a new trial and denying an arrest of judgment — the reasons for which order do not appear of record — and from the judgment of sentence on the twenty-third day of last month imposed upon him, the court herein files of record, in compliance with Rule Fifty-eight (58) of the Superior Court, at least a brief statement of the reasons for such order in the form of an

Opinion.

Immediately after sensible conviction by a jury of the defendant for a violation of that part of the second paragraph of the twenty-third section of the Act of June 30, 1919, P. L. 678-701, 692, which says that “No person shall operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor,” he moved, by his counsel and in writing, both for a new trial and in arrest of judgment because, first, the verdict had been against the law; second, against the evidence; and, third, the court had erred in admitting the testimony of Dr. Fine. Although the trial judge, in entertaining the motion and ordering it on the next argument list — where, in due course, the motion was heard by the court in bane — and in directing the transcription and filing of the notes of testimony and the charge, had granted the defendant leave, within Ten (10) days after such transcription and filing, to assign additional written reasons in support of the motion, no new reasqn was ever so assigned. To the contrary, at the argument, the first and second reasons were practically abandoned by the defendant’s counsel^ who pressed only the third reason.

At the trial, Dr. Walter E. Fine, a graduate of the Hahnemann Medical College, of the city and county of Philadelphia, and, ever since 1904, a continuous practitioner of medicine in the borough of Ambler, this county, testified, on behalf of the Commonwealth, that, between Seven (7 P. M.) and Eight (8 P. M.) o’clock in the evening of Sunday, the seventeenth day of October, 1926, John T. Camburn, constable of the township of Whitpain, this county, had brought the defendant to the office of the witness; that, then and there, he had seen the defendant walk with unsteady gait, had detected the odor of alcohol upon his breath and had heard him so incoherently speak and mumble his words that, at times, the physician could hardly understand the defendant; that the doctor had submitted to the defendant, first, the test of standing up with eyes closed and hands and toes together, whereupon the defendant swayed; second, the ocular test and thereby found the mucous membranes covering the outer surfaces of the eye-balls and the inner surfaces of the eye-lids of the defendant much inflamed; and, third, the test of closing his eyes and bringing the index finger of his right hand to his nose, to which test the defendant reacted with such great negation that not only did he usually miss his nose but often he could not find even his cheek; that, in consequence of the observation of the defendant by the physician and his conversation with the former and as a result of the tests, the witness felt himself qualified to express an opinion as to whether the defendant had or had not been under the influence of intoxicating liquor; and that, at the time of the examination of the defendant, he had been under such influence.

On cross-examination, Dr. Fine swore, also, that when the defendant had come to the office of the witness, he knew the defendant was under arrest; that the physician had not told the defendant anything he might say or do could later be used against him; and that, without the tests, the doctor would not have been able to say the defendant had been under the influence of [680]*680intoxicating liquor: wherefore, it is contended by counsel for the defendant that all of the testimony of Dr. Pine should have been excluded from consideration by the jury on the ground that, at the time of the examination, the witness having failed to inform the defendant whatever he should do might be employed adversely against him at subsequent trial, the constitutional privilege of the defendant had been violated in that he was compelled to be a witness against himself. In other words, the sole contention of the defendant is that the admission of the evidence of Dr. Fine was in derogation of that part of the ninth section of the first article of the Constitution of our Commonwealth which provides that “In all criminal prosecutions the accused . . . cannot be compelled to give evidence against himself,” the manifest purpose of which provision, in conferring upon every citizen the personal privilege of remaining silent whenever it appears reasonable his testimony or declaration might result in self-incrimination, Commonwealth v. Bolger, Appellant, 42 Pa. Superior Ct. 115, 121, was to prohibit the compelling of self-incriminating testimony. In Re Adjudication of Contempt of Myers and Brei, 83 Pa. Superior Ct. 383, 388.

At once it is to be noted that what is prohibited by the constitutional clause under discussion is the compelling of an accused to give evidence against himself, that the object of the so-called right organically declared is to secure for the defendant freedom from compulsion of disclosure of self-incriminatory testimony, that the personal privilege recognized by fundamental law is a protection to one charged with the commission of crime only in that he cannot be “compelled” to incriminate himself.

To compel — as is signified by the Latin derivation, compellere, from con, together, and pellere, to drive, i. e., to drive together — is to urge with irresistible force; and, hence, is to oblige, to necessitate, to constrain, to coerce, to subdue, to force, to yield; or to exact, to extort, to seize, to wrest, to take by violence; or to overcome, to overpower, to subjugate.

Compel is synonymous with force. To force is to constrain, to do by the exercise of an overwhelming power, as soldiers are forced to submit to their conquerors, or slaves are forced to labor by their masters; to do violence to, as females are forced in common law rape; to get, impel or obtain by main strength; to take by struggle; to capture by assault; to storm; to strain; to exert to the utmost; to produce by excessive, unnatural or untimely pressure or action.

Compulsion, instantly suggestive of might in opposition to impotence. and of obligation as opposed to volition, means forcible inducement to the commission of an act and involves the setting in motion of power and the actual application of strength by one followed by the doing of an act requiring fulfillment and affording no alternative by another, who acts contrary to his will.

In the instant case, the record fails to show, even out of the mouth of him who had the greatest interest in the result of the trial,'that the defendant was urged with irresistible force to accompany the township constable to the office of Dr. Fine, or that, there, the defendant was forced to walk, or was obliged to talk to the physician or answer his questions, or was coerced into closing his eyes, or into placing the tips of his fingers upon the ends of his toes, or into allowing the doctor to see the hot and irritated conjunctiva, or into attempting to swing the right index finger toward the organ of smell. There is no evidence of constraint or necessitation on the part of the defendant; no testimony that he was violently impelled to speak or take the tests applied by Dr.

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Bluebook (online)
10 Pa. D. & C. 678, 1927 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 270, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-cox-paqtrsessmontgo-1927.