Commonwealth v. DeCaro

444 A.2d 160, 298 Pa. Super. 32, 1982 Pa. Super. LEXIS 3889
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedApril 12, 1982
Docket2343
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 444 A.2d 160 (Commonwealth v. DeCaro) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. DeCaro, 444 A.2d 160, 298 Pa. Super. 32, 1982 Pa. Super. LEXIS 3889 (Pa. Ct. App. 1982).

Opinions

JOHNSON, Judge:

For the reasons given below, the denial by the trial court of the motion to suppress is affirmed. The case is remanded to the lower court with directions to entertain appellant’s motion for modification of sentence nunc pro tunc.

Paulette DeCaro was tried in the Municipal Court of Philadelphia County on charges of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance1 and knowing and intentional possession of a controlled substance.2 The drugs consisted of about 855 pills and 2 vials. The municipal court judge found her guilty and sentenced her to two years’ probation and a $5,000.00 fine.

Appellant filed an appeal for a trial de novo in the Court of Common Pleas. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 6006.3 After a non-jury trial, she was found guilty of the charges against her, and sentenced, after denial of post-trial motions, to a term of imprisonment for not less than llVz months and not more than 23 months. It is from this sentence that she appeals.

Appellant’s first allegation of error concerns the fact that the sentence imposed in the Court of Common Pleas at the trial de novo was greater than the sentence imposed at the first trial in Municipal Court. Appellant asks us to apply [37]*37the rule of North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969), to this situation, rather than the rule of Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 1953, 32 L.Ed.2d 584 (1972), which is what our case law has applied hitherto.

The Pearce case applies specifically to sentences imposed following retrial after a prior conviction has been overturned on appeal because of error tainting the first trial. The Colten case applies where there is a two-tiered system, involving speedy disposition of certain criminal offenses at the first level, as is the system in Philadelphia. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 6000-6013. The United States Supreme Court specifically stated in Colten that the Kentucky trial de novo system did not present the hazards calling for the restraints which the Court had required in Pearce. See 407 U.S. at 119, 92 S.Ct. at 1961, 32 L.Ed.2d at 595. The Pearce requirements are:

whenever a judge imposes a more severe sentence upon a defendant after a new trial, the reasons for his doing so must affirmatively appear. Those reasons must be based upon objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding. And the factual data upon which the increased sentence is based must be made part of the record, so that the constitutional legitimacy of the increased sentence may be fully reviewed on appeal.

North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. at 726, 89 S.Ct. at 2081, 23 L.Ed.2d at 670. The reason for this is primarily to protect the defendant from any vindictiveness on the part of the judge at the second trial. In Colten the Court found that there was not a likely danger of such vindictiveness in the Kentucky two-tier system. The Court said:

The possibility of vindictiveness, found to exist in Pearce, is not inherent in the Kentucky two-tier system.
We note first the obvious: that the court which conducted Colten’s trial and imposed the final sentence was not the court with whose work Colten was sufficiently [38]*38dissatisfied to seek a different result on appeal; and it is not the court that is asked to do over what it thought it had already done correctly. Nor is the de novo court even asked to find error in another court’s work. Rather, the Kentucky court in which Colten had the unrestricted right to have a new trial was merely asked to accord the same trial, under the same rules and procedures, available to defendants whose cases are begun in that court in the first instance.

Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. at 116-117, 92 S.Ct. at 1960, 32 L.Ed.2d at 593.

In Pennsylvania, we held, in Commonwealth v. Moore, 226 Pa.Super.Ct. 58, 312 A.2d 422 (1973), petition for allowance of appeal denied, May 17, 1976, that Colten applies to Pennsylvania, and that the reasoning therein is the law of Pennsylvania.4 See also Commonwealth v. Possinger, 264 Pa.Super.Ct. 332, 399 A.2d 1077 (1979); Commonwealth v. Clay, 230 Pa.Super.Ct. 157, 326 A.2d 513 (1974), petition for allowance of appeal denied, January 2, 1975.

Appellant urges us to apply Pearce rather than Colten because, in particular, she took her appeal from the Municipal Court in order to relitigate a motion to suppress which had been denied in the Municipal Court. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in a case subsequent both to Colten and to Moore, Commonwealth v. Harmon, 469 Pa. 490, 366 A.2d 895 (1976), held that the rule that pre-trial decisions, such as a motion to suppress, at the Municipal Court level, cannot be relitigated during the Common Pleas trial de novo was not unconstitutional. The issue, then, is whether the loss of the right to relitigate a motion to suppress at a trial de novo makes for a significant difference between the Kentucky [39]*39and the Philadelphia two-tier systems, such that the rule in Commonwealth v. Moore (Colten applies in Pennsylvania) should no longer stand.5

Appellant argues that there are three basic differences between the Kentucky system approved in Colten and the system in Philadelphia: (1) in Colten a prison sentence was not involved, but merely a fine; (2) the right to trial in Kentucky involves a completely fresh determination of guilt or innocence which is allegedly now lacking in the Philadelphia system since suppression motions cannot be relitigated; (3) in Kentucky there is a right to trial by jury at the first level, which is not the case in the Philadelphia system.

As to the first difference, i.e. the penalty involved, the Supreme Court in Colten, though it mentioned that the defendants in Pearce had received longer prison sentences after reconviction, did not say that it was the nature of the penalty which called for the rule. It was in the motivation for the increased penalty that the danger lay:

Positing that a more severe penalty after reconviction would violate due process of law if imposed as purposeful punishment for having successfully appealed, the court concluded that such untoward sentences occurred with sufficient frequency to warrant the imposition of a prophylactic rule to insure “that vindictiveness against a defendant for having successfully attacked his first conviction . .. [would] play no part in the sentence he receives after a new trial...” and to ensure that the apprehension of such vindictiveness does not “deter a defendant’s exercise of the right to appeal or collaterally attack [40]

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Bluebook (online)
444 A.2d 160, 298 Pa. Super. 32, 1982 Pa. Super. LEXIS 3889, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-decaro-pasuperct-1982.