Commonwealth v. Ehly

319 A.2d 167, 457 Pa. 225, 1974 Pa. LEXIS 835
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedMay 2, 1974
DocketAppeal, No. 373
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 319 A.2d 167 (Commonwealth v. Ehly) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme 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. Ehly, 319 A.2d 167, 457 Pa. 225, 1974 Pa. LEXIS 835 (Pa. 1974).

Opinions

Opinion by

Mr. Justice O’Brien,

On January 27, 1967, an automobile owned by a Philadelphia City Policeman was broken into while street-parked, and the officer’s official hat and badge were stolen.

On February 14, 1967, three men forced their way by gunpoint into the Manzo residence on Germantown Avenue. The residents, four in number, were tied up. A safe in a subcellar was broken into and $18,000 and a valuable diamond ring were stolen.

Appellant, Douglas Ehly, was arrested in Florida, extradited and tried on a series of charges based on the before-related crimes. He was acquitted of burglary based on the automobile entry, but was convicted of receiving stolen goods in connection with this occurrence. Ehly was convicted of armed robbery and re[228]*228lated crimes based on the Manzo occurrence. He received a sentence of imprisonment of two to eight years on the robbery conviction. Sentences of imprisonment for lesser periods to run concurrently were imposed on the other convictions. On appeal, the Superior Court unanimously affirmed the judgments without opinion. We granted allocatur to examine several allegations of error raised by appellant.

First, we must deal with appellant’s argument that he is entitled to an acquittal on the charge of receiving stolen goods because the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction for possession of the stolen police badge. The badge was discovered by the police during a search, conducted pursuant to a warrant, of the premises at 4207 Penn Street, which appellant shared with his girl friend, noAV his wife, Barbara Ehly. At the time of the search, February 20, 1967, appellant was in Florida. The warrant specified “guns and stolen property” and the badge A\ras discovered in Mrs. Ehly’s purse. The only evidence which linked appellant to possession of the badge was the following hearsay testimony, which came out during cross-examination of Officer Chitwood at trial: “By Mr. Peruto, Defense Attorney: Q. What evidence did you have that this handbag was in possession of this defendant? A. None. Q. What evidence did you have that this badge was in the possession of this defendant? A. The woman that was living with him, Barbara Ehly, stated to me he had given her the badge. Q. She stated that to you? A. That is correct.”

No objection was made to this testimony at the time. Moreover, since it was elicited as a direct result of appellant’s counsel’s cross-examination, and, despite the contention of appellant, was a direct response to a question put to the witness by appellant’s counsel, appellant, in the absence of a motion to strike, cannot be heard to contend that the admission of the remark [229]*229constitutes reversible error. Commonwealth v. Beach, 445 Pa. 257, 260, 284 A.2d 792 (1971); Commonwealth v. Camm, 443 Pa. 253, 271, 277 A.2d 325 (1971). Consequently, the evidence is part of the record and it may now support appellant’s conviction. The fact that Mrs. Ehly testified at trial that she had never told the police that appellant had given her the badge and that her son, Raymond Ehly, had found the badge in the street, a fact to which Raymond Ehly also testified, makes no difference. The jury was free to believe Mrs. Ehly’s earlier statement to the police rather than her testimony, and the statement that appellant gave her the badge would amply support the conviction for receiving stolen goods. Commonwealth v. Davis, 444 Pa. 11, 280 A.2d 119 (1971). Cases such as Commonwealth v. Maybee, 429 Pa. 222, 239 A.2d 332 (1968) and Commonwealth v. Ellsworth, 409 Pa. 505, 187 A.2d 640 (1963), are of no help to appellant because the hearsay in those cases came on direct examination and was admitted over objection. In fact, in Maybee, supra, even though the conviction was based solely upon the hearsay testimony, the defendant was not granted a motion in arrest of judgment. Rather he was simply awarded a new trial because of our long-established principle that we may not grant a motion in arrest of judgment on a diminished record. Since, in the instant case, the record will not be diminished, and since, as such, the record supports the verdict, appellant’s challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence must fail.

Appellant also raises serious challenges to the search warrant and to the admission of other evidence seized pursuant to the warrant, including a BB gun, ammunition, and a key ring with several automobile master keys. However, appellant filed no pretrial motion to suppress and, therefore, ordinarily, the constitutional arguments that the warrant was invalid or was unconstitutionally vague could not be raised. Rule [230]*230323(b) of Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure. However, appellant’s counsel also argues that he was unable to file a pretrial motion to suppress because appellant was not arraigned until the day of trial, in violation of Rule 317(b) of Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure, and, consequently, appellant’s counsel had no knowledge until trial began that charges growing out of the burglary of the policeman’s car were to be tried at the same time as the charges growing out of the Manzo robbery or even that the car-related charges existed.

The record is somewhat confusing in that the bills of indictment indicate that appellant was arraigned on all charges on May 15, 1968. However, the transcript clearly shows that on April 2, 1969, when the trial began, appellant was arraigned and his trial counsel made the following objection: “Mr. Peruto (Defense Counsel) : If Your Honor please, this is the very, very first I am hearing of a burglary of an automobile. I hated to say something in the presence of the jury panel. I have never, in the exposure I have had in this case, known that this defendant has been charged with a burglary of an automobile. Now, to come forward and just to spring it on me in this fashion, I don’t know what to say to Your Honor about it. I think it is prejudicial to try him charged with two separate offenses that occurred on separate dates and were not even in the same month and were at two separate locations and two types of crimes and subject matters. Therefore, I ask that the District Attorney be required to elect as between them rather than try both of them before a jury for obvious reasons.” The court refused appellant’s motion.1

The Commonwealth argues, inter aMa, that appellant waived any objection that he might have to the [231]*231arraignment because he did not specifically request a continuance on the basis of the Commonwealth’s failure to comply with the rule at the beginning of trial, but instead waited until midway through the trial when the police officer who executed the search warrant was testifying. At that point, after objecting to the late arraignment, appellant’s counsel requested a conference in chambers, at which time he explained the problem he faced: “Me.

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Bluebook (online)
319 A.2d 167, 457 Pa. 225, 1974 Pa. LEXIS 835, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-ehly-pa-1974.