# Commonwealth v. Murray

> Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · December 27, 2013 · 623 Pa. 506

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4968350

## Case

- **Full name:** COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Harold MURRAY, IV
- **Court:** Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
- **Decided:** December 27, 2013
- **Citations:** 623 Pa. 506; 83 A.3d 137; 2013 Pa. LEXIS 3266; 2013 WL 6831852
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Eakin
- **Judges:** Baer, Castille, Eakin, McCaffery, Saylor, Todd
- **Cited by:** 129 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4968350

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that to satisfy excited utterance hearsay exception it must first be shown that declarant had witnessed event sufficiently startling and so close in point of time as to render declarant’s reflective thought processes inoperable and, second, that his declarations wer…
- holding that the defendant waived his claim regarding attorney-client privilege by failing to raise it in the trial court and stating “that preservation of the specific argument in support of the ground for reversal is required for appellate review” (citation omitted)
- concluding that a victim’s statement “they’re going to kill me” was an excited utterance -6- J-S57012-15 in part because, “[a] threat upon one’s life is certainly a startling event[]’”
- describing an excited utterance as a “spontaneous declaration by a person whose mind has been suddenly made subject to an overpowering emotion caused by some unexpected and shocking occurrence, which that person has just participated in or closely witnessed, and made in refere…
- noting that the common law definition of an excited utterance is still applicable to Rule 803(2), but concluding that the circumstances surrounding a statement may be sufficient to establish the existence of a sufficiently startling event

## Opinion text

Justice EAKIN,
concurring.
I join the majority. I write separately merely to reiterate that stating that capital cases are “subjected to the closest scrutiny,” Majority Op., at 168, should not be construed as affording a more complete level of scrutiny to capital cases. As I have previously expressed, relaxing requirements of proof for capital defendants or affording these cases greater scrutiny than is given others does not afford those others the equal protection of the laws. See Commonwealth v. Brooks, 576 Pa. 332 , 839 A.2d 245, 255 (2003) (Eakin, J, concurring) (“[T]he constitution does not afford some lesser right to effective counsel on those charged with noncapital crimes. The right to counsel inures to the capital defendant, the felon, and the misdemean-ant alike.”). Defendants not convicted of capital murder do not get scrutiny that is less close, nor do they deserve “less exacting review” than capital defendants.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4968350. Public record. Not legal advice.