Opinion

Commonwealth v. Aulisio

  • 514 Pa. 84
  • 522 A.2d 1075
  • 1987 Pa. LEXIS 675
Court
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Filed
Mar 19, 1987
Status
Published
Author
Hutchinson
On the bench
Nix, Larsen, Flaherty, McDermott, Hutchinson, Zappala, Papadakos
Cited by
36 cases
Authority
More cited than 8.9%

Distinguished

  • Distinguished by In Re Tg, 836 A.2d 1003 (2003)

    We conclude that the Supreme Court's decision in Aulisio is distinguishable from the case at bar.
    Superior Court of PennsylvaniaNov 17, 20032 citing opinionsRead it

The opinion

HUTCHINSON, Justice,

concurring.

I join the majority opinion. However, I believe Mr. Justice Papadakos’s dissenting opinion deserves comment. I agree with him that Section 9711 of the Sentencing Code, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711, does not establish a per se rule requiring this Court to set aside a death penalty where any one aggravating circumstance found by the jury is not supported by the evidence, and there are other mitigating circumstances. If it is clear that the error committed by the jury was harmless, as might occur if the jury states both the aggravating and mitigating circumstances that it found, then I believe we can sustain the death penalty.

*96 I do not believe that the majority opinion is inconsistent with my position. In this case the error cannot be found to be harmless in the face of the mitigating circumstances of defendant’s age of fifteen when he committed the crimes, and the presence of a single proper aggravating circumstance as found by the jury. See Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104 , 102 S.Ct. 869 , 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982); Commonwealth v. Holcomb, 508 Pa. 425 , 498 A.2d 833 (1985) (Hutchinson, J., Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court).

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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