# Commonwealth v. Minnis

> Superior Court of Pennsylvania · March 18, 1983 · 312 Pa. Super. 53

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9751047

## Case

- **Full name:** COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Kevin MINNIS, Appellant
- **Court:** Superior Court of Pennsylvania
- **Decided:** March 18, 1983
- **Citations:** 312 Pa. Super. 53; 458 A.2d 231; 1983 Pa. Super. LEXIS 2751
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by McEWEN
- **Judges:** Cercone, McEwen, Hoffman
- **Cited by:** 47 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/9751047

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- concluding there was sufficient evidence to sustain Minnis’s adjudication of delinquency when, inter alia, “the victim’s boyfriend [who witnessed the robbery], although he qualified his identification by reference to [Minnis’s] jacket, did not shy away from identifying appella…

## Opinion text

McEWEN, Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result. It is certainly clearly established that counsel must be present at any identification procedure after an arrest so as to ensure the elimination of suggestiveness from such procedures; and, it is just as clearly established that there must be exceptions to the rule, as, for example, when the confrontation is prompt and on-the-scene. The majority opinion of our distinguished colleague, Judge J. Sydney Hoffman, provides a fine exposition of the *61 issues attendant to this question. It seems, however, that while the majority opinion observes that “our courts ... have been fairly expansive in construing ‘on-the-scene’ ” {See p. 59), the majority opines that a prompt on-the-scene identification procedure is the only exception to the rule that counsel must be present for any confrontation procedure. It is that specific holding that causes me to be hesitant to join in the majority opinion since, while the courts seem to employ the term “prompt on-the-scene confrontation” to define the exception, the decisions construing that exception have not, as the foregoing excerpt from the majority opinion notes, been so narrowly restrictive. I simply am hesitant to apply so limited a label to the exception. The fact remains, however, that the facts of this case do not present such circumstances as to invoke the exception and, therefore, I concur in the result.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9751047. Public record. Not legal advice.