Commonwealth v. Pasture

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Commonwealth v. Pasture, 37 A.3d 1174 (Pa. 2012)
614 Pa. 333; 2012 Pa. LEXIS 163
Files, Saylor

Commonwealth v. Pasture

Opinion of the Court

ORDER

PER CURIAM.

AND NOW, this 24th day of January, 2012, the Petition for Allowance of Appeal is hereby GRANTED, the order of the Superior Court VACATED, and the matter REMANDED to that court for consideration of the issue in light of Commonwealth v. Perry, 32 A.3d 232 (Pa. 2011) (sentence can be overturned only if it results from manifest unreasonableness, partiality, bias, ill-will, or such lack of support so as to be clearly erroneous). Jurisdiction relinquished.

Justice SAYLOR files a Dissenting Statement.

Dissenting Opinion

Justice SAYLOR,

dissenting.

But for limited instances in which this Court undertakes review of the Superior Court’s legal determinations, see Commonwealth v. Walls, 592 Pa. 557, 926 A.2d 957, 961 (2007), the decision to disturb the intermediate court’s resolution of discretionary sentencing challenges leaves the impression that this Court has disregarded the jurisdictional boundaries imposed by the General Assembly. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9781(f). While I acknowledge that the majority of Justices did not share the similar concern that I expressed in Commonwealth v. Perry, 32 A.3d 232, 242-43 (Pa. 2011) (Saylor, J., dissenting), the reliance on that case to vacate the Superior Court’s order in the present matter only reinforces such impression. By their very nature, sentencing decisions are informed by the individual facts of each case, and this Court’s inclination to summarily vitiate the Superior Court’s reasonableness assessment of a sentence under a distinct factual *1175paradigm, in my opinion, resembles a circumvention of the limitations of Section 9781(f).

Reference

Full Case Name
COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Tyde PASTURE
Cited By
4 cases
Status
Published