Commonwealth v. Smith

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Musmanno,

So insignificant an event in the world of constitutional rights and liberties as the purchase of an ice cream cone on a summer’s evening, set off, in this case, a chain of events which carried litigation into a court of quarter sessions, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the office of the Solicitor General of the United States, and the Supreme Court of the United States — and now into this Court again.

On the evening of August 8, 1960, E. Newbold Smith, a graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy, married and a father of three…