J-S14001-15

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION – SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

: PENNSYLVANIA

Appellee :

:

v. :

:

DELANO CURTIS MUNFORD, :

:

Appellant : No. 3035 EDA 2012

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence September 28, 2012,

Court of Common Pleas, Bucks County,

Criminal Division at No. CP-09-CR-0004822-2012

BEFORE: DONOHUE, OLSON and MUSMANNO, JJ.

MEMORANDUM BY DONOHUE, J.: FILED MARCH 02, 2015

Delano Curtis Munford (“Munford”) appeals from the judgment of 

sentence entered following his conviction of possession of marijuana with the 

intent to distribute (“PWID”), 35 P.S. § 780-113(a)(30). We affirm. 

On appeal, Munford challenges only the trial court’s denial of his 

motion to suppress. Munford’s Brief at 5. 

Our standard of review in addressing a challenge to 

the denial of a suppression motion is limited to 

determining whether the suppression court’s factual 

findings are supported by the record and whether 

the legal conclusions drawn from those facts are 

correct. Because the Commonwealth prevailed before

the suppression court, we may consider only the 

evidence of the Commonwealth and so much of the 

evidence for the defense as remains uncontradicted 

when read in the context of the record as a whole. 

Where the suppression court’s factual findings are 

supported by the record, we are bound by these 

findings and may reverse only if the court’s legal 

conclusions are erroneous. The suppression court’s 
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legal conclusions are not binding on an appellate 

court, whose duty it is to determine if the 

suppression court properly applied the law to the 

facts. Thus, the conclusions of law of the courts 

below are subject to our plenary review. Moreover, 

appellate courts are limited to reviewing only the 

evidence presented at the suppression hearing when 

examining a ruling on a pre-trial motion to suppress.

Commonwealth v. Ranson, 103 A.3d 73, 76 (Pa. Super. 2014). 

The facts as found by the trial court, and supported by the evidence of 

record, are as follows. On May 30, 2012, Officer Gregory Smith of the 

Bensalem Police Department went to Munford’s residence at 3110 Knights 

Road to execute a warrant for Munford’s arrest for felony PWID. N.T., 

9/28/12, at 5-6. Officer Smith, a ten-year veteran with the Bensalem Police 

Department, had been a member of the narcotics unit for five years and had 

served many arrest and search warrants as part of his position. Id. at 4. 

Officer Smith testified that serving arrest warrants for felony-level drug 

offenses is very dangerous, often involves violent people, and a common 

concern is the presence and use of deadly weapons against the police when 

executing an arrest warrant. Id. at 5. 

Officer Smith approached Munford’s door with three other officers. Id.

at 6, 9. They heard “several individuals inside talking” before knocking on 

the door. Id. After the officers knocked on the door, between fifteen and 

thirty seconds elapsed before Munford answered the door. Id. From the 

entrance to the apartment the officers could see Munford’s living room. Id.
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at 7. Officer Smith observed two or three other people sitting on the sofa. 

Id. at 6. He and Corporal Schwartz entered the residence while one of the 

remaining officers took Munford into custody. Id. The officers entered the 

apartment to determine whether these people presented a threat to the 

officers’ safety. Id. at 25. At that moment, another person emerged from 

the bathroom, which was down a short hallway from the living room. Id. at 

6. The officers instructed this person to sit on the sofa and then, out of 

concern for the officers’ safety, Officer Smith and Corporal Schwartz looked 

in the bedroom (which was adjacent to the bathroom) to determine whether 

anyone else was in the apartment. Id. at 6-8. As they looked into the 

bedroom, they observed segments of marijuana cigarettes, or “roaches,” on 

the nightstand. Id. at 8-9. 

Munford filed a motion to suppress arguing that the officers’ search of 

his residence, and resulting seizure of the marijuana roaches, was 

impermissible because they did not have a search warrant for the premises. 

At the conclusion of a hearing on Munford’s motion, the trial court found that 

the officers’ conduct was a permissible protective sweep incident to arrest 

and that because the roaches were discovered in plain view during this 

permissible action, Munford was not entitled to suppression of the 

contraband. Id. at 26. 

We find no error in this determination by the trial court. Generally, a 

warrant is required for a lawful search of a premises; however, “[i]t is well-
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settled that under emergent circumstances, protective sweeps are a wellrecognized exception to the warrant requirement.” Commonwealth v. 

Potts, 73 A.3d 1275, 1281 (Pa. Super. 2013), appeal denied, 83 A.3d 415 

(Pa. 2013) (citation omitted). 

“A protective sweep search is a quick and limited search of the 

premises, incident to an arrest, conducted to ensure the safety of the 

arresting officer. Its scope extends only to a visual inspection of those 

places that may harbor a person, who may constitute a danger to the 

officer.” In re J.E., 937 A.2d 421, 427 n.2 (Pa. 2007). There are two levels 

of protective sweeps, which have been defined as follows:

[A]s an incident to the arrest the officers could, as a 

precautionary matter and without probable cause or 

reasonable suspicion, look in closets and other 

spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest 

from which an attack could be immediately launched. 

Beyond that, however, we hold that there must be 

articulable facts which, taken together with the 

rational inferences from those facts, would warrant a 

reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area 

to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to 

those on the arrest scene.

Potts, 73 A.3d at 1281 (quoting Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325 (1990)). 

Pursuant to the first level of a protective sweep, 

without a showing of even reasonable suspicion, 

police officers may make cursory visual inspections 

of spaces immediately adjacent to the arrest scene, 

which could conceal an assailant. The scope of the 

second level permits a search for attackers further 

away from the place of arrest, provided that the 

officer who conducted the sweep can articulate 
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specific facts to justify a reasonable fear for the 

safety of himself and others.

Id. at 1281-82 (quoting Commonwealth v. Taylor, 771 A.2d 1261, 1267 

(Pa. 2001)). 

Accordingly, upon executing the arrest warrant at Munford’s residence, 

the police officers were automatically permitted to “look in closets and other 

spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from which an attack could 

be immediately launched[.]” Id. at 1281. The evidence reveals that the 

bedroom was not visible from the entryway where the arrest took place, but 

that it was down a short hallway from the living room. N.T., 9/28/12, at 7. 

As such, although the evidence reveals that this was a small apartment, we 

cannot conclude that the bedroom was immediately adjoining the place of 

arrest. 

We conclude, however, that the evidence does support a finding that 

the officers had “articulat[able] specific facts to justify a reasonable fear for 

the safety of himself and others” so as to justify a protective sweep that 

exceeded the areas immediately adjacent to the location of the arrest. 

Potts, 73 A.3d at 1282. Officer Smith testified that violence is common 

when executing arrest warrants for felony drug charges and that a common 

concern is the presence and use of deadly weapons against the police when 

executing such arrest warrant. N.T., 9/28/12, at 5. Before knocking on the 

front door, the officers heard multiple people talking. Id. at 6. There was a 
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pause of fifteen to thirty seconds before Munford answered the door. Id. In 

consideration of the facts here, it is rational to infer that it would not take 

between fifteen and thirty second to answer the door and that the pause 

could have been the result of hiding items (or persons) that posed a risk to 

the officers’ safety. Once inside the apartment, the officers observed two 

people sitting on a sofa in the living room. Id. A third person then emerged 

from the bathroom. Id. The emergence of a third person from a more 

remote part of the apartment, coupled with the pause before Munford 

opened the front door, provided an adequate basis for the officers to suspect 

that other people might be concealed in the residence. This permitted the 

police officers to check areas that might harbor other potential attackers 

further away from the arrest; i.e., Munford’s bedroom. Potts, 73 A.3d at 

1282; see also Commonwealth v. Crouse, 729 A.2d 588, 598 (holding 

that protective sweep of second floor of residence was permissible because 

in course of executing arrest warrant on first floor, police became aware that 

there were persons on the second floor hidden from view). 

Thus, Officer Smith lawfully looked into Munford’s bedroom, where he 

observed the marijuana roaches in plain view. Although the purpose of a 

protective sweep is to assure officer safety, police officers are not required 

to ignore contraband they encounter in the course thereof. Potts, 73 A.3d 

at 1282 (“If, while conducting a protective sweep, the officer should ... 

discover contraband other than weapons, he clearly cannot be required to 
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ignore the contraband, and the Fourth Amendment does not require its 

suppression in such circumstances.”). 

On appeal, Munford argues primarily that the police were not entitled 

to enter Munford’s residence because (1) they did not have a search 

warrant; (2) they did not have to search the residence for him because he 

answered the door; and (3) he did not attempt to flee from the police as 

they took him into custody. Munford’s Brief at 12-13. These arguments 

ignore the existence and purpose of the protective sweep doctrine, which is 

an exception to the search warrant requirement and exists for the purpose 

of ensuring officer safety when arresting a suspect in his or her home. In 

other words, our focus is not on whether Munford submitted easily when the 

officers arrested him in his home, but what scope of protective sweep the 

officers were lawfully permitted to perform and whether they exceeded that 

scope. 

As discussed above, the officers had articulable facts to believe that 

there was a concern for their safety, and therefore, the protective sweep 

was permissible. We find no error in the trial court’s denial of Munford’s 

motion to suppress. 

Judgment of sentence affirmed. 
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Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 3/2/2015