Opinion ID: 2756539
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Robbery of Poland Jewelers

Text: On the morning of March 29, 2011, appellant Anthony Burnett, and his co-felon, Raheem Hankerson, robbed A.I. Poland Jewelers in Philadelphia. In the days leading up to the robbery, Hankerson and Burnett planned the robbery and visited the store. In addition, Burnett secured a gun to use during the crime and Hankerson arranged to borrow a black Honda owned 3 by his girlfriend, Shavon Adams, for use in the robbery. On the day of the robbery, Hankerson borrowed the Honda from Adams, picked up Burnett, and drove to Poland Jewelers. Adams, who was not acquainted with Burnett, had given Hankerson permission to use the Honda but so far as the record reveals did not know that Burnett would be a passenger in the car or that Hankerson intended to use it during commission of a crime. After reaching the store, Hankerson parked the car on a nearby side street as Burnett got ready to enter the store. Wearing a hat, wig, and sunglasses, Burnett entered Poland Jewelers and, posing as a customer, engaged an employee in a discussion about a potential purchase. Burnett then pointed a gun at the employee and the owner of the store, and, after ordering them to get on the floor, restrained them with plastic “zip ties.” A store video security system clearly captured Burnett’s face during the early stages of the robbery. After he subdued the victims, Burnett called Hankerson by cell phone and told him to join him in the store. The two men donned latex gloves and looted the store, stealing, among other items, jewelry, a revolver, and the videotape from its security system. At one point when the store owner attempted to free himself, Burnett bludgeoned him on the head with the gun, inflicting wounds that required seven surgical staples to close. Acting quickly, the robbers threw their loot into shopping bags. Hankerson shoved the stolen revolver into a pocket of his coat and left the store, and Burnett followed him out. The robbers fled from the area in Adams’ Honda with Hankerson driving. They, however, got lost and drove down a dead-end street about two and a half miles from Poland Jewelers. For reasons that the parties do not discuss in their briefs, instead of backing out or turning around and continuing to drive away in 4 the Honda, they parked the Honda on the dead-end street. Then from the back seat, Burnett and Hankerson placed the shopping bags in the trunk of the Honda, and exited the vehicle. They then left the area on foot. After Hankerson and Burnett fled, the victims freed themselves and called the police. An initial police radio broadcast reported that Poland Jewelers had been robbed by two black men, one wearing a wig and one wearing a yellow coat, both armed with guns. Officers responded to the scene and quickly surmised that the robbers used a vehicle to make their escape, a conclusion that they reached as none of the officers who responded to the robbery had seen anyone fleeing the area on foot, and the officers believed that two men running while wearing wigs and carrying bags of goods likely would have been noticed and reported. The police then received a call reporting that a “suspicious black Honda” was parked on a dead-end residential street not far from the scene of the robbery. An officer dispatched to that location interviewed two witnesses who reported that its operator had driven the Honda up the street at a high rate of speed; that two black men had exited the car; that one wore a tan jacket and jumped out of the driver’s side of the car and opened the trunk; that the second man threw various items into the trunk; that the man in the tan jacket threw a bag into the trunk; and that the two men then fled the area on foot. The officer suspected that the vehicle had been used in the Poland Jewelers robbery and notified police dispatch of what he had discovered. The police quickly ascertained from the Honda’s license plate that the registered owner of the vehicle had an address in a section of Philadelphia different from that where the police found it. The police then sent a patrol car to the Honda owner’s 5 address in an unsuccessful effort to contact the Honda’s owner, and then had the Honda towed to the police garage. After the police recovered the Honda, the detective assigned to the case prepared an affidavit and application for a search warrant, which the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office approved. The application was submitted to a magistrate who approved it and issued the search warrant. The police executed the warrant by searching the trunk of the car and in the search recovered the jewelry, store gun, stolen security videotape, two wigs, the bloodstained gun used in the robbery, a wallet containing Hankerson’s identification card, latex gloves, and “zip ties” identical to those used during the robbery to bind the victims. A test of the latex gloves for DNA evidence revealed that one contained the DNA of Burnett and the store owner and the other contained the DNA of both Hankerson and the store owner.