Opinion ID: 2374008
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Legal Consequences of an Illegal Arrest

Text: It is long-established law that the fruits of an illegal search made by an individual who was not acting for the state are not suppressible under the exclusionary rule. Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 41 S.Ct. 574, 65 L.Ed. 1048 (1921); Commonwealth v. Dingfelt, 227 Pa.Super. 380, 323 A.2d 145 (1974). [6] Unlike the private searcher who can be acting for his own ends, [7] one making a citizen's arrest [8] is, definitionally, acting under the authority of the state. The legitimating factor which distinguishes his actions from an unprivileged battery or kidnapping is the state recognition and sanction of this act. [9] Of course, in any case which would come before the criminal courts, the police and prosecution would also have ratified the citizen's arrest by taking the arrestee into custody and by seeking to use any evidence that was the fruit of that arrest. [10] Since the very occurrence of the act is freighted with the authority of the state, if that act is committed improperly, the fruits of that arrest must be suppressed. A case recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court reviews and restates the elements necessary for state action. Our cases have accordingly insisted that the conduct allegedly causing the deprivation of a federal right to be fairly attributable to the state. These cases reflect a two-part approach to the question of fair attribution. First, the deprivation must be caused by the exercise of some right or privilege created by the state . . . Second, the party charged with the deprivation must be a person who may fairly be said to be a state actor. This may be because . . . his conduct is otherwise chargeable to the state. Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., Inc., 457 U.S. 922, 102 S.Ct. 2744 at 2754, 73 L.Ed.2d 482 (1982). These conditions are met here. The test has also been set out by the U.S. Supreme Court in a criminal context. The critical factor, as the United States Supreme Court has stated, is whether [the private individual] in light of all the circumstances of the case, must be regarded as having acted as an `instrument' or agent of the state . . . Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 487, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2049, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971). Commonwealth v. Borecky, 277 Pa.Super. 244 at 249, 419 A.2d 753 at 755-6 (1980). Again, it is clear that in a citizen's arrest, legitimated by state law, and ratified by the police and prosecution, the arresting person is an instrument of the state. To hold, as we do here, that the fruits of an illegal arrest by an individual must be suppressed, is not inconsistent with the rule stating that the fruits of an illegal search and seizure of things by an individual are not suppressible. This is so because an arrest by an individual is necessarily undertaken under the authority of the state; while a search and seizure of things may, of course, be carried out for personal purposes, without such authority. This holding acts to fill a gap in the law, rather than to contradict established law. The usual case dealing with private actors and the Fourth Amendment involves searches and seizures of things; not the seizure of a person. A few cases have dealt with the suppressibility of the fruits of an illegal citizen's arrest. A 1949 case out of Kentucky, Thacker v. Commonwealth, 310 Ky. 702, 221 S.W.2d 682, held that a person making a citizen's arrest is acting for and on behalf of the sovereignty. Therefore it followed that he would be subject to Kentucky's constitutional provision which is parallel to the Fourth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. Thacker, supra, at 683. The legality of a citizen's arrest was examined by this court recently. Commonwealth v. Andrews, 285 Pa.Super. 100, 426 A.2d 1160 (1981). [11] The arrest was found to have been legal; but there would have been no purpose to that enquiry and finding if legal consequences did not flow from the finding. The only apparent legal consequence of illegality of the arrest would have been the suppression of the fruits of the arrest. This was not made explicit in Andrews, but here we make it so. We hold, as a matter of federal constitutional law, that the fruits of an illegal citizen's arrest are subject to the full action of the Fourth Amendment and to the exclusionary rule. On separate, independent and adequate state grounds, applying Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution of this Commonwealth, we hold that the same results also obtain. [12]