Court Opinion

ID: 9693819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:01:40.079453+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:50.666102
License: Public Domain

CASTILLE, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent to the majority’s conclusion that the firearms seized from appellant’s “private” collection did not constitute derivative contraband. Because the Commonwealth established a sufficient nexus between the property at issue and appellant’s underlying criminal conduct of unlawfully selling firearms, appellant has no entitlement to the proceeds of *35the sale of the confiscated firearms. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the lower courts.
Appellant contends that the firearms stored at his residence and at his daughter-in-law’s residence were merely part of his private collection, unavailable for sale and hence unrelated to his underlying criminal activity, and that the Commonwealth failed to sustain its burden of proving otherwise by a preponderance of the evidence. However, the trial court properly determined that at appellant’s guilty plea and sentencing hearing, appellant adopted the contents of the presentence investigation report (“PSI”) and the affidavit of probable cause attached thereto. After reviewing the PSI, appellant stated that only one mistake relating to his educational level existed on the PSI. In the affidavit of probable cause which led to appellant’s arrest, Trooper Diskin stated:
“By [appellant’s] own admission, he indicates that he has guns stored at his place and a much larger amount at his daughter-in-laws [sic] residence. He has asked me on more then [sic] one occasion what type I was interested in and indicated that he had what I was looking for along with other types that I might be interested in” (PSI at 40).
This undisputed statement alone is sufficient to support the finding of the lower courts that the Commonwealth established a nexus between appellant’s underlying criminal activity and the firearms which appellant now seeks to shield under the guise that the firearms constituted his private collection. Since appellant plainly admits in this statement that he could obtain whatever type of firearm Trooper Diskin was interested in from the guns that he had stored at his residence and at his daughter-in-law’s residence, appellant’s transparent attempt to cast what is truly his “inventory” as a “private collection” fails.
The conclusion that the firearms stowed at the two locations were actually part of appellant’s sales inventory is further buttressed by the fact that appellant admitted that each of the forty-eight firearms that he sold to Trooper Diskin and which served as the predicate for the three convictions against him came from this same inventory. By presenting evidence that *36appellant had violated the sanctity of his “private” collection forty-eight times for a pure profit motive, and had further advertised his willingness to sell from that collection any other firearms which Officer Diskin desired, the Commonwealth established by a preponderance of the evidence that there was actually nothing “private” about this collection. Instead, as the Superior Court correctly held, the firearms from this collection were intended by appellant to be used in illegal sales of firearms and thus were derivative contraband.
The majority attempts to derive support for its conclusion that the firearms at issue were not derivative contraband by asserting the “tenuous” nature of the connection between the unsold guns in the “collection” and appellant’s criminal activity. Specifically, the majority points to the fact that these guns were neither sold, displayed, nor specifically described. However, the majority overlooks the significance of the fact that appellant had already told Trooper Diskin that he could get him any gun that Diskin was looking for from this collection, and thus that appellant obviously did not feel it necessary to further describe any particular gun with specificity-
I agree with the majority’s statement that the Court must be vigilant in guarding against the temptation to create a “gun exception” to the general rule that a nexus must be proven between the seized item and the criminal conduct. However, this case does not threaten to create such an exception — here the evidence establishes the requisite nexus beyond peradventure. Consequently, I would deny the petition for return of property and affirm the Order of the Superior Court.
SAYLOR, J., did not participate in the consideration or decision of this matter.
CAPPY, J., joins this dissenting opinion.