Court Opinion

ID: 9636890
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:48:04.663208+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:50.955734
License: Public Domain

MCEWEN, P.J.E.,
Concurring and Dissenting.
¶ 1 While the author of the Majority Opinion has undertaken a careful analysis and provided a perceptive expression of view, and while I hasten to join in the *490conclusion of the Majority that the police did not violate the rights of appellees as guaranteed by Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, and therefore join in the decision to reverse the order of suppression, I am nonetheless compelled to disagree with the ruling that only appel-lee Grundy was entitled to claim the protections of that Constitutional provision.
¶ 2 The trial judge in her Opinion to this Court phrased the relevant issue as “whether the police had the right to enter on fenced [and] gated private property without a warrant and without even the most minimal attempt to contact the owner or owners for permission.” Slip Opinion, p. 4. This Court recently, in Commonwealth v. Reed, 851 A.2d 958 (Pa.Super.2004), when confronted with a claim that the hallway and stairway of an apartment house were protected by the Pennsylvania Constitution, concluded that “[i]f even one unrelated person had an unfettered right to access an area, the area is not protected in Pennsylvania from government searches and seizures.” Id. at 962. In the present case, the presence of the police on the common driveway of this collection of garages, entry of which was through unlocked gates, was even less invasive than the conduct approved by this Court in Reed. Therefore, there is no support for appellees’ argument, which was accepted by the trial judge,3 that the police in this case were not in a legal position to view their activity in the garage.
¶ 3 Thus, since the police presence outside the subject garage was not prohibited, it follows that when they witnessed defendants in the possession of the recently stolen vehicle, and they had legitimate reason to believe that that evidence was soon to be damaged or destroyed, there existed sufficient exigent circumstances4 to justify their actions. See: Commonwealth v. Carelli, 377 Pa.Super. 117, 546 A.2d 1185, 1192, 1197 (1988), appeal denied, 521 Pa. 609, 557 A.2d 341 (1989) (observation of evidence located in a protected area from a lawful vantage point outside the protected area is generally deemed not to be a search); Commonwealth v. Govens, 429 Pa.Super. 464, 632 A.2d 1316 (1993) (en banc), appeal denied, 539 Pa. 675, 652 A.2d 1321 (1994) (defendant had standing, but search without warrant did not violate constitutional rights). Consequently, on this record there is no basis upon which to find that the police violated the constitutional rights of the appellees.
¶ 4 Although the conclusion that the police did not act improperly renders moot the question of whether each of the appel-lees was entitled to assert the Constitutional protection afforded by Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, I am obliged to express the basis for my disagreement with the Majority on this issue. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in the landmark case of Commonwealth v. Sell, 504 Pa. 46, 470 A.2d 457 (1983), held that in this Commonwealth “a defendant accused of a possessory crime who seeks to challenge a search and seizure under Article I, section 8 has ‘automatic standing’ ... to maintain that challenge ...,” id. 504 Pa. at 66, 470 A.2d at 468, and declared:
We decline to undermine the clear language, of Article I, section 8 by making the Fourth Amendment’s amorphous “legitimate expectation of privacy” standard a part of our state guarantee *491against unreasonable searches and seizures. We do so not only because we find the United States Supreme Court’s analytical distinction between “standing” and “threshold substantive question,” see Rakas [v. Illinois,] 439 U.S. 128, 139 n. 7, 99 S.Ct. 421, 428 n. 7, 58 L.Ed.2d 387, unhelpful to our interpretation of Article I, section 8’s protection, but also because we believe the United States Supreme Court’s current use of the “legitimate expectation of privacy” concept needlessly detracts from the critical element of unreasonable governmental intrusion.
Sell, supra, at 66-67, 470 A.2d at 468. Eventually, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did include the concept of “legitimate expectation of privacy” in the analysis of Article I, Section 8 claims, but made it clear that this concept was operable only when the focus of the reviewing court was on the place searched by the police. See: Commonwealth v. Peterson, 535 Pa. 492, 636 A.2d 615 (1993). See also: Commonwealth v. Carlton, 549 Pa. 174, 180, 701 A.2d 143, 145-146 (1997) (“[I]n order for a defendant accused of a possessory crime to prevail in a challenge to the search and seizure which provided the evidence used against him, [a defendant] must, as a threshold matter, establish that he has a legally cognizable expectation of privacy in the premises which were searched.”).
¶ 5 The Supreme Court, in its 1993 decision in Commonwealth v. Peterson, supra, addressed the issue of whether the defendant was entitled to expect constitutional protection while present in an “abandoned storefront,” id. at 495, 636 A.2d at 617, and unanimously ruled that the defendant had no legitimate expectation of privacy in a place where “he had no rights as against the owner, and none which would permit him to exclude other persons attempting to enter.” Id. at 500, 636 A.2d at 619 (citation omitted). The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has continued to apply the same approach in Commonwealth v. Gordon, 546 Pa. 65, 683 A.2d 253 (1996) (no privacy interest in abandoned building where defendant had no right to exclude other), and in Commonwealth v. Hawkins, 553 Pa. 76, 718 A.2d 265 (1998) (defendant had abandoned any interest in the property seized by transferring it to another person prior to the police seizing it from that other person). More recently, this Court, in Commonwealth v. Perea, 791 A.2d 427 (Pa.Super.2002), appeal denied, 568 Pa. 736, 798 A.2d 1288 (2002), applied the Peterson rationale in concluding that the defendant had no expectation of privacy in an “abandoned vehicle”, which was parked on the street with no valid registration, no license plate, two flat tires, and an expired inspection sticker. Id. at 428-429. The unifying fact in each of these cases was abandonment: either the site searched was open to anyone by virtue of its owner having abandoned it, or the person asserting the right to challenge the police seizure had abandoned the property. Compare: Commonwealth v. Carlton, supra at 180, 701 A.2d at 146 (expectation of privacy was found to exist where defendant Donald Carlton was found to have “used” the residence searched, even after his counsel argued on the issue of constructive possession that he did not live there). The factual history of the present case, however, reveals that all of the defendants were invitees to a leased structure, the lessee of which had the ability to legally exclude others by closing and/or locking the door.5 It is upon this basis *492that I would hold that all of the defendants were entitled to the protections of Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution to the extent that those protections afforded them relief.6 See e.g.: Commonwealth v. Govens, supra.
¶ 6 Therefore, I concur in the decision of the Majority to reverse the Order of the trial court.

. It merits mention that the trial judge did not have the benefit of this Court’s decision in Commonwealth v. Reed, 851 A.2d 958 (Pa.Super.2004).

. See: Commonwealth v. Lopez, 525 Pa. 185, 190-191, 579 A.2d 854, 856 (1990), cited with approval in Commonwealth v. Peterson, 535 Pa. 492, 499, 636 A.2d 615, 618 (1993).

. Although the garage here appears to have been devoted to a commercial use, it bespeaks the obvious that in most instances a garage is part of residential use by attendant homeowners. It strikes me that if one accepts the rationale of the Majority, a guest present in *492the garage attached to the residential home of a lessee would have no reasonable expectation of privacy and would be subject to the unrestricted prerogative of the police to conduct a search of those things not physically attached to his person. Some would say that such a result would eviscerate the concept of automatic standing in this Commonwealth. See: Commonwealth v. Sell, 504 Pa. 46, 470 A.2d 457 (1983).

. I differ with the reliance of the Majority upon the Federal Court Opinions in Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 119 S.Ct. 469, 142 L.Ed.2d 373 (1998), and United States v. Silva, 247 F.3d 1051 (9th Cir.2001), since those cases were "standing” cases under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution which, unlike the Pennsylvania Constitution, has been interpreted to contain no right of automatic standing. Nor, in my view is the majority’s citation to Commonwealth v. Ferretti, 395 Pa.Super. 629, 577 A.2d 1375 (1990), appeal denied, 527 Pa. 597, 589 A.2d 688 (1991), apt, since the Court there was addressing a challenge brought by a defendant who was not charged with a possessory crime, and the Court specifically held that it was not a case controlled by Commonwealth v. Sell, 504 Pa. 46, 470 A.2d 457 (1983). See: Commonwealth v. Ferretti, supra at 1380, n. 3.