Court Opinion

ID: 9756996
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:13:16.316037+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:58:04.315882
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice
(concurring).
 The facts of this case are similar to those of Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975). It is important to note, therefore, as Mr. Justice Blackmun did in Brown, that when statements are given as the result of an arrest without probable cause a court must consider fourth amendment rights as well as the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. See also Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). Thus the required inquiry goes beyond the mere voluntariness of the statements or waiver of fifth amendment rights. As Mr. Justice Blackmun stated for the Court in Brown v. Illinois:
“[E]ven if the statements in this case were found to be voluntary under the Fifth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment issue remains. In order for the causal *329chain, between the illegal arrest and the statements made subsequent thereto, to be broken [,] Wong Sun requires not merely that the statement meet the Fifth Amendment standard of voluntariness but that it be "sufficiently the act of free will to purge the primary taint.’ ”
Applying such an analysis to the facts of this case, there can be no. doubt that, as the majority concludes, the statement should not be admitted into evidence. See Commonwealth v. Whitaker, Pa., 336 A.2d 603 (1975). I, therefore, concur in the result.
POMEROY, J., joins in this concurring opinion.