Court Opinion

ID: 9693797
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:00:28.852608+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:50.418372
License: Public Domain

CASTILLE, Justice,
dissenting.
I join the portion of Justice Capp/s dissenting opinion which concludes that the officer’s decision to frisk appellant was not violative of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). I further agree with Justice Cappy that the “plain feel” doctrine as enunciated in Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 124 L.Ed.2d 334 (1993), is consistent with the privacy protections provided by Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution and should therefore be adopted in this Commonwealth. However, unlike Justice Cappy, I believe that the officer’s conduct was proper and within the parameters of the “plain feel” doctrine. Therefore, I dissent separately.
The United States Supreme Court held in Dickerson that: If a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect’s outer clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately apparent, there has been no inva- . sion of the suspect’s privacy beyond that already authorized by the officer’s search for weapons; if the object is contraband, its warrantless seizure would be justified by the same practical considerations that inhere in the plain view context.
Id. at 375-76, 113 S.Ct. 2130. In Dickerson, two police officers stopped and frisked the suspect after observing him acting suspiciously while departing from an apartment building known for drug sales. The search revealed no weapons, but the officer who conducted the search testified that as he patted down the front of the suspect’s body, he felt a small lump in the front pocket. The officer “examined it with [his] fingers and slid it and it felt to be a lump of crack cocaine in cellophane.” Id. at 369, 113 S.Ct. 2130. The officer reached into the suspect’s pocket and retrieved a small plastic bag containing crack cocaine. After noting that the propriety of the stop was not at issue, the United States Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether the officer who conducted the *655search was acting within the lawful bounds marked by Terry at the time he gained probable cause to believe that the lump in the suspect’s jacket was contraband. The record revealed that the officer did not immediately upon initial contact recognize the lump in the suspect’s pocket as being crack cocaine. Rather, the officer determined that the lump was contraband after “squeezing, sliding and otherwise manipulating the contents of the defendant’s pocket” — a pocket which the officer already knew contained no weapon. Id. at 377, 113 S.Ct. 2130. Thus, the United States Supreme Court concluded that the officer’s continued exploration of the suspect’s pocket after having realized that it contained no weapon was unrelated to the sole justification of the search under Terry : the protection of the police officer and others nearby. Accordingly, the Court held that the search of the suspect’s pocket was improper. Thus, pursuant to Dickerson, an officer may lawfully seize contraband found on a suspect provided that the officer has reasonable suspicion to search the suspect for weapons and the officer immediately recognizes the item as contraband without conducting some further search of the object.
In the instant case, unlike the particular facts in Dickerson, the identity of the cocaine was immediately apparent to the officer. The officer testified as follows:
Q. Officer, when you — I’m sorry. When you say you were patting him down, were you patting down the outside of the clothing or were you reaching inside his clothing?
A. Patting down the outside of the clothing. As I was working my way down, came to the right pocket, outer pocket, where I felt a hard chunky substance in plastic, which I knew that it was crack cocaine.
Q. Have you felt that before?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. In what capacity?
A. In other arrests.
Q. And what has that substance been in other arrests?
A. Cocaine, alleged form of rock cocaine.
*656Q. Okay. Now, when you patted that substance, you said that you — well, what did you think when you patted it?
A. I thought it was cocaine right off the bat.
Q. And how long did it take you to reach that conclusion? A. Instantly, as soon as I felt it.
Notes of Testimony, Suppression Hearing, (N.T.) at 11-12 (emphasis added). The officer further testified that he was “kind of squeezing” the pocket area before he asked appellant if there were any needles in the pocket. N.T. at 13.
On cross-examination, the officer testified as follows:
Q. Officer, is it fair to say that once you squeezed the items, you could determine that it was some type of what you described or what you believed to be cocaine?
A. What I believed it was?
Q. Yes.
A. Yes, I did.
Q. After that squeezing, then you took the items out of his pocket; is that correct?
A. That’s correct, after asking the defendant again if he had any needles in that pocket.
N.T. at 14-15.
I do not believe that the officer here exceeded the parameters of the “plain feel” doctrine as enunciated in Dickerson. The officer had over four years of experience and testified that it was instantly apparent to him that the item he felt during the pat-down of appellant’s pocket was cocaine. He did not slide the object, roll it between his fingers or otherwise manipulate it. Although the officer acknowledged that he was “kind of squeezing” the cocaine, unlike the officer in Dickerson, he was already aware “right off the bat” that the item was cocaine. Further, the officer was still in the process of frisking appellant for weapons. He had not already concluded that no weapons were present. Therefore, Dickerson does not mandate suppression under these circumstances.
A slight squeeze is inherent in a pat-down search, for it is through the fingers that the human body exercises the tactile *657sense, much as a non-sighted individual “sees” a person’s face through the fingers placed slightly upon the face or “reads” by Braille. In order to perform a real-life pat-down on the street, an officer does not simply extend his hands in a stiff and robotic fashion. A slight amount of hand-cupping and finger pressure is necessary for an officer to perform a pat down in order to be able to ascertain in his own mind whether an object is a weapon. The officer sub judice did not squeeze the item and roll it between his fingers as did the officer in Dickerson. Rather, the squeezing was immediate and slight, consistent with a permissible pat-down search. Surely the United States Supreme Court did not intend for officers to conduct pat-down searches with their fingers stiff and straight as if fused at the knuckles. Such a result would be not only absurd, but would be inconsistent with the reasoning of Terry which permits a thorough and careful pat-down for weapons in order to protect the safety of the officer and the public. Terry, 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S.Ct. 1868.
Other courts construing similar factual patterns have refused to invalidate a pat-down search pursuant to Dickerson where the officer slightly squeezed the contraband. In State v. Smith, 329 S.C. 550, 495 S.E.2d 798 (1998), the court held that although there was testimony in the record that the officer squeezed the outside of the defendant’s jacket, it was not sufficient to invalidate the seizure under Dickerson. The officer testified that he squeezed the outside of the defendant’s jacket and squeezed around the package. He stated that after doing this, “there was no doubt in my mind it was marijuana after feeling it.” The officer also admitted that he felt the package through the jacket with his fingertips, the palm of his hand, and the entire hand. He testified that the first time he felt the package, it was obvious to him that it was a bag, and that he did not have to determine the contents of the package because he already knew what it was when he felt it. The court reasoned that:
As such, we find this case is distinguishable from Dickerson in that [the officer] detected the drugs during the initial search for weapons rather than a further search. Other *658than the squeeze described by [the officer], his testimony indicates he determined the object was contraband as soon as he felt it. Unlike the patdown in Dickerson, [the officer’s] identification of the substance did not require additional squeezing or manipulation.
Id: 495 S.E.2d at 803.
Similarly, here the officer’s detection of the drugs occurred during the initial search of appellant for weapons. Like the officer in Smith, the officer here determined that the object was contraband as soon as he felt it. The identification of the substance did not require additional squeezing or manipulation. Accordingly, the officer did not exceed the bounds of a permissible search pursuant to the “plain feel” doctrine. See also Andrews v. State, 221 Ga.App. 492, 471 S.E.2d 567 (1996) (seizure of a “cookie” of crack cocaine under the “plain feel” doctrine was valid where the officer squeezed the object in the defendant’s shorts to confirm his initial belief that it was crack cocaine); In the Interest of B.C., 453 Pa.Super. 294, 683 A.2d 919 (1996) (seizure of a baggy containing packets of crack cocaine was justified under “plain feel” doctrine where the officer squeezed the suspect’s pocket and immediately recognized the bulge as packets of a controlled substance); Strickland v. State, 923 S.W.2d 617 (Tex.Ct.App.1995) (officer’s search for weapons did not exceed the bounds of Terry where he moved his fingertips across an object in the defendant’s pocket, but did not extensively manipulate the defendant’s pocket or its contents and immediately recognized the object as a crack pipe).
Accordingly, I would hold that the thirty-six bags of crack cocaine found on appellant are not suppressible. Since the majority’s holding is to the contrary, I dissent.
NEWMAN, J., joins this dissenting opinion.