Court Opinion

ID: 9763031
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:35:44.98755+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:15.053009
License: Public Domain

WIEAND, Judge,
concurring:
I join the majority’s decision to affirm the judgment of sentence. I write separately for the sole purpose of observing that an intent to abandon property lying next to a person cannot be found from his or her silence or failure to respond to a police officer’s questions regarding ownership of the property.
The Superior Court has recently held that abandonment may result where, in response to police questioning, a person denies ownership of property lying several feet away. See: Commonwealth v. Bennett, 412 Pa.Super. 603, 604 A.2d 276 (1992). The holding in Bennett, however, cannot be extended to a situation in which a person ignores and refuses to answer police questions regarding ownership. In this respect, I agree with Professor LaFave, who has said that a defendant’s denial of ownership should “be distinguished from mere silence in response to police questioning about ownership, which is not to be characterized in the same way. ‘To equate a passive failure to claim potentially incriminating evidence with an affirmative abandon*309ment of property would be to twist both logic and experience in a most uncomfortable knot.’ ” 1 LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 2.6(b), at p. 469 n. 54 (2d ed. 1987), quoting State v. Joyner, 66 Hawaii 543, 544, 669 P.2d 152, 153 (1983).
Nevertheless, review of the testimony at the suppression hearing in this case is persuasive that appellant did, in fact, affirmatively abandon the jacket which was subsequently seized and searched by police. Officer Fox, who entered the building where appellant was reported to have been dealing drugs, observed appellant as he placed the jacket on the bannister at the second floor landing of the staircase. Fox approached appellant and the two persons with him, identified himself as a police officer and asked appellant for identification. After appellant had identified himself, Fox asked him if the jacket on the bannister belonged to him. Appellant, according to Fox, denied ownership. Fox then went to the next floor to make certain that it had been secured. Meantime, Officer Bireley, who had followed Fox into the building, arrived at the second floor, where he observed the jacket on the bannister. When he asked appellant and the two persons on the landing if the jacket belonged to any of them, no one answered. Bireley thereupon seized the jacket, reached into a pocket and found twenty-one (21) packets of heroin.
Under these circumstances, I agree with the majority that appellant had abandoned the jacket and surrendered any expectation of privacy with respect thereto. Not only had he denied ownership in response to Officer Fox’s question regarding the jacket, but he also had failed to claim ownership when given an opportunity to do so by Officer Bireley. Therefore, he cannot complain that the police seized the jacket and examined the contents of the pocket. He no longer had any right to assert a privacy interest therein. See: Commonwealth v. Bennett, supra.
Moreover, because the abandonment occurred on a landing of a public housing project building, where the public, including the police, had a right to be, it cannot be said that *310appellant was unlawfully coerced to surrender his privacy interest in the jacket. Therefore, I agree that appellant’s abandonment of the jacket was voluntary.
I also agree with the majority that the trial court did not commit an abuse of discretion when it denied a second request by appellant for a continuance of his trial.