Court Opinion

ID: 9716368
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:35:50.871671+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:44.448251
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. The issue concerning the admissibility of appellant’s confession obtained following an illegal arrest *252is controlled by Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 89 S. Ct. 1394, 22 L.Ed.2d 676 (1969). Under Davis, the appellant’s confession was clearly inadmissible.
The majority’s holding would permit the seizure of innocent citizens by government officials without the constitutional safeguards guaranteed by Article I, Section 8, of the Pennsylvania Constitution, P.S., and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The majority reasons that the appellant’s confession, made following his illegal arrest, is admissible because the confession was not causally related to an invasion of the appellant’s constitutional rights. The logical and dangerous result of this reasoning is to grant law enforcement officers an unfettered discretion to illegally seize any person or any number of persons on mere suspicion secure in the knowledge that if by chance a subsequent confession is obtained by means of a confrontation with a suspected co-defendant, the illegally seized individual will not have the right to suppress the tainted confession.
The conclusion the majority reaches ignores the purpose of the exclusionary constitutional rules by allowing subsequent discoveries from an illegal seizure to validate an arrest that was made without probable cause.
Accordingly, I would reverse and remand with the instruction to suppress the confession as the fruit of an illegal seizure.