Court Opinion

ID: 9717313
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:01:26.540515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:52.473082
License: Public Domain

KELLY, Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result. I agree with appellant that at the time of his violent attempt to escape from the control of the campus police, he had been subjected only to a non-custodial detention and not a custodial detention or formal arrest. See Commonwealth v. Ellis, 379 Pa.Super. 337, 349-360, 549 A.2d 1323, 1329-34 (1988). Nonetheless, I would construe “arrest” as used in the resisting arrest statute to include lawful non-custodial detentions as well as custodial detentions and formal arrests.
I find that the statute is plainly intended to sanction and deter unlawful violent or potentially dangerous resistance by a suspect to the lawful exercise of police authority over the suspect. Though non-custodial detentions do not constitute “arrests” for Fourth Amendment purposes, they nonetheless involve the lawful exercise of control over a suspect while suspicious circumstances are being promptly investigated to determine whether formal arrest or release is appropriate. Any construction of 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5104 which would distinguish between lawful non-custodial detentions and custodial detentions or formal arrests in this context would ignore the plain intent of the statute, unreasonably imperil law enforcement personnel, and carry constitutional distinctions improperly and illogically out of the context in which they belong. Though the statute could certainly be drafted so as to make this point more clearly, I decline to adopt any distinction such as that appellant has proposed absent a clear mandate by our legislature. See 1 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 1901, 1921(a); 1922(1).
I agree that the campus police had territorial jurisdiction to make this arrest. There is no basis in the language of the applicable statute to limit territorial jurisdiction of cam*606pus police based upon the use to which particular campus property is put. I note, however, that I do not read the majority opinion to have addressed or decided the issue of whether non-university property logically contained within a university campus (e.g. property surrounded by or contiguous on three sides to campus property) or property owned by a university but entirely removed from the main campus would fall within the jurisdiction of the campus police.