Court Opinion

ID: 9652233
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:21:02.070972+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:49.593082
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring:
I have concluded that the affidavit in support of the warrant was sufficient, but for different reasons than the majority’s.
I cannot join the majority’s opinion because I think Judge HOFFMAN correct in his conclusion that the informant’s statement was not a declaration against penal interest; I also think him correct in his conclusion that none of the four factors identified in Commonwealth v. Ambers, 225 Pa.Super. 381, 310 A.2d 347 (1973), is present. I further cannot *9join the majority’s opinion because it stands for the proposition (implicitly if not explicitly) that the mere fact of arrest confers on the person arrested an aura of veracity. However, I agree with the majority that the four factors are not the only factors to be considered, but that we should look at all of the circumstances of each particular case. When I look at all of the circumstances here, I am persuaded that the district justice was justified in issuing the warrant.
In Commonwealth v. Purcell, 251 Pa.Super. 545, 380 A.2d 914 (1977); this court summarized the test to be applied by an issuing authority, in deciding whether to believe a hearsay statement in an affidavit, as follows:
[T]he issuing authority must by reference to the information in the affidavit be able to answer two questions: (1) Do I have enough information to warrant the belief that the informant could know what the officer says she told him she knew? And (2) If I do have enough such information, do I also have enough information to warrant the belief that she did know it?
251 Pa.Super. at 550, 380 A.2d at 917.
Here, the affidavit starts by reciting that on February 21, 1976, at about 1:00 a.m. Officer Donald Tappan found the marihuana on the informant, Terry Lynn Woodrow, and was told by Woodrow that he had purchased the marihuana from appellee. The affidavit goes on to recite that Woodrow was committed to the county prison to await the action of the authorities of the Loysville Youth Development Center, which he had run away from, and that at about 9:50 a.m. the affiant, Officer Richard Dougherty, and Officer Charles Gulick went to the prison to question Woodrow. The affidavit then says that this is what Woodrow told the two officers:
[O]n Thursday the 19th of February, 1976 he was in the company of Robert J. Reisinger of 120 Carol Lane, Enola, Penna. and one Frederick Miller of Marysville, Pa. During the course of a discussion Woodrow mentioned that he wanted to buy some marijuana and that Reisinger replied that he had some marijuana he would sell to him. Accord*10ing to Woodrow all three of them (Woodrow, Reisinger, and Miller) drove to the Reisinger home at 120 Carol Lane, Enola, Penna. where they entered the rear kitchen door. Others present in the home at that time was a young child and another woman believed to be Reisinger’s wife. According to Woodrow, Mr. Reisinger opened one of the kitchen cabinets (which Woodrow believes were painted white and revealed a large heavy-duty green garbage bag which was inside this cabinet. Woodrow stated that Reisinger reached into this bag and produced a plastic bag containing approx. Vi pound of marijuana. Reisinger was heard to ask his wife where the scales were and then produced a set of weighing scales from another drawer or cabinet in the kitchen. Reisinger then weighed out an ounce of marijuana, handed it to Woodrow, and Woodrow in return gave him $15.00. Woodrow informed us that Robert Reisinger had informed him that he still had approx. 25 pounds of marijuana remaining in the plastic trash bag which was in the kitchen cabinets. Reisinger also told Woodrow that he was expecting another shipment of marijuana on Saturday the 21st of Feb., 1976) Reisinger also told Woodrow that he gets this marijuana from a truck driver.
I admit that Woodrow might have made up all of this detail, simply to give credence to “an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”1 Nevertheless, I think the district justice was justified in concluding that Woodrow had been in appellee’s kitchen and therefore could know what it was like inside. In fact, I do not understand that there is any real difference of opinion about this. The difference of opinion is about whether the district justice was justified in concluding that Woodrow did know what it was like inside appellee’s kitchen, that is, was telling the truth.
Woodrow twice identified appellee as the person from whom he purchased the marihuana: to Officer Tappan, and later, without Tappan being there, to Officers Dougherty and Gulick. Both times he gave appellee’s address. In his „ *11second statement he identified Frederick Miller as having been with him when he purchased the marihuana. Also in his second statement he specified in detail certain features of appellee’s kitchen. In short: he was consistent in his accounts to the police, and he told them a story that could easily be disproved if it was false.
In Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959), the Supreme Court held that a federal narcotics agent had probable cause to arrest the petitioner without a warrant where the agent had prior to the arrest personally verified detailed information given to him by an informant regarding the petitioner. Crucial to the Court’s holding was the fact that the informant was known to the agent and had supplied reliable information to him in the past. Here, the officers had had no prior dealings with Woodrow. Therefore, the details supplied in Woodrow’s statements to the officers cannot be considered by themselves sufficient to establish Woodrow’s veracity. However, when one considers Woodrow’s statements in the context of the circumstances set out above, and when one adds the facts that Woodrow was a juvenile, already in trouble with the law, and with no apparent reason to lie about appellee, it seems to me that the district justice was justified in concluding that Woodrow was telling the truth.

. My apologies to Pooh-Bah in the Mikado.