Court Opinion

ID: 9905530
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-29 17:11:12.834899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:40.776829
License: Public Domain

J-S30011-23

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

 COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA             :    IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
                                          :         PENNSYLVANIA
                                          :
              v.                          :
                                          :
                                          :
 CHRISTOPHER SANCHEZ                      :
                                          :
                    Appellant             :    No. 2910 EDA 2022

       Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Entered October 7, 2022
  In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at
                      No(s): CP-51-CR-0001384-2022

BEFORE: BENDER, P.J.E., LAZARUS, J., and SULLIVAN, J.

MEMORANDUM BY BENDER, P.J.E.:                  FILED NOVEMBER 28, 2023

      Appellant, Christopher Sanchez, appeals from the judgment of sentence

of 6 to 12 years’ incarceration, imposed after he was convicted, following a

non-jury trial, of one count of possession of a firearm by a person prohibited,

18 Pa.C.S. § 6105(a)(1). On appeal, Appellant solely challenges the court’s

denial of his pretrial motion to suppress the firearm he was convicted of

possessing. After careful review, we affirm.

      The facts established at the suppression hearing in this case were

summarized by the trial court, as follows:

      On December 29, Police Officer Leggie Thompson (hereinafter
      “Officer Thompson”)[,] at approximately 9:30 am[,] was on
      bicycle patrol when he received a call for a [“]disturbance on
      highway — person with a gun.[”] Notes of Testimony (hereinafter
      “N.T.”), 08/08/2022[,] at 9-10. He arrived less than five minutes
      [later] on the 1800 block of East Wishart Street in Philadelphia
      when he observed … Appellant running with a black weapon in his
      right hand. Id. at 10. Officer Thompson saw the firearm in
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       Appellant’s hand less than 10 feet away as “he was running west
       while [the officer was] riding east on East Wishart.” Id. at 10-11.
       Appellant moved the gun from his right side to between his
       legs[.1] Officer Thompson told Appellant twice to drop the
       weapon. Id. at 12. Appellant dove down behind a parked car and
       Officer Thompson heard the metal when the gun was tossed
       hitting the ground. Id. at 12-13. Appellant was detained and
       Officer Thompson recovered the black handgun, a Taurus G3C .9
       millimeter. Id. at 14[-]15[,] … 21-22. When asked, Appellant
       “said he [did not] have a permit to carry, [and] he’s on state
       parole.” Id. at 14. The incident was captured as described on
       police body[-]worn camera. See [Commonwealth’s] Exhibit C-4.

Trial Court Opinion (TCO), 1/10/23, at 2.

       Appellant was arrested and charged with several firearm offenses,

including possession of a firearm by a person prohibited.        Prior to trial,

Appellant filed a motion to suppress the firearm. After a hearing on August

8, 2022, the court denied Appellant’s motion. The Commonwealth then filed

a motion to nol prosse all charges except the single count of possession of a

firearm by a person prohibited. The court granted that motion and Appellant’s

case proceeded to a non-jury trial, at the close of which the court found

Appellant guilty of that offense. On October 7, 2022, Appellant was sentenced

to the term set forth above. He filed a timely motion for reconsideration of

his sentence, which was denied. Appellant then filed a timely notice of appeal,

and he complied with the trial court’s order to file a Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) concise

____________________________________________

1 Specifically, Officer Thompson testified thatthe gun “was on [Appellant’s]
right leg, but as soon as he looked up and saw [the officer], he started to put
it in between both legs” and moved it “towards his cro[tch] area in between
his thigh[s].”     Id. at 11 (quoting officer’s testimony, as well as the
Commonwealth’s explanation of the officer’s physical motions demonstrating
how Appellant moved the weapon).

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statement of errors complained of on appeal. Herein, Appellant states one

issue for our review:

      Did not the trial court err in denying [A]ppellant’s motion to
      suppress a firearm that was the fruit of a stop unsupported by
      reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment of the United
      States Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania
      Constitution where the arresting officers only saw Appellant
      running with a gun, in contradiction to the holding of the
      Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Hicks, 208
      A.3d 916, 937 (Pa. 2019)?

Appellant’s Brief at 4.

      Our standard and scope of review of a challenge to a suppression court’s

order denying, or granting, a motion to suppress evidence is well-settled:

      When we review the ruling of a suppression court[,] we must
      determine whether the factual findings are supported by the
      record. When it is a defendant who [] appealed, we must consider
      only the evidence of the prosecution and so much of the evidence
      for the defense as, fairly read in the context of the record as a
      whole, remains uncontradicted. Assuming that there is support in
      the record, we are bound by the facts as are found and we may
      reverse the suppression court only if the legal conclusions drawn
      from those facts are in error.

Hicks, 208 A.3d at 925 (citation omitted). “As an appellate court, we are not

bound by the suppression court’s conclusions of law; rather, when reviewing

questions of law, our standard of review is de novo and our scope of review is

plenary.” Id. (citation and original quotation marks omitted). Moreover, our

scope of review from a suppression ruling is limited to the evidentiary record

that was created at the suppression hearing. In re L.J., 79 A.3d 1073, 1087

(Pa. 2013).

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     Here, Appellant avers that the trial court erred by denying his motion to

suppress. He insists that he was seized when Officer Thompson ordered him

to drop the firearm and that, at that point, Officer Thompson lacked

reasonable suspicion that Appellant was engaged in any unlawful behavior.

Appellant   contends   that   “[t]he    situation   in   the   instant   case   is

indistinguishable” from Hicks. There,

     the defendant stopped at a gas station to fuel his vehicle, spoke
     with an acquaintance, and showed that individual his concealed
     firearm before he proceeded to enter the convenience store to pay
     for his gasoline. Surveillance camera footage revealed that the
     defendant was carrying the concealed weapon as he entered the
     store. Police officers had been alerted to this fact, and when the
     defendant exited the establishment, police officers seized him at
     gunpoint, removed him from his vehicle, and restrained him based
     exclusively upon his possession of a concealed firearm in public,
     which, it subsequently was determined, the defendant was
     licensed to possess and carry. During this incident, officers
     retrieved the defendant’s firearm from a holster on his waistband,
     when they noticed the odor of alcohol emanating from him. They
     also discovered a small amount of marijuana in his pocket.

     After being charged with, inter alia, driving under the influence of
     alcohol and possession of marijuana, the defendant filed a motion
     to suppress the evidence recovered in the search. The trial court
     denied suppression based upon the Superior Court’s ruling in
     Commonwealth v. Robinson, 600 A.2d 957 (Pa. Super. 1991),
     which held that the “possession of a concealed firearm by an
     individual in public is sufficient to create a reasonable suspicion
     that the individual may be dangerous, such that an officer can
     approach the individual and briefly detain him in order to
     investigate whether the person is properly licensed.” Id. at 959.
     The defendant in Hicks was subsequently convicted of driving
     under the influence of alcohol, and later appealed his judgment of
     sentence, challenging the denial of suppression. The Superior
     Court affirmed the defendant’s judgment of sentence based on its
     previous decision in Robinson.

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     Th[e Supreme] Court granted allowance of appeal in Hicks to
     consider the viability of the Robinson holding. Upon close
     examination of the issue, [the Court] held that the Robinson rule
     subverts the fundamental protections of the Fourth Amendment
     and contravenes Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 … (1968), which
     requires law enforcement officers, in effectuating a lawful stop and
     frisk of an individual, to suspect reasonably: (1) that the person
     apprehended is committing or has committed a criminal offense;
     and (2) that the person stopped is armed and dangerous. Hicks,
     208 A.3d at 921

     In analyzing whether the requisites of Terry were established,
     th[e] Court found “no justification for the notion that a police
     officer may infer criminal activity merely from an individual’s
     possession of a concealed firearm in public.” Hicks, 208 A.3d at
     936. Acknowledging that it is unlawful to carry a concealed
     firearm if the individual is statutorily prohibited from firearm
     ownership or unlicensed to carry a concealed firearm, we
     emphasized that it is not a criminal offense for a license holder to
     carry a concealed firearm in public. Id.

     [The Hicks Court] explained that “[u]nless a police officer has
     prior knowledge that a specific individual is not permitted to carry
     a concealed firearm, and absent articulable facts supporting
     reasonable suspicion that a firearm is being used or intended to
     be used in a criminal manner, there simply is no justification for
     the conclusion that the mere possession of a firearm, where it
     lawfully may be carried, is alone suggestive of criminal activity.”
     Id. at 937. Th[e] Court reasoned that the Robinson rule
     eliminated the requirement of individualized suspicion, and
     misapplied the totality of the circumstances test. Id. Further, we
     explained, the Robinson rule impermissibly allowed the conduct
     for which the individual obtained a license to serve as the
     exclusive basis for the deprivation of the licensee’s liberty. Id. at
     940. Accordingly, [the Hicks Court] held that “with respect to the
     conduct at issue – in which hundreds of thousands of
     Pennsylvanians are licensed to engage lawfully, [] that conduct
     alone is an insufficient basis for reasonable suspicion that criminal
     activity is afoot.” Id. at 945.

Commonwealth v. Barr, 266 A.3d 25, 42-24 (Pa. 2021).

     The Hicks Court then went on to conclude that, “[e]ven viewing all of

the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, there exist[ed]

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no basis for a finding that Hicks was engaged in any manner of criminal

conduct.” Hicks, 208 A.3d at 950. It explained:

      There was no indication or apparent threat of violence, and no
      information suggesting that Hicks engaged in any type of
      confrontation with another individual, physical, verbal, or
      otherwise. Neither the camera operator’s report nor the police
      radio dispatch suggest anything of the sort. Indeed, “[t]he video
      from the camera clearly shows the firearm concealed in [Hicks’]
      waistband and that, despite the hour, there are a number of
      individuals at this location.” Brief for Commonwealth at 16.
      However, significantly, no individual expresses any visible
      indication of alarm at Hicks’ presence, his possession of his
      firearm, or the manner in which he carried it. Rather, the video
      depicts patrons of a gas station going about their business, at least
      two of whom engage in seemingly friendly interactions with Hicks.

Id. The Court also reasoned that the “the time of day at which the seizure

occurred and the fact that Hicks was seized in … a high crime neighborhood[,]”

while “relevant contextual considerations in a totality of the circumstances

inquiry[,]” were not sufficient to demonstrate a     “particularized basis upon

which to suspect that Hicks’ mere possession of a concealed firearm was

unlawful.” Id. at 951. Thus, no reasonable suspicion existed to support the

officers’ detention of Hicks.

      Appellant’s claim that Hicks supports that there was no reasonable

suspicion to detain him in this case is meritless. First, we note that Appellant

never contended, in his suppression motion or at the hearing below, that he

was detained when Officer Thompson ordered him to drop the weapon.

Instead, Appellant indicated at the suppression hearing that he was detained

when Officer Thompson placed him in handcuffs. See N.T. at 23 (defense

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counsel’s stating that Appellant “was immediately placed in handcuffs by the

officer. The officer testified that [Appellant] was detained. So then moving

onto the question of what basis there was to detain him in that manner, I

would argue that there was none. There was not any sort of sufficient basis

to place him in handcuffs, to point a service weapon at him.”). Thus, any

argument that Appellant was detained prior to being handcuffed is waived.

See Pa.R.A.P. 302(a) (“Issues not raised in the lower court are waived and

cannot be raised for the first time on appeal.”).

      In any event, even assuming Appellant was seized at the moment

Officer Thompson ordered him to drop his gun, there were sufficient facts to

show that the officer had reasonable suspicion to detain Appellant at that time.

The present case is distinguishable from the innocuous facts of Hicks. Here,

less than five minutes after officers received a call about a “disturbance”

involving a person with a gun, Officer Thompson saw Appellant running

towards the officer with a gun in his hand. We agree with Appellant that his

running toward the officers, before he had even noticed them, did not

constitute “flight” as that term is typically used in the reasonable suspicion

analysis. See In re D.M., 781 A.2d 1161, 1164 (Pa. 2001) (finding that the

defendant’s running away as police approached was “unprovoked flight in a

high crime area” that was sufficient to create reasonable suspicion for police

to pursue and stop him); Commonwealth v. Foglia, 979 A.2d 357, 359 (Pa.

Super. 2009) (en banc) (concluding that the defendant’s walking away from

police constituted flight that was a factor in finding reasonable suspicion

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existed to stop him). However, the fact that Appellant was holding a gun in

his hand, while running away from the location of a reported disturbance

involving an armed individual, were certainly factors that a reasonable officer

would deem suspicious. Additionally, Officer Thompson’s testimony that once

Appellant saw him, he moved the gun in between his legs made it reasonable

for the court to infer that Appellant attempted to conceal the weapon, thus

bolstering the officer’s suspicion that Appellant was not acting lawfully in

possessing and/or using that weapon.

      In sum, while each of these facts alone might not have been enough to

validate a detention, the combination of the circumstances known to Officer

Thompson provided him with reasonable suspicion that Appellant was engaged

in criminal behavior, namely, the illegal possession and/or use of a firearm.

See Commonwealth v. Mackey, 177 A.3d 221, 233 (Pa. Super. 2017) (“[A]

combination of facts may establish reasonable suspicion….”) (citations

omitted). Thus, even if Officer Thompson detained Appellant at the moment

he ordered him to drop the firearm, the officer possessed reasonable suspicion

to support that detention.

      Judgment of sentence affirmed.

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Date: 11/28/2023

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