Court Opinion

ID: 9647115
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:23:34.968157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:45.561343
License: Public Domain

*291CASTILLE, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority holds that the evidence obtained1 as a result of the officer’s stop of appellant in his jurisdiction should have been suppressed because the officer based his stop, in part, upon information he gathered while outside his jurisdiction in violation of the Statewide Municipal Police Jurisdiction Act (the “Statewide Act”).2 Because I do not believe that the Statewide Act is dispositive of or controls our determination of whether the suppression motion should have been granted, I respectfully dissent.
Appellant’s only contention is that the officer’s stop of him was unlawful because it was based upon evidence obtained outside the officer’s jurisdiction. In determining whether the evidence must be suppressed, this Court should first determine whether the evidence obtained within the officer’s jurisdiction permitted a lawful stop of appellant’s vehicle within the officer’s jurisdiction. I would hold that the Superior Court properly reversed the motion to suppress because the evidence obtained within the officer’s jurisdiction permitted a stop of appellant’s automobile based upon a reasonable suspicion that appellant was speeding in the officer’s jurisdiction.
In this Commonwealth, an investigatory stop of a vehicle is valid if the stop is based upon objective facts creating a reasonable suspicion that the detained motorist is engaged in unlawful activity. Commonwealth v. Murray, 460 Pa. 53, 61, 331 A.2d 414, 418 (1975).3 Here, the officer saw appellant *292substantially speeding past cars on the highway in his jurisdiction at approximately 2:15 a.m. Believing appellant to be speeding in violation of the posted speed limits of thirty-five and forty-five miles per hour, the officer drove approximately seventy miles per hour to catch up with appellant so that he could clock him pursuant to 75 Pa.C.S. § 3368(a).4 By the time the officer caught up to appellant, the street upon which appellant was driving briefly crossed into another municipality before reentering the primary jurisdiction of the officer. When appellant reentered the officer’s jurisdiction, the officer clocked appellant for at least one-sixth of a mile at which time appellant drove at least ten miles over the speed limit. As the Superior Court properly found, this evidence demonstrated a reasonable suspicion by the officer to believe that appellant had violated the speed limits of his municipality. Accordingly, the officer could lawfully conduct an investigatory stop of appellant. Once he lawfully stopped appellant and discovered that appellant evidenced signs of alcohol ingestion, his reasonable suspicion ripened into probable cause for his arrest. The fruits of the stop and of the arrest should, therefore, be admissible.
Furthermore, I believe that the officer could stop appellant based upon what he observed outside his jurisdiction, which together with his other observations, clearly established probable cause for the stop. It is well established that what a person knowingly exposes to the public is not subject to Fourth Amendment protections. See, e.g., California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988); Commonwealth v. Oglialoro, 525 Pa. 250, 579 A.2d 1288, 1291-92 (1990) (not subject to state or federal protections against unreasonable searches and seizures). Notwithstanding this clear rule, the majority construes the Statewide Act to mean that an officer, while in pursuit of someone he suspects to be *293speeding, cannot observe appellant’s speeding in another jurisdiction even though any member of the public could do so. In reaching this conclusion, the majority utterly ignores its prior interpretation of the Statewide Act in Commonwealth v. O’Shea, 523 Pa. 384, 567 A.2d 1023 (1989), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 881, 111 S.Ct. 225, 112 L.Ed.2d 180 (1990), wherein the Court specifically noted that Section 8953 does not prohibit an officer from leaving their primary jurisdiction to go into other jurisdictions to ask questions therein, to enter a residence therein upon the valid consent of the owner, or to otherwise conduct activities which are unobtrusive police conduct, and observe what they observe therein. Id. at 398, 567 A.2d at 1029-30.
In O’Shea, certain detectives visited the appellant’s home in another jurisdiction, where he lived with his brother and sister-in-law, in order to question him in connection with a robbery and murder of the owner of a store in the detective’s jurisdiction from which the appellant had recently been fired. When the detectives arrived at the appellant’s home, he was not present. However, the appellant’s brother and sister-in-law, the owners of the home, consented to the detectives search of the house. When the detectives searched the home, they found incriminating evidence in plain view. This Court held that nothing in Section 8953 prohibited the police from going into another jurisdiction to conduct the investigative activities that took place. I submit that the officer’s mere observation of a driver speeding on a public highway in another jurisdiction constitutes the very “unobtrusive” conduct which this Court has previously interpreted the Statewide Act not to prohibit.
Moreover, even assuming arguendo that the officer’s conduct outside his jurisdiction did technically violate the Section 8953, an argument with which I do not agree, this Court also held in O’Shea that even if police activities were conducted in violation of Section 8953, suppression of the fruits of the investigation were nevertheless not warranted where the activities of the police amounted to, at best, minor infractions of the Statewide Act. The Court noted that automatic exclusion *294of evidence obtained by relatively minor infractions of Section 8958 would be an inappropriate remedy. 523 Pa. at 399, 567 A.2d at 1030. See Commonwealth v. Mason, 507 Pa. 396, 490 A.2d 421 (1985) (suppression of evidence was not an appropriate remedy for violation of Rules of Criminal Procedure regarding the issuance and execution of a search warrant outside the officer’s jurisdiction).
In viewing the conduct of the detectives in O’Shea, this Court found that the detectives’ conduct in entering the appellant’s home, at the most, amounted to only a minor infraction and therefore held that suppression was not warranted. The officer’s conduct in this case on a public highway failed to rise to even the level of conduct in O’Shea. Hence, suppression is equally unwarranted in this case.
The majority fails even to cite to O’Shea and instead adopts an overly strict reading which defeats the purpose of the Statewide Act in disregard of its reasoning in O’Shea, which the majority adopted only five years ago. The Statewide Act should not be construed to restrict the officer from otherwise being able to do things or act as any member of the public would be able to do or act. Such a construction would require that an officer, simply by virtue of being an officer, avert his or her eyes from evidence of an unlawful act which could have been observed by any member of the public. This was not the purpose of the act.5 The majority’s conclusion to the contrary leads to an absurd result.
Thus, in addition to holding that the officer had reasonable suspicion to stop appellant’s automobile based upon his observations in his jurisdiction, I would also hold that where an officer obtains evidence in another jurisdiction that is readily available or exposed to the public, and not by virtue of an obtrusive exercise of his police authority, such evidence is not *295obtained in violation of the Statewide Act; even if it were, the circumstance of this case do not warrant suppression of the evidence.
Accordingly, I would affirm the Superior Court’s reversal of the trial court’s grant of the suppression motion and remand the case back for trial.
PAPADAKOS, J., joins this dissenting opinion.

. The evidence specifically sought to be suppressed were the results of a blood alcohol test. The majority states that appellant also sought the suppression of certain statements; however, the officer testified that appellant did not make any statements to him. Record at 44.

. 42 Pa.C.S. § 8953(a)(2).

. Appellant’s reliance upon Commonwealth v. Swanger, 453 Pa. 107, 307 A.2d 875 (1973), is misplaced. In Swanger, this Court was faced with the issue of whether the police could randomly stop a particular car (not in a road block situation) to determine whether it had violated the motor vehicle code. The Court held that such a random stop violated constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. Here, the officer had a reasonable basis to believe that a law of this Commonwealth had been violated prior to stopping the car. Thus, his stop of appellant’s car was not unreasonable.

. 75 Pa.C.S. § 3368 provides, in pertinent part:
(a) Speedometers authorized. — The rate of speed of any vehicle may be timed on any highway by a police officer using a motor vehicle equipped with a speedometer. In ascertaining the speed of a vehicle by the use of a speedometer, the speed shall be timed for a distance of not less than three-tenths of a mile.

. The Statewide Act is to be construed liberally in order to reasonably broaden police powers (e.g. arrests, execution of search warrants and other official police conduct) outside an officer’s primary jurisdiction, and to promote coordination and cooperation between police in different jurisdictions. See Commonwealth v. O’Shea, 523 Pa. at 397, 567 A.2d at 1029 (1989), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 881, 111 S.Ct. 225, 112 L.Ed.2d 180 (1990).