Court Opinion

ID: 9716207
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:30:52.05571+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:58:54.706757
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Pomeroy:
In holding that appellant’s waiver of Miranda rights did not break the causal connection between his illegal arrest and a subsequent confession, the Court by its decision in this case appears to have joined those “courts [which] have held that an illegal arrest, ipso facto, is sufficient to exclude any subsequently obtained evidence as tainted fruit.” Although the opinion indicates that the Commonwealth may be able to prove a confession purged of the taint of the initial arrest, the prospects of succeeding in such a task would seem to be more illusory than real.1 With Miranda warnings rele*393gated to the status of a “mere perfunctory recital”, however, it is not unlikely that henceforth the only acceptable manner of purging the taint will be to release the suspect following his illegal arrest.2
If this is indeed the effect of the decision, it pays too little attention to society’s justifiable interest in utilizing voluntary confessions. On the other hand, however, the opposite approach would be to me equally objectionable; that is, to admit any statement which is given following an illegal arrest so long as it is given freely and voluntarily, attended by all required warnings.3 This would be to overlook the crucial objective *394of police deterrence imbedded in the exclusionary rule. A sensible and workable accommodation as between these often conflicting interests seems to me to have been achieved by the draftsmen of the American Law Institute’s Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure, still in process of consideration.4 Section 9.02 of the proposed Model Code provides:
"Statements Made After An Illegal Arrest.
If a law enforcement officer, acting without a warrant, arrests a person without the reasonable cause required by Section 3.01, and the court determines that such arrest was made without fair basis for the belief that sueh cause existed, no statement made by such person after such arrest and prior to his release, unless it is made in the presence of or upon consultation with counsel, shall be admitted in evidence against such person in a criminal proceeding in which he is the defendant.”5 (Emphasis supplied.) As the commentary to this section makes clear, before a court even considers whether a "fair basis for the belief that [probable] cause existed” for the arrest, it must conclude that proper warnings were given and that the statement was otherwise free of coercion.
*395Applying the test of the ALI’s tentative draft of the Model Code to the facts of the instant case, while it is clear that appellant’s confession was voluntary, it is equally clear that the police acted on the uncorroborated tip of an unidentified informant whose reliability was never established. In light of the countless decisions, both state and federal, interpreting the requirements of Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 12 L. Ed. 2d 723 (1964) and Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637 (1969) to factual situations almost identical to this one, I would hold that the police did not have a fair basis for their belief that probable cause existed to arrest appellant and that the confession must therefore be excluded.6
It is on the basis of this approach that T concur in the decision of the Court.

 The Court purports to follow our previous decision in Commonwealth v. Bishop, 425 Pa. 175, 183, 228 A. 2d 661, 666, cert. denied, 389 U.S. 875 (1967), where we held: “[I]f the connection between the arrest and the confession is shown to be so vague or tenuous ‘as to dissipate the taint’ or ‘sufficiently an act of free will’, the confession is admissible, despite the illegality of the arrest. By ‘sufficiently an act of free will,’ we mean that not only was the confession truly voluntary, hut also free of any element of coerciveness due to the unlawful arrest. The burden of proof, of course is upon the Commonwealth.” (Footnote omitted.) An exam*393ination of the facts in Bishop makes it clear that the burden of showing dissipation of the taint was not intended to be an insurmountable one.

 That such a release had occurred was the determinative factor favoring admissibiliiy of the confession of Wong Sun in Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 9 L. Ed. 2d 441 (1963). See also Thomas v. United States, 377 F. 2d 118 (5th Cir. 1967).

 This approach appears to have been adopted in the following decisions: United States v. Close, 349 F. 2d 841 (4th Cir. 1965), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 992 (1966) ; Collins v. Beto, 348 F. 2d 823 (5th Cir. 1965) (This case is erroneously cited by the majority as authority for excluding, ispo facto, a confession following an illegal arrest. To the contrary, in announcing the opinion of the Court, Chief Judge Tuttle, speaking for himself only, said that affording the suspect an opportunity to obtain counsel is the best and perhaps the only way to purge a confession of the taint of a prior illegal arrest) ; Commonwealth ex rel. Craig v. Maroney, 348 F. 2d 22 (3rd Cir. 1965), aff’d, 352 F. 2d 30 (3rd Cir. 1965), cert. denied, 284 U.S. 1019 (1966) ; Rogers v. United States, 330 F. 2d 535 (5th Cir. 1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 916 (1964) ; Burke v. United States, 328 F. 2d 399 (1st Cir. 1964) ; State v. Jackson, 43 N.J. 148, 203 A. 2d 1 (1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 982 (1965) ; State v. Moore, 275 N.C. 141, 166 S.E. 2d 53 (1969). For a discussion of the conflicting approaches to the treatment of confessions following illegal arrests, see generally, Admissibility of Confessions Made Subsequent to an Illegal Arrest: Wong Sun v. United States Revisited, 61 J. Grim. D. 207 (1970) ; Voluntary Incriminating Statements Made Subsequent to an Illegal Arrest—A Proposed Modification of the Mxclusionary Rule, 71 Dick. L. Rev. 573 (1967).

 American Law Institute, Tentative Draft No. 1, A Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure (1966).

 Concurring in Collins v. Beto, 348 F. 2d 823, 835 (5th Cir. 1965), Judge Friendly (of the Second Circuit, sitting by designation) suggested a test very similar to that of the ALI: “A good deal might be said for a limiting principle based on the wantonness of the arrest. ... On this view, a flagrantly unlawful violation by the police would require depriving them of every foreseeable benefit that might spur further adventures of the same kind, certainly suppression of all evidence acquired, including confessions given prior to release or in the absence of a lawyer. On the other hand, those errors of judgment inevitable when the Fourth Amendment is being interpreted ‘on the run’ would not disqualify the evidence on the theory that the added margin of deterrence and increased security is not worth the added price.”

 I observe, however, that given the same facts, save for the degree of deviation from probable cause requirements (e.g., the informant was shown to be reliable and the police had some, though not sufficient, underlying circumstances to meet the AguilarBpinelli standard) a contrary result would be indicated under the ADI test.