Court Opinion

ID: 9735167
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:04:19.477103+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:55.884109
License: Public Domain

NIGRO, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I agree with the majority that Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution does not per se require the exclusion of evidence obtained during the course of a valid plain feel seizure. I disagree with the majority, however, that such a valid seizure occurred in the instant case.
In explaining the plain feel doctrine, this Court has stated: [In Minnesota v. Dickerson, the United States Supreme Court] adopted the so-called plain feel doctrine and held that a police officer may seize non-threatening contraband detected through the officer’s sense of touch during a Terry frisk if the officer is lawfully in a position to detect the presence of contraband, the incriminating nature of the contraband is immediately apparent from its tactile impression and the officer has a lawful right of access to the object ... Immediately apparent means that the officer readily perceives, without further exploration or searching, that what he is feeling is contraband.
Commonwealth v. Stevenson/R.A., 560 Pa. 345, 744 A.2d 1261, 1265 (2000) (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
*566I cannot agree with the majority that the immediately apparent requirement of the plain feel doctrine was met in the instant case. Here, Officer Singletary testified that when he grabbed the outside of Appellant’s jacket, he felt a large bundle of caps. N.T., 11/9/93, at 12. He then reached into Appellant’s pocket and retrieved a plastic baggie containing vials of what was later confirmed to be crack cocaine. Id. Unlike the majority, I can make no material distinction between the circumstances of this seizure and the ones this Court found to exceed the scope of the plain feel doctrine in Stevenson/R.A. In both cases, the police merely felt material which may or may not be used for packaging controlled substances, which, as we held in Stevenson/R. A, is insufficient to meet the immediately apparent element of the plain feel doctrine. See Stevenson/R.A., 744 A.2d at 1268. Thus, in my view, the seizure of the drugs from Appellant’s jacket was not justifiable under the plain feel doctrine and accordingly, I must dissent from that portion of the majority opinion holding otherwise.