Court Opinion

ID: 9540187
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:13:30.928566+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:41.546024
License: Public Domain

Justice SAYLOR,
dissenting.
The United States Supreme Court has observed that “probable cause is a fluid concept — turning on the assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts — not readily, or even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 232, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2329, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). Appellate inquiries in particular cases therefore tend to be heavily fact-specific, and they often present close questions. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Banks, 540 Pa. 453, 456, 658 A.2d 752, 753 (1995) (holding that police observation of the exchange of an unidentified item on a public street corner for cash, together with subsequent flight, “fall narrowly short of establishing probable cause”). The present controversy is no exception. Particularly in view of the arresting officer’s testimony that he believed he had witnessed an illegal drug sale due to both the location of the transaction and the fact that he had “seen that [hand-to-hand] exchange done several hundred *226times,” N.T. Sept. 29, 2005, at 11, the majority’s holding is not without some foundation. Nevertheless, I am unable meaningfully to distinguish the circumstances in this appeal from those underlying our very recent decision in Commonwealth v. Dunlap, 596 Pa. 147, 941 A.2d 671 (2007). As such, I respectfully dissent.