Court Opinion

ID: 9757640
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:50:44.73798+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:41.850235
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
dissenting.
I agree that Agent Sites plainly acted as a federal agent making an arrest outside his authority, and that the arrest was, therefore, illegal. It does not necessarily follow, howev*414er, that the evidence which was available at trial because of this arrest must be suppressed. The exclusionary rule is called into effect when evidence adverse to a criminal defendant is secured as a result of police misconduct. The evidence is suppressed in order to deter such misconduct.
In the present case, there is no police misconduct in the sense that term is used in the context of the exclusionary rule. Although the majority concludes that Agent Sites’ action was attributable to the state, in my view, there was no state action.
It is difficult to understand how it can be said that a federal law enforcement officer who exceeds his authority, utilizing his federal police vehicle and his federal badge to effect an arrest for an act which everyone concedes is outside his jurisdiction, has become an agent of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Federal jurisdiction is not, of course, coterminous with state jurisdiction. A federal officer is not a state officer. Agent Sites is not paid by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Nor was he hired by the Commonwealth. Nor is he supervised or directed by the Commonwealth. Nor was he directed by any employer to arrest Price or a person in Price’s position. To the contrary, he is paid, hired, supervised and directed by the federal government, and he is expressly limited by the United States Congress to warrantless arrests involving felonies only. See 18 U.S.C. § 3052.
Since I do not regard Sikes as an agent of the state, I do not agree that the evidence must be suppressed. As Mr. Chief Justice Nix states in his concurring opinion in Commonwealth v. Galloway, 525 Pa. 12, 21, 574 A.2d 1045, 1050 (1990),
The theory justifying the use of an exclusionary rule to exclude evidence damaging to a defendant is that the illegality in procuring that evidence offends our collective concept of fundamental fairness. We have made the societal judgment that it is better to relieve the culprit of responsibility for the act rather than condone law enforcement officers in conduct of such nature.
Because the FBI agent’s acts in this case did not constitute police overreaching or oppression, indeed there was no state *415action at all, but rather, were predicated upon the need to act immediately to avoid the possibility of serious injury to others, the rule of exclusion has no applicability.
Accordingly, I would reverse the order of Superior Court.
CASTILLE and NEWMAN, JJ., join this dissenting opinion.