Court Opinion

ID: 9764417
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:21:13.143234+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:56.350096
License: Public Domain

*283MANDERINO, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. The majority first states it need not decide whether appellant was arrested (footnote 1, ante), but then goes on to conclude that appellant’s arrest was legal. I can only assume from the majority’s conclusion that “we find a legal arrest” that the majority did, in fact, decide appellant was arrested when police officers picked him up at his friend’s house in Aston, Pennsylvania. I agree appellant was arrested, but I emphatically disagree with the majority’s conclusion that appellant’s arrest was legal because “Detective Melly could have effectuated a valid warrantless arrest” of appellant at that time. That statement by the majority plainly ignores a well-established principle of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: that warrantless arrests are constitutional only in very limited circumstances. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 156, 45 S.Ct. 280, 286, 69 L.Ed. 543, 552-53 (1925) (“the guaranty of the Fourth Amendment [is that] where the securing of a warrant is reasonably practicable, it must be used”). See also Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971); cf. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963).
The majority concludes Detective Melley had probable cause to arrest appellant. Assuming arguendo that the majority is correct, the fact that police officers have cause to arrest does not relieve the officers of the necessity to obtain an arrest warrant where practicable; the United States Supreme Court has flatly rejected the argument that “the existence of probable cause renders noncompliance with the warrant procedure an irrelevance.” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra, 403 U.S. at 450, 91 S.Ct. at 2030, 29 L.Ed.2d at 574.
The majority upholds this warrantless arrest without examining whether or not it was practicable for the police to obtain a warrant for appellant’s arrest. No exigent circumstances appear in the record, and it is clear none existed. The police had ample time to obtain an arrest warrant, the *284police knew where appellant was, and there was no indication appellant was attempting to flee authorities or otherwise prevent his apprehension. Indeed, other detectives had time to obtain a search warrant for appellant’s residence, yet the majority does not explain why there was not equal time to obtain an arrest warrant to seize appellant. The fact is, if this arrest was not unconstitutional because effectuated without an arrest warrant, this Court has written the arrest warrant requirement completely out of the Fourth Amendment, for this arrest is precisely the kind of arrest in which it was intended that a warrant be obtained. If police officers in this Commonwealth have an untrammelled right to arrest without a warrant, why ever bother to get a warrant?
It should have been a neutral, detached magistrate, not a police officer, who made the decision that appellant should be seized in connection with this crime. See Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96, 85 S.Ct. 223, 228, 13 L.Ed.2d 142, 147 (1964). The Fourth Amendment arrest warrant requirement was intended to insure that citizens enjoy this important safeguard against arbitrary government seizures, and by today’s decision this Court seems willing to abandon that safeguard and allow police officers unfettered discretion as to whom they will arrest and how much information they need to justify an arrest.
I dissent.