Court Opinion

ID: 9754165
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:47:12.529424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:50.091407
License: Public Domain

Justice BALDWIN,
dissenting.
I join Chief Justice Cappy’s cogent dissenting opinion. I write separately to emphasize that the majority’s indication that this Court, in Commonwealth v. Brion, 589 Pa. 256, 652 A.2d 287 (1994), “ignored the Edmunds paradigm” is confusing. Majority Opinion, op. at 131 n. 10, 934 A.2d at 1206 n. 10. Commomwealth v. Edmunds, 526 Pa. 374, 586 A.2d 887 (1991), held that Pennsylvania’s Constitution provides greater protections than the United States Constitution, finding that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, found constitutional under the Fourth Amendment in United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984), violated Article I, Section 8 of Pennsylvania’s Constitution. Edmunds requires that in order to facilitate the appropriate analysis, “litigants seeking this Court’s review of claims based exclusively on the Pennsylvania Constitution” should brief and analyze the four factors generally known as the Edmunds analysis.1 Commonwealth v. Shaw, 564 Pa. 617, 622, 770 A.2d 295, 298 (2001); Commonwealth v. Duncan, 572 Pa. 438, 445, 817 A.2d 455, 459 (2003) (use of Edmunds framework by litigants “strongly encourage[d]”). This places a burden on the litigants, not the courts. Clearly, a court may consider all of the information provided by the litigant, but it is not *151required to explicitly state its review of each of the four Edmunds factors.
If, by “ignored the Edmunds paradigm,” the Majority means to say that there was no explicit analysis of each of the Edmunds factors, that is correct; however, if the Majority means that the Court failed to conduct an appropriate analysis of the history and state-specific reasons for a decision departing from federal standards, as they believe is required by Edmunds, that assumption is incorrect. Edmunds does not require that the Court’s thought processes be made explicit, but rather strongly encourages that the litigants provide the Court with the appropriate information to reach a reasoned decision on an independent claim under the Pennsylvania Constitution. See Duncan, supra.
Justice BAER joins this dissenting opinion.

. Edmunds requires that
the following four factors are to be briefed and analyzed by litigants in each case hereafter implicating a provision of the Pennsylvania constitution: 1) text of the Pennsylvania constitutional provision; 2) history of the provision, including Pennsylvania case-law; 3) related case-law from other states; Land] 4) policy considerations, including unique issues of state and local concern, and applicability within modern Pennsylvania jurisprudence.
Edmunds at 389-90, 586 A.2d at 894-95.