Court Opinion

ID: 9729884
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:51:25.04929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:01.933713
License: Public Domain

VAN der VOORT, Judge,
dissenting:
A majority of our Court has decided to quash the Commonwealth’s appeal of an order suppressing evidence. The rationale of the majority is that the suppression of an on-the-scene identification made by a victim within two hours of a robbery will not substantially handicap the Commonwealth’s prosecution of the case, in light of the remaining evidence. I respectfully dissent.
In Commonwealth v. Rose, 211 Pa.Super. 295, 296, 235 A.2d 462, 463 (1967), our Court stated: “Since appellee has not filed a motion to quash, we will assume that the suppression order will substantially handicap the Commonwealth and hear the appeal.” (Emphasis added). In Commonwealth v. Deren, 233 Pa.Super. 373, 377-78, 337 A.2d 600, 602 (1975), our Court reiterated this position: “[W]hen the District Attorney from one of the counties of this Commonwealth directs an appeal from the suppression of evidence, we must accept such an appeal as the Commonwealth’s good faith certification that the case will be terminated or substantially prejudiced by such an order, and determine only if the suppression was proper.” In the case before us, no motion to quash the appeal was filed. By quashing this appeal without even giving the Commonwealth an opportunity to show how it may be substantially handicapped by the suppression order, we are doing the Commonwealth a disservice. We have led the Commonwealth to believe that we will automatically entertain appeals from orders suppressing *528evidence (provided that no petition to quash the appeal has been filed), and then quashed this appeal in the Commonwealth’s face.
Turning to the merits of this case, I would find that the lower court erred in granting the suppression motion. The facts of the case are as follows:
At approximately 10:00 the morning of October 9, 1974, the Havertown Pharmacy was robbed. The robber was described for the police as a bushy-haired white male with a mustache and about a week’s beard growth, approximately twenty-two years old, approximately one hundred forty pounds, wearing a blue plaid shirt and blue jeans. Police officers following the robber’s escape route came upon a blue plaid shirt near a fence, and eventually ascertained that a person matching the robber’s description had entered a house located at 100 Marthart Street. The police knocked on the door of this house, but received no answer. They left, but returned at approximately 11:30 A.M., at which time they came across a number of people smoking marijuana in a car parked in front of the house. While the police were in the process of arresting these people, appellee Victor DeFelice came out of the house and asked the police for first aid assistance for cuts which he had received in the palms of both hands. The police noticed that appellee matched the description of the drugstore robber, with the exception of the shirt and the beard. They also noticed that appellee had fresh cuts on his face, as if he had just shaved. The police again left, called a detective at the police station for advice, and were told to return to 100 Marthart Street and ask appellee if he would accompany them to the drugstore. The police returned to the house, explained the situation to appellee, and asked if he would accompany them. Appellee agreed to go, provided it didn’t take too long, since he had “nothing to hide.” At the drugstore, a female clerk positively identified appellee as the robber; appellee was informed of his rights and was formally arrested. On the way to the police station, a stop was made near the fence where the blue shirt had earlier been discovered, and appellee’s shoe *529was compared with a footprint on the opposite side of the fence. The result of the comparison was inconclusive.
At the police station, appellee was sitting in the Youth Aid Office near the Detective Bureau, when the owner of the drugstore walked past, spotted appellee, and identified him as the robber. Appellee was again informed of his rights, was questioned about the robbery, and was then taken back to the house at 100 Marthart Street. At the house (in which three persons in addition to appellee resided), the police found various articles connected with the robbery: ten bottles of narcotics, a large plastic bag of pills, a bottle of pills with a Havertown Pharmacy label, and a .38 revolver loaded with hollow-point bullets. None of these articles were found in appellee’s room. The search was conducted with the consent of appellee and the other occupants of the house. Subsequent to this search, appellee was again questioned at the police station, and signed a five-page incriminating statement. Appellee was formally arraigned between 5:30 and 6:00 that evening, charged with robbery, theft by unlawful taking or disposition, theft by receiving stolen property, possession of a firearm without a license, and with narcotics violations. Appellee filed a petition on April 8, 1975 to suppress all evidence obtained in connection with the allegedly-illegal confrontations and arrest, which petition was granted by the lower court (“to the extent that the identification and arrest are suppressed”) by Order dated April 22, 1975. Appeal was taken to our court by the Commonwealth from this Order suppressing these portions of the evidence.
Although the lower court found that appellee had been informed of the crime and the possible charges and had voluntarily accompanied the police to the drugstore, the court ruled that the police acted improperly in taking appellee to the drugstore rather than to the police station for a line-up. The court accordingly suppressed the identification and the subsequent arrest. I believe that the police were justified in this case in taking appellee to the scene of the robbery, and that the lower court erred in granting the petition to suppress.
*530In Commonwealth v. Ray, 455 Pa. 43, 315 A.2d 634 (1974), within a short time of a robbery, police stopped a speeding automobile and observed that one of the passengers matched the description of the robber. The police held the suspect in a parking lot until the victim of the robbery arrived and identified the suspect as the robber. The identification was made approximately fifty minutes after the commission of the crime. The suspect was convicted and, relying on United States v. Wade, 338 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), and Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178 (1967), argued on appeal that the identification was constitutionally infirm because he had not been informed of his right to have counsel present at the confrontation, and because he had not been afforded a formal line-up. Our Supreme Court held in Ray that adversary judicial proceedings did not commence with the pre-arrest confrontation of a suspect who had been detained for investigation shortly after the commission of a crime, and that the defendant accordingly had no right to have counsel present or to have the confrontation postponed until a formal line-up could be held.
In Commonwealth v. Turner, 454 Pa. 520, 314 A.2d 496 (1974), our Supreme Court dealt with the issue of an allegedly suggestive and prejudicial confrontation, in an essentially similar fact situation. In Turner, a robbery suspect was apprehended and was taken by the police in a patrol car to be confronted by the victim. The confrontation occurred within fifteen minutes of the crime. The suspect was identified and was subsequently convicted of the crime, and on appeal argued that the identification had been overly suggestive and a denial of his due process rights. While recognizing that Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967) required the suppression of identification testimony if the pre-trial confrontation was so infected by suggestiveness as to give rise to irreparable likelihood of misidentification, the court in Turner stated that a prompt on-the-scene confrontation did not, “absent some special elements of unfairness,” violate due process. In so finding, *531the court noted that close proximity in time and place greatly reduced the chance of misidentification. The court also recognized the importance of the rapid release of innocent suspects and the quick resumption by the police of their search for the guilty parties.
Although the time between commission of the crime and the identification of the perpetrator was greater in the case before us (just under two hours) than in either Ray (fifty minutes) or Turner (fifteen minutes), I believe that the identification of appellee was made while the police were still in the early stage of their investigative work, and was made quickly enough after the crime to outweigh any suggestiveness in the viewing. Neither appellee’s Wade nor Stovall rights were violated by the actions of the police in this case.
Accepting the finding of the lower court that appellee voluntarily accompanied the police to the drugstore, and having found that appellee’s Wade and Stovall due process rights were not violated by the confrontation at the drugstore, it is necessary to address the question of whether appellee was illegally arrested. Whether or not an arrest is constitutionally valid depends upon whether at the moment the arrest is made the arresting police officers have probable cause to make the arrest — whether at the time of the arrest the facts and circumstances within the knowledge of the arresting officers, and of which they have reasonably trustworthy information, are sufficient to warrant a man of reasonable caution in believing that the suspect has committed or is committing a crime. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964); Commonwealth v. Murray, 437 Pa. 326, 329, 263 A.2d 886 (1970); Commonwealth v. Tookes, 236 Pa.Super. 386, 388, 344 A.2d 576 (1975). In the case before us, a suspect who voluntarily accompanied police officers to the scene of a robbery was identified as the robber by one of the victims. After this identification, the police were in possession of information which would lead reasonable persons to conclude that appellee had committed a robbery — probable cause then existed for an arrest. See *532Commonwealth v. Hall, 456 Pa. 243, 317 A.2d 891 (1974). I would find that the identification at the drugstore was not made in violation of appellee’s Wade and Stovall rights, that the police did have probable cause to arrest appellee, and that the lower court erred in suppressing the evidence. Since I read the lower court’s Order as suppressing only the identification at the drugstore (the lower court was somewhat less than clear on what it meant by suppressing “the arrest”), the issue of the admissibility of (1) the identification made during the accidental confrontation at the police station, (2) the inculpatory written statement, and (3) the items seized from the house in which appellee resided, would not be before us at this time.
I dissent from the majority’s disposition. The Order of the lower court dated April 22, 1975 should be reversed, and the case should be remanded with a procedendo.
JACOBS, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.