Court Opinion

ID: 9726882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:11:23.691851+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:31.743906
License: Public Domain

*675Justice BAER,
concurs.
I join in the Majority’s decision because this Court is bound to defer to the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of federal due process precepts as enunciated in Illinois v. Fisher, 540 U.S. 544, 124 S.Ct. 1200, 157 L.Ed.2d 1060 (2004). I believe, however, that our interpretation of due process and fundamental fairness in Commonwealth v. Deans, 530 Pa. 514, 610 A.2d 32 (1992), was correct, and would be inclined to consider our analysis in Deans in the context of a due process argument premised upon the Pennsylvania constitution when such an argument is properly presented.
Pursuant to a search warrant, the Commonwealth removed soil samples from Appellees’ property and determined that the soil contained levels of lead and silver that exceeded the limits established by the Solid Waste Management Act, 35 P.S. §§ 6018.101 et seq. (the Act). After the Commonwealth brought charges against Appellees for violations of the Act, they moved to suppress the test results because the samples had been destroyed before they were able to test them. Appellants argued that the destruction of the soil samples violated their federal due process rights, as interpreted and applied by this Court in Deans. The trial court suppressed the soil sample test results, and the Commonwealth Court affirmed. The Majority now reverses, finding that our analysis in Deans was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in Fisher.
In Deans, we examined whether a defendant’s due process rights under the federal constitution required the exclusion of the Commonwealth’s expert opinion regarding tests performed on a lottery ticket allegedly forged by the defendant which was lost before the defense could examine it. The Commonwealth alleged that their expert report was central to the prosecution. We held that because the Commonwealth was attempting to use the evidence against the defendant, and in fact, could not make a case without it, while denying to the defendant any possible benefit to be derived from an examination of the evidence, the defendant’s federal due process rights were violated. Id. at 34. We rejected the Commonwealth’s *676argument that when the state fails to preserve potentially useful evidence, the due process clause of the federal constitution is not violated unless there is evidence of the Commonwealth’s bad faith. Id. The Court reasoned that to permit the prosecution to use the evidence would deprive the defendant of federal due process irrespective of the good or bad faith on the part of the prosecution. Id.1
Following our decision in Deans, in 2004 the Supreme Court decided Fisher, supra. In Fisher, the Court did not focus on the centrality of the missing evidence to the Commonwealth’s case, as this Court did in Deans. Rather, the Supreme Court found that whether a federal due process violation occurs depends on whether the evidence can be considered materially exculpatory or merely potentially useful to a defendant. When the state fails to disclose evidence that is materially exculpatory to a defendant, a federal due process violation occurs and the evidence must be suppressed without regard to the good or bad faith of the prosecution. Fisher, 540 U.S. at 547, 124 S.Ct. 1200 (citing Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963) (characterizing as materially exculpatory the extra-judicial statements made by the defendant’s confederate, in which the confederate confessed to the murder for which the defendant was prosecuted)). In contrast, the federal due process clause requires a different result when the state fails to preserve “evidentiary material of which not more can be said than that it could have been subjected to tests, the results of which might have exonerated the defendant.” Id. (citing Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51, 109 S.Ct. 333, 102 L.Ed.2d 281 (1988)). The High Court characterized such evidence as only “potentially useful” to a defendant, and concluded that the failure to preserve such evidence does not violate due process “unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police.” Fisher, 540 U.S. at *677547-48, 124 S.Ct. 1200 (citing Youngblood, 488 U.S. at 58, 109 S.Ct. 333).
The evidence in Fisher was a white powdery substance revealed to be cocaine by four laboratory tests. The defendant sought a fifth test, which could not be conducted because the state had disposed of the evidence in accord with its policy. Because the most the defendant could hope for was that a fifth test conducted on the substance would have been inconsistent with the first four tests, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the evidence was potentially useful, not materially exculpatory, and that the defendant had to prove bad faith on the part of the state before establishing a federal due process violation. As the Majority in the instant case notes, the Fisher Court explicitly rejected an examination of the centrality of the evidence (the dominant concern of our Court in Deans), holding that “the applicability of the bad-faith requirement of Youngblood depended not on the centrality of the contested evidence to the prosecution’s case or the defendant’s defense, but on the distinction between ‘materially exculpatory’ evidence and ‘potentially useful’ evidence.” Fisher, 540 U.S. at 549, 124 S.Ct. 1200.
Because Deans considered the centrality of the evidence to the prosecution’s case, and Fisher held that even where the destroyed evidence is central to the prosecution’s case, a defendant must show bad faith to justify suppression, the Majority correctly notes that the High Court vitiated that aspect of our holding in Deans. Both Deans and Fisher implicated the federal constitution’s guarantee of due process; where our interpretation of the federal constitution differs from that of the Supreme Court, we must defer to the High Court as the final arbiter of the federal constitution. Therefore, I am constrained to agree with the Majority’s application of Fisher, overruling Deans, in this case.
I write separately to express my opinion that the Deans construct analyzing the centrality of the evidence to the Commonwealth’s case remains, to me, a preferable criteria to employ in determining whether there is a due process violation. Nonetheless, as a matter of federal due process, Fisher *678vitiated that test in favor of the “materially exculpatory”/“potentially useful” analysis, and Appellees limited their argument to the federal constitution, not raising a parallel argument premised on the Pennsylvania constitution.
The provisions of the Pennsylvania constitution may provide greater protection than their federal counterparts. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Edmunds, 526 Pa. 374, 586 A.2d 887 (1991); Commonwealth v. DeJohn, 486 Pa. 32, 403 A.2d 1283 (1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1032, 100 S.Ct. 704, 62 L.Ed.2d 668 (1980). We may construe Article I, Section 9 of the Pennsylvania Constitution more broadly than federal due process where there are particular reasons to do so. Commonwealth v. Kratsas, 564 Pa. 36, 764 A.2d 20 (2001) (rejecting the defendant’s invitation to construe the Pennsylvania constitution more broadly than federal due process because the defen- ■ dant failed to offer any particular reasons to support the departure); Commonwealth v. Mance, 539 Pa. 282, 652 A.2d 299, 302 (1995) (same). Therefore, provided a defendant sets forth an independent analysis of the Pennsylvania constitution pursuant to Edmunds, I look forward to examining whether Pennsylvania should go beyond the minimum protection established by Fisher and, specifically, whether those aspects of the Deans centrality of the evidence analysis that the Majority concludes are abrogated as a matter of federal constitutional law following Fisher, exist as a matter of Pennsylvania constitutional law.

. We noted that lost evidence does not preclude expert reports or testimony in every case, because results of tests conducted on different types of evidence will produce differing degrees of probability, sometimes amounting to a near certainty, other times being more subjective. Deans, 610 A.2d at 35. An opinion about the authenticity of a lottery ticket was at least somewhat subjective, and, as such, more likely to produce inconsistent or contradictory opinions. Id.