Court Opinion

ID: 9756919
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:09:18.18521+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:33.273914
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
concurring.
I agree with the reasoning and conclusion of the majority, but cannot join the opinion of the court due to its mistaken reference to our holding in Commonwealth v. Tarbert, 517 Pa. 277, 535 A.2d 1035 (1987). The holding of Tarbert was that when a roadblock was conducted in violation of a statute, the resultant illegal breathalyzer evidence must be suppressed. That holding is authoritative precedent for suppression of evidence in this case, where a blood sample was extracted in violation of a statute.
The majority in this case, however, makes the incorrect statement that Tarbert:
held that the roadblock did not violate the United States or the Pennsylvania Constitutions. The roadblock did, however, violate an implicit prohibition of such roadblocks in the Motor Vehicle Code, and as a result we ordered that suppression was the appropriate remedy for the fruit of that unlawful but not unconstitutional search.
(Emphasis added.) The emphasized language is a misstatement of the law. The court in Tarbert held no such thing. Only two justices joined an opinion gratuitously expressing the emphasized proposition, which was an entirely unnecessary and unwarranted excursion into constitutional analysis when statutory construction rendered the constitutional issue moot. As Mr. Justice Papadakos wrote: “We have too often stated *113that when a case raises constitutional and non-constitutional issues, we should not reach constitutional issues if the case can properly be decided on non-constitutional grounds. Because of the inclusion of this obiter dictum, I am constrained to concur in the result.” Tarbert, 517 Pa. at 301-02, 535 A.2d at 1047 (Papadakos, J., concurring; citations omitted).
Due to the misstatement in the majority opinion as to the holding of Tarbert, I cannot join the opinion though I concur in the result.
Mr. Justice PAPADAKOS and Mr. Justice CAPPY join this concurring opinion.