Court Opinion

ID: 9755671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:46:07.279427+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:10.104546
License: Public Domain

Justice NEWMAN,
Concurring.
Although I agree with the decision to affirm the convictions and sentences, I do not agree with the determination that the *241“public safety exception” applies to the statement Appellant made in the police car.
As the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court correctly concludes, the interrogation leading to Appellant’s confession in the police car, while he was handcuffed and in the back seat, was custodial in nature and presumptively required Miranda warnings.1 Commonwealth v. Williams, 539 Pa. 61, 650 A.2d 420 (1994). Nevertheless, “Miranda warnings ... are not required in certain situations where the police ask questions to ensure public safety and not to elicit incriminating responses.” Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court at 9 (citing Quarles, 467 U.S. at 655-57, 104 S.Ct. 2626; Commonwealth v. Stewart, 740 A.2d 712, 719-20 (Pa.Super.1999)). The Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court determines that the instant matter presents one of these situations, in which “overriding considerations of public safety justified Trooper Tretter’s failure to provide Appellant with Miranda warnings before asking him the limited question regarding the woman’s whereabouts.... ” Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court at 791. The public safety concerns considered included: (1) the troopers thought that they were responding to a violent domestic dispute; (2) they saw blood on the front door; and (3) Appellant gave a “confusing account” of the events that had transpired.
I do not find these circumstances to be ones that justify the “narrow exception” that the Supreme Court articulated in New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 104 S.Ct. 2626, 81 L.Ed.2d 550 (1984), which involved a real and immediate threat to public safety, consisting of circumstances far more exigent than the ones here. Id. at 650, 104 S.Ct. 2626. In that case, a woman approached two police officers and told them she had just been raped, described her assailant, and informed them that the man had just entered a nearby supermarket and was carrying a gun. One officer entered the store, saw a man who matched the description, witnessed the suspect run, ordered him to stop, frisked him, and discovered he was wearing an *242empty holster. After handcuffing the suspect, the officer asked him where the gun was, and the suspect gestured and said “over there.” The officer retrieved the gun, arrested the suspect, and then read him his rights. The Supreme Court stated that:
The police in this case, in the very act of apprehending a suspect, were confronted with the immediate necessity of ascertaining the whereabouts of a gun which they had every reason to believe the suspect had just removed from his empty holster and discarded in the supermarket. So long as the gun was concealed somewhere in the supermarket, with its actual whereabouts unknown, it obviously posed more than one danger to the public safety: an accomplice might make use of it, a customer or employee might come upon it.
Quarles, 467 U.S. at 657, 104 S.Ct. 2626 (emphasis added).
The situation in the instant matter stands in stark contrast to the one in Quarles. When police took Appellant into custody, they were responding first to a report of domestic violence and then to an inconsistent claim by Appellant that he was the victim of an attack by two men. Unlike Quarles, there was no identified victim, no report of a gun at the scene, and no contemporaneous crime being witnessed. Further, Appellant was already handcuffed and placed in the back seat of the patrol car when he was questioned and blurted out his confession. Clearly, Appellant did not pose a threat to public safety, and, while police knew that something bad had happened, Appellant himself was a self-described crime victim, and there were no weapons or armed suspects known to be present. It strains credulity in these circumstances to hold that the “narrow exception” based on public safety articulated in Quarles applies.
■ Although I believe that the police car confession was not admissible, I agree with the result and would not reverse the determination on guilt because there is sufficient evidence of record, including a second confession and Appellant’s inculpa*243tory testimony,2 to support the conviction even in the absence of the first statement.3

. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

. Appellant testified that he shot the two victims. The pathologist who performed the autopsies testified that each victim had been shot in a vital part of the body. Specific intent can be inferred where a defendant uses a deadly weapon upon a vital part of the victim's body. Commonwealth v. Washington, 547 Pa. 563, 692 A.2d 1024 (1997).

. Appellant has not raised any issue based on the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, regarding evidence obtained as a result of the police car confession.