Court Opinion

ID: 9750020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:13:31.676714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:01.602294
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
While I agree with the majority that the Attorney General is not clothed with the arrest powers otherwise possessed by a police officer, I cannot concur in that portion of the opinion which so swiftly blinds itself to the patent illegality of the State action that brought about this arrest, cleansing it with the appearance of a State Police officer who is permitted to arrest Appellee on the basis of the “untainted” information supplied by the same Deputy Attorney General whose actions were chastised just a few paragraphs before.
There can be no dispute that the actions of the Attorney General’s agent here are state action. As such, inasmuch as it is held that those actions were not within the power of the agent, those acts were violative of Appellee’s Constitutional rights, under both the Federal (Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments) and State (Article 1, § 8) Constitutions. The tactics utilized to apprehend Appellee were stipulated on the record as being performed under color of State authority. As such, their use in the later arrest by State Police, was no less “fruit of the poisonous tree” than any other violation subject to the exclusionary ruje where evidence obtained illegally through state action must be suppressed.
To hold otherwise renders meaningless the primary holding of this case. The effect would be to allow these agents to continue to “arrest” and detain any citizen so long as the ultimate arrest is conducted by a police officer with the proper authority acting on information supplied by the illegally acting Agent. This result is ludicrous and flies in the face of the principles we established in Commonwealth *23v. Corley, 507 Pa. 540, 491 A.2d 829 (1985), wherein this Court set forth an exhaustive examination of the principles of state action and the application of the exclusionary rule. Those considerations, ignored by the majority today, require a court to determine the relationship of the individual committing the wrongful action and his relationship to the state. Under the Corley principles, it is clear that the agent’s actions were inseparable from the State and the evidence obtained therefrom must be suppressed. The majority has, however, completely ignored the precedent established in Corley in favor of an ad hoc ratification of illegal state action to validate the prosecution of an otherwise illegally detained person.
As a reading of Corley would establish, the instant situation must be viewed in a different light than that of a private individual attempting a citizen’s arrest. In that instance the citizen is not acting, nor holding himself out as acting, as an agent for the state. As such, responsibility for his actions must rest solely on that citizen. Indeed, the record indicates that the Agent was not making a citizen’s arrest, but was acting solely upon powers he felt he possessed as an agent of the Attorney General. (Opinion, p. 1046). The flaw in the majority’s reasoning is in ignoring this distinction. Either the arrest was effectuated by a private citizen or a duly authorized agent of the state. Since neither applies to the facts of this case, the arrest was illegal ab initio and no subsequent action can erase the taint.
In the present case, were we to ratify and allow illegal State action by likening it to a citizen’s arrest, we would also, as a secondary and unwanted effect, open the state up to untold civil liability were the effects of these “citizen's arrests”, less than correct or successful.
Instead, I think the more prudent path is to emphasize to the Attorney General that he has specific, enumerated powers and to act ultra vires those powers will only frustrate the law enforcement scheme which has already been legislatively and constitutionally established. This is the *24primary purpose of the exclusionary rule and that purpose is no better served nor its application less warranted than upon the facts presently before us.
I therefore dissent from the majority’s validation of the arrest of Appellee based upon information supplied by the agent for the Attorney General.
LARSEN, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.