Com. v. Hughes

• Decision Date: 25 November 2003
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Jerome Jason HUGHES, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

836 A.2d 893

575 Pa. 447

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Jerome Jason HUGHES, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued May 14, 2003.

Decided November 25, 2003.

Paul Watson Muller, Hershey, for Jerome Jason Hughes, Appellant.

Edward Michael Marsico, Jr., Harrisburg, James Patrick Barker, Williamsport, for the Com. of PA, Appellee.

Before: CAPPY, C.J., and CASTILLE, NIGRO, NEWMAN, SAYLOR, EAKIN and LAMB, JJ.

OPINION ANNOUNCING THE JUDGMENT OF THE COURT

Justice NEWMAN.

We granted allocatur in this case to determine whether the Superior Court erred when it affirmed the trial court's denial of a suppression motion, which alleged that the police officers had invalid third party consent to search the approved parole residence of Jerome Jason Hughes (Appellant). After reviewing the claims raised by Appellant, we affirm the decision of the Superior Court.

Facts and Procedural History

On June 24, 1999, Dauphin County Adult Parole Officer James Vines (Officer Vines) and City of Harrisburg Police Officer Kirk Aldrich (Officer Aldrich) noticed Appellant standing on a corner outside of a bar while they were patrolling an area in Harrisburg. Officer Vines recognized Appellant as one of his parolees and wanted to question him about several recent parole violations.¹ The officers drove around the block in an attempt to speak with him, but by the time they had returned, Appellant had left the corner.

Officer Vines thought that Appellant probably went to the residence approved for his parole located at 115 North 13th Street and, therefore, traveled to that location. At around ten o'clock p.m., when the officers arrived at the parole residence, there were several teenage girls standing on the front porch. The officers asked the girls if Appellant was home and the girls responded that he was not there. Officer Vines inquired if he and Officer Aldrich could go inside the house to look for Appellant. The girls consented; two of the girls opened the door and followed the officers inside the house.

Once inside the residence, the officers saw yellow headphones similar to the ones that they noticed Appellant wearing earlier in the evening outside of the bar. Officers Vines and Aldrich walked throughout the house looking for Appellant. They looked in his bedroom on the first floor. When they stepped into Appellant's bedroom, they immediately noticed a clear plastic sandwich bag containing marijuana on the headboard of the bed. They also found a blue tinted Ziploc TM bag filled with marijuana and another plastic bag containing numerous empty plastic bags.

At that point, the officers determined that they did not want to look for more evidence of drugs and drug paraphernalia until they obtained consent to search Appellant's bedroom from Tracey Griffin (Griffin), the owner of the house. When Griffin arrived, she consented to a full search of the house. The officers thoroughly searched the bedroom of Appellant and found 2.41 grams of crack cocaine, a cellular phone, and a pager hidden in a bedroom closet.

Police arrested Appellant and on December 2, 1999, charged him with two counts of Possession With Intent to Deliver a Controlled Substance² and one count of Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.³ On March 16, 2000, Appellant filed an Omnibus Pre-trial Motion to Suppress the Evidence obtained from the house on the grounds that the police conducted the search in violation of his constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. After holding a Suppression Hearing on April 28, 2000, the trial court, in an Order issued on June 23, 2000, denied the motion of Appellant.

On September 13, 2000, Appellant filed a Motion in Limine in an attempt to prevent the Commonwealth from mentioning his prior drug convictions, alleged parole violations, or any hearsay statements identifying him as the owner of seized property. The trial court granted the motion with regard to the prior criminal record of Appellant, but ruled that any evidence concerning his parole status would be admissible for the purpose of showing how Officer Vines knew Appellant and why he went to meet with Appellant at his approved parole address.

On September 15, 2000, a jury found Appellant guilty on all three counts. The trial court sentenced him to an aggregate sentence of four-to-eleven years' imprisonment. On January 10, 2001, the trial court denied the post-sentence motions filed by Appellant. Appellant appealed to the Superior Court. In a Memorandum Opinion, the Superior Court affirmed the Judgment of Sentence imposed by the trial court.

In affirming the decision of the trial court, however, the Superior Court disagreed with the analysis advanced by the Commonwealth that the parole status of Appellant and his alleged violations alone provided sufficient authority to search his bedroom, considering that parolees have a diminished expectation of privacy. The Superior Court determined that the officers did have reasonable suspicion to believe that Appellant violated his parole, but that the search of his residence for drugs did not reasonably relate to his parole violations for failing to begin community service and maintain employment, or to the parole officer's duty in confirming them. Furthermore, the Superior Court noted that the officers entered the house only to discuss his parole violations with him, and not to search the home for evidence.

Nonetheless, the Superior Court upheld the search as reasonable pursuant to the "apparent authority exception" to the exclusionary rule. The Superior Court has consistently held that warrantless searches based upon the reasonable belief of a police officer that the third party who has given consent to the officers to search has actual authority, will be upheld as reasonable even though that belief was mistaken. Superior Court Slip Op. at 7; Commonwealth v. Quiles, 422 Pa.Super. 153, 619 A.2d 291 (1993); Commonwealth v. Blair, 394 Pa.Super. 207, 575 A.2d 593 (1990), appeal denied, 526 Pa. 646, 585 A.2d 466 (1991). In this case, the Superior Court determined that the actions displayed by the girls provided the officers with the reasonable belief that they possessed common authority over the premises, which would permit them to provide valid consent to enter the home.

Judge Klein, in a dissenting opinion, stated that he agreed with the majority opinion that a search should be upheld where a police officer reasonably, although mistakenly, believes that a third party has actual authority to consent. Nevertheless, Judge Klein would have determined that it was unreasonable for the police officers in this case to believe that several teenage girls standing on the porch of a house at ten o'clock at night had the requisite authority to consent to a search of the residence.

Discussion

As previously noted, the issue in this case is whether the Superior Court erred when it affirmed the trial court's denial of a suppression motion made by Appellant alleging that the police officers had invalid third party consent to search his approved parole residence. The resolution of this issue requires an analysis of: (1) the "apparent authority exception" to the exclusionary rule; (2) the proper application of this exception pursuant to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution; and (3) whether such an exception is consistent with the Pennsylvania Constitution and past Pennsylvania jurisprudence.

The standard and scope of review for a challenge to the denial of a suppression motion is "whether the factual findings are supported by the record and whether the legal conclusions drawn from those facts are correct." Commonwealth v. Hawkins, 549 Pa. 352, 701 A.2d 492, 504 (1997), cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1083, 118 S.Ct. 1535, 140 L.Ed.2d 685 (1998). "When reviewing rulings of a suppression court, we must consider only the evidence of the prosecution and so much of the evidence for the defense as remains uncontradicted when read in the context of the record as a whole." Id. at 504-505. "Where the record supports findings of the suppression court, we are bound by those facts and may reverse only if the legal conclusions drawn therefrom are in error." Id. at 505.

Appellant contends that the Superior Court erred in affirming the trial court's denial of his Suppression Motion, because the search conducted by the police officers was allegedly improper due to their failure to obtain legally sufficient consent to enter the residence. The Commonwealth argues that the officers had lawful authority to enter the approved parole residence of Appellant and search for him, considering his outstanding parole violations.⁴ We will first address the position of the Commonwealth.

Parole Exception

The parole status of Appellant is significant because a parolee has a diminished expectation of privacy and the Fourth Amendment protections of a parolee are more limited than the protections afforded the average citizen. Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987); Commonwealth v. Pickron, 535 Pa. 241, 634 A.2d 1093 (1993). In Commonwealth v. Williams, 547 Pa. 577, 692 A.2d 1031 (1997), as a matter of first impression, this Court addressed the degree of authorization that a parole agreement gives a parole officer to search the residence of a parolee. We determined that the Pennsylvania Constitution provides a parolee with no greater protection than the United States Constitution in the area of warrantless searches of a parolee's approved residence, where the parolee has signed a parole agreement in which he agreed to the search of his premises as a condition to the parole. Id. This Court ruled that the requirement that a parole officer obtain a warrant supported by probable cause prior to conducting a search is inapplicable in a parole context because "parole is a form of criminal punishment imposed after a guilty verdict and the states must have the necessary power over parolees in order to...