Com. v. Jones

• Decision Date: 25 April 2005
• Citation: 874 A.2d 108
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Barnswell JONES, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

874 A.2d 108

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Barnswell JONES, Appellant.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Submitted October 12, 2004.

Filed April 25, 2005.

John C. Carlson, Reading, for appellant.

Douglas J. Waltman, Asst. Dist. Atty., Reading, for Com., appellee.

Before: HUDOCK, GANTMAN, and BECK, JJ.

GANTMAN, J.

¶ 1 Appellant, Barnswell Jones, asks us to determine whether the suppression court erred when it denied his omnibus pretrial motion which, inter alia, sought to suppress all evidence obtained as a result of an investigatory detention subsequent to a routine traffic stop on October 17, 2001. Appellant also challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support his convictions for possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance ("PWID")¹ and conspiracy.² We hold the investigative detention of Appellant was lawful under the circumstances of this case. We also hold Appellant had no constitutional expectation of privacy in a rental automobile, where he was the operator of the vehicle but not the named lessee, he was not an authorized driver, and the return date on the rental agreement had passed. We further hold the Commonwealth's evidence was sufficient to support Appellant's convictions. Accordingly, we affirm.

¶ 2 The relevant facts and procedural history of this appeal are as follows. On October 17, 2001, at approximately 1:35 a.m., Officer Dale Ulshafer, a five year veteran of the Fleetwood Police Department, began to follow a teal Toyota Corolla traveling southbound on Route 222. Officer Ulshafer observed the vehicle cross over the double yellow centerline four times. After the fourth centerline cross over, Officer Ulshafer activated his overhead lights to effectuate a traffic stop. The Corolla pulled onto the shoulder of the road. In addition to the driver, a female sat in the front passenger's seat and a male sat in the rear of the vehicle on the passenger's side.

¶ 3 Officer Ulshafer exited his patrol car and asked Appellant (the driver) for his license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance. Appellant provided a non-driver identification card from New York. The card contained the name "William Graham." Additionally, Appellant did not produce registration and insurance papers. Instead, Appellant gave Officer Ulshafer a rental agreement from Enterprise Rent-a-Car Company ("Enterprise"). Officer Ulshafer returned to his patrol car to review the documents.

¶ 4 Officer Ulshafer called for back-up and ran a PennDOT computer check on the information from Appellant's identification card. This check could not verify the information on the card. Officers Phillips, Wood, and Soumas arrived shortly thereafter. With his back-up in place, Officer Ulshafer returned to the Corolla and asked to speak with each passenger individually. During Appellant's interview, he stated the group had been in New York for a few hours and that he was returning to his home in Reading. Appellant denied drinking alcohol, but admitted he was extremely tired. Appellant indicated that the passenger in the front, Melissa Nieves, was his girlfriend and the passenger in the rear, Jamal Walker, was his cousin.

¶ 5 Nieves declared she was Appellant's girlfriend, and called him "Will" throughout her interview. She said the group had been in New York "for a while" visiting friends and family. She also identified Walker as Appellant's friend, but she did not know anything else about him. Walker told Officer Ulshafer that the group had been in New York for one week. Walker also said Appellant was his cousin, and he referred to Appellant as "Wes." Additionally, Walker produced a valid New York driver's license.

¶ 6 During Officer Ulshafer's interviews with Nieves and Walker, Officer Wood engaged Appellant in conversation. Officer Wood questioned Appellant about his identification card, but Appellant seemed preoccupied. Officer Wood later testified:

[Appellant] really wasn't paying attention to me when I was talking to him, when I was asking him questions. He was focusing on the right front of the vehicle. And I noticed when the other officers would bring the occupants out, he was concentrating on the right front of the vehicle, specifically the female passenger.

(N.T. Trial, 3/23/04, at 69).

¶ 7 After the interviews, Officer Ulshafer returned the rental agreement to Appellant and told him that the group was free to leave if Walker drove. However, based upon the inconsistent statements from the passengers and his drug interdiction training, Officer Ulshafer believed the group was trafficking narcotics. Before the group left, Officer Ulshafer resumed conversation with Appellant and asked for consent to search the automobile. Officer Ulshafer also asked Appellant if he could see the car rental agreement again. Appellant appeared nervous and stalled before refusing to consent to a search. Officer Ulshafer advised Appellant that he would call for a drug dog to come to the scene to sniff the vehicle for narcotics. Appellant consented to a drug sniff.

¶ 8 While Officer Ulshafer located the drug dog, his fellow officers examined the agreement and discovered the Corolla had been rented from a location in Reading. Moreover, the Corolla's return date had expired. The named lessee, Shawna Norris, was not in the vehicle, and the agreement expressly prohibited anyone other than Norris from driving the vehicle. Further, the agreement did not permit the car to be driven outside of Pennsylvania. In light of this new information, Officer Ulshafer called Enterprise and advised one of their representatives of his findings. The representative asked the police to have the vehicle towed from the scene and impounded.

¶ 9 Officer Ulshafer informed the passengers about this development and offered them courtesy transportation to the nearest gas station with a pay phone. The passengers exited the Corolla and the officers patted them down prior to the courtesy ride. Officer Ulshafer placed the passengers in his patrol car, drove them a short distance down Route 222, and released them at the gas station. Meanwhile, Officers Wood and Phillips remained with the Corolla and waited for the tow truck. Officer Wood testified about his observations of the automobile:

I walked up to the right front passenger area and shined my flashlight through the passenger-side window, into the windshield, and I noticed suspected narcotics on the right front passenger seat, between the floor and the door, like the floorboard area where the seat controls are.

* * *

They were in a — not a clear bag, but a grocery-type bag.

* * *

The bag was — the contents were in the bag, and the bag was sitting, you know, in the door, and you could see what was in the bag. The handles were up, you know, like — I lifted it with a pen. That's how I pulled it out.

(Id. at 71, 73, 74). The windows and doors of the Corolla were shut, but the car was not locked. Officer Wood opened the passenger-side door, examined the items in the grocery bag, seized the grocery bag and its contents, and placed these items in his patrol car.

¶ 10 With the suspected narcotics secured, Officer Wood radioed Officer Ulshafer and told him not to release the suspects. However, Officer Ulshafer did not get this call until approximately two minutes after he had left the suspects at the gas station. Officer Ulshafer returned to the gas station, and Officers Wood and Phillips went to assist him. Officer Wood found Appellant and Nieves in the women's bathroom. Shortly thereafter, Officer Ulshafer found Walker hiding under the gas station dumpster.

¶ 11 While in custody, police searched Appellant incident to arrest. The search yielded $481.00 in cash, in denominations of five, ten, twenty, and fifty dollar bills. Further, laboratory tests revealed that the grocery bag taken from the Corolla contained two packages of cocaine; one package of "crack" cocaine weighing 101 grams and one package of "powder" cocaine which weighing 55.8 grams. Police subsequently charged Appellant with false identification to law enforcement authorities,³ PWID, conspiracy, drivers required to be licensed,⁴ and driving on roadways laned for traffic.⁵

¶ 12 Officers Ulshafer and Wood testified at Appellant's preliminary hearing on November 20, 2001. Following this hearing, the court determined that the Commonwealth had established a prima facie case against Appellant and bound over the charges for trial. On February 21, 2002, Appellant filed an omnibus pretrial motion which, inter alia, sought to suppress all evidence obtained as a result of the traffic stop, on the grounds that Officer Ulshafer did not possess "specific and articulable facts" that criminal activity might have been afoot, pursuant to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The suppression court conducted a hearing on April 10, 2002, and denied Appellant's motion on May 22, 2002.⁶ After several continuances, Appellant's jury trial commenced on March 23, 2004.⁷

¶ 13 At trial, the Commonwealth presented three witnesses. Officers Ulshafer and Wood both testified about their involvement in the events leading to Appellant's arrest. Additionally, Corporal Scott Errington, from Berks County, testified as an expert in the field of illegal narcotics. Corporal Errington opined that the cocaine seized from the rental car was possessed with the intent to distribute. Corporal Errington based this opinion on the amount of cocaine seized, its packaging, the lack of drug paraphernalia for consumption, and the amount of cash carried by Appellant. Following the Commonwealth's case-in-chief, the defense did not present any witnesses. Moreover, the trial court conducted an on-the-record colloquy, at which time Appellant announced his decision not to testify on his own behalf.

¶ 14 After brief deliberations, the jury found Appellant guilty of false identification to law enforcement authorities, PWID, and conspiracy. The trial court also found Appel...