Com. v. Lagana

• Decision Date: 25 February 1988
• Citation: 517 Pa. 371,537 A.2d 1351
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. Joseph M. LAGANA, Appellee.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 1351

537 A.2d 1351

517 Pa. 371

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. Joseph M. LAGANA, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued Nov. 13, 1987.

Decided Feb. 25, 1988.

Gaele McLaughlin Barthold, Deputy Dist. Atty., Alan Sacks, Philadelphia, for appellant.

John W. Packel, Chief, Appeal Div., Leonard Sosnov, Philadelphia, for appellee.

Before NIX, C.J., and LARSEN, FLAHERTY, McDERMOTT, ZAPPALA and PAPADOKAS, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

LARSEN, Justice.

The issue presented in this appeal is the admissibility of evidence seized by a police officer without a warrant during an investigatory stop and frisk prompted by a police radio call which contained information received from an unidentified source.

The pertinent facts from the record are as follows. On May 11, 1981 at 7:30 p.m. Officer Gelovich of the Philadelphia Police Department received a police radio broadcast that there was a man with a gun at the corner of Ninth and Wharton Streets in Philadelphia. The man was described as a white male, twenty to twenty-five years of age and wearing a yellow raincoat. Officer Gelovich arrived at Ninth and Wharton Streets within two minutes of the radio call and observed a man who fit this description looking through binoculars at a restaurant which was approximately thirty feet away. It was raining heavily and there were twenty to thirty people in the area, none of whom were wearing a yellow raincoat or otherwise fit the description of the suspect.

The police officer jumped out of his car, approached the man who was later identified as appellee Joseph Lagana, immediately frisked him and discovered a thirty-two caliber revolver in the waistband of his pants. Officer Gelovich arrested appellee on charges of illegal possession of a firearm. ¹ At appellee's feet the officer saw a black camera case, a brown case and a small purple pouch. ² On June 9, 1981 appellee was also charged with burglary after the various items in the cases were found to have been stolen. The charges were not consolidated.

On August 28, 1981 a suppression hearing was held before Judge Nelson Diaz regarding the evidence seized in the burglary case. Judge Diaz found that "at the time the police officer went looking for someone with that characteristic of the radio call he went there with the purpose of arresting this individual" and concluded that appellee was under arrest before the gun was seized. The suppression court granted appellee's motion to suppress, holding that the arrest was without probable cause because the source for the information in the radio broadcast was unknown and that, therefore, the evidence seized was the fruit of an illegal arrest. The Commonwealth elected not to appeal the case and nolle prossed the charge.

On September 8, 1981 a suppression hearing was held before Judge Eugene H. Clarke, Jr. on appellee's motion to suppress evidence of the gun in regard to the charges of illegal possession of a firearm. Judge Clarke granted appellee's motion on the basis of collateral estoppel, relying on Judge Diaz's findings and conclusions in the burglary suppression hearing. This order was appealed to the Superior Court which affirmed in Commonwealth v. Lagana, 334 Pa.Super. 100, 482 A.2d 1101 (1984). On appeal to this Court we reversed and remanded the case directing the Superior Court to "have the ruling of the first suppression hearing incorporated into the record of the second hearing, and to allow review of the first decision on appeal as if it had been entered anew." Commonwealth v. Lagana, 510 Pa. 477, 483, 509 A.2d 863, 866 (1986). ³

The Superior Court upon remand held that Judge Diaz, the judge in the first suppression hearing, erred in concluding that appellee had been arrested prior to seizure of the gun and in suppressing the evidence as the fruit of the illegal arrest. Nevertheless, the Superior Court affirmed the suppression court's ruling, holding that the police officer did not have a reasonable suspicion sufficient to conduct an investigatory stop under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Commonwealth v. Lagana, 356 Pa.Super. 132, 514 A.2d 179 (1986). We granted allocatur and we now reverse.

In reviewing the findings of a suppression court where the Commonwealth is appealing, we must consider only the evidence of the defendant's witnesses and so much of the evidence for the prosecution as read in the context of the record as a whole remains uncontradicted. Commonwealth v. Hamlin, 503 Pa. 210, 469 A.2d 137 (1983) (plurality opinion). While we are bound by the lower court's findings of fact if supported by the record, we are not bound by the court's legal conclusions which are drawn from the facts of the case. Commonwealth v. Cortez, 507 Pa. 529, 491 A.2d 111 (1985).

A police officer is entitled to conduct a limited search of an individual to detect weapons if the officer observes unusual and suspicious conduct on the part of the individual which leads him to reasonably believe that criminal activity is afoot and that the person may be armed and dangerous. Terry, 392 U.S. at 30, 88 S.Ct. at 1884, Cortez, 507 Pa. at 533, 491 A.2d at 113, citing Commonwealth v. Hicks, 434 Pa. 153, 253 A.2d 276 (1969).

In this case the Superior Court held that the stop and frisk of appellee was invalid since: 1) the source for the radio broadcast was unsubstantiated; 2) the description of appellee was not specific, and 3) there was no information linking the appellee with a crime. The court cited our decision in Commonwealth v. Anderson, 481 Pa. 292, 392 A.2d 1298 (1978) to support its holding.

In Anderson, the police received an anonymous tip and transmitted a car radio report that a black male, named Perry, about 5'10"'' tall with a bush style haircut, wearing a dark coat had escaped from a drug rehabilitation program and was in a bar at 57th and Master Streets in Philadelphia. Upon approaching the suspect in the bar one officer asked him if he was carrying a weapon. Before the suspect responded, the second officer touched his right jacket pocket and felt an object which was a gun.

On appeal, this Court held that the officers did not possess a reasonable suspicion to justify a Terry stop and that the evidence of the gun should have been suppressed. We stated: "[h]ere we do not...