Com. v. Perez

• Decision Date: 24 March 2004
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. John PEREZ, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

845 A.2d 779

577 Pa. 360

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. John PEREZ, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued April 9, 2002.

Decided March 24, 2004.

John Packel, Karl Baker, Jeffrey Paul Shender, Philadelphia, for John Perez.

Hugh J. Burns, Michael Erlich, Philadelphia, for Com.

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

OPINION

Justice EAKIN.

We are asked to determine whether the Superior Court erred in affirming appellant's judgment of sentence for robbery and related offenses, when the evidence included an inculpatory statement appellant made more than six hours after his arrest, before he was arraigned. The Superior Court's application of the "six-hour rule" established by Commonwealth v. Davenport, 471 Pa. 278, 370 A.2d 301 (1977), and Commonwealth v. Duncan, 514 Pa. 395, 525 A.2d 1177 (1987) (Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court),¹ causes us to re-examine this bright-line rule, which calls for suppression of a prearraignment confession simply because it was obtained more than six hours after arrest.

At 4:30 p.m., on November 24, 1996, three men robbed a deli at gunpoint. Based on the victims' account and a videotape from a security camera, police had a description of the suspects and their car. At 6:15 p.m., a pizzeria was robbed by three men of the same description, with the same car. At 6:30 p.m., police stopped a car matching the description, and finding its occupants matched the description of the suspects, arrested them for both robberies. Appellant, a juvenile at the time, was one of the occupants; seeking to avoid discovery by the police of outstanding warrants for his arrest, he gave police what they later found to be a false name, birth date, address, and phone number.

At approximately 11:15 p.m., after concluding his preliminary investigation of the crime scenes, Detective George Fetters began to interview appellant. When Detective Fetters ran a computer check at 11:42 p.m., using the name appellant had given, he discovered appellant had lied. Police ascertained appellant's true identity around midnight; at 12:15 a.m., they telephoned his aunt, with whom he lived, and asked her to be present while they talked to appellant. She declined, but gave the detectives permission to speak with appellant about the robberies. At 12:45 a.m., appellant was given Miranda² warnings and agreed to make a statement; he confessed to being involved in both robberies. Questioning concluded at 4:35 a.m. Appellant was arraigned at 9:24 a.m., nearly 15 hours after his arrest.

Appellant moved to suppress his statement because it was not obtained within six hours of his arrest, in violation of Davenport and Duncan. The trial court denied the motion. Appellant was tried as an adult, a jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to 8 to 20 years imprisonment. He appealed to the Superior Court, again alleging his confession should have been suppressed.

The Superior Court affirmed, concluding that although the interrogation did not begin until nearly six hours following arrest, suppression was not required because appellant caused the delay by giving the police false information. Commonwealth v. Perez, 760 A.2d 873, 876 (Pa.Super.2000), appeal granted, 567 Pa. 759, 790 A.2d 1015 (2001). The majority was reluctant to allow appellant to benefit from a delay he intentionally caused, and cited the reasoning in Commonwealth v. Devan, 338 Pa.Super. 95, 487 A.2d 869 (1985) (plurality), where the two-hour delay resulting from the accused's use of a false name was excluded from calculation of the six-hour period. The Devan court analogized cases where the defendants deliberately made themselves unavailable for trial, yet claimed violations of former Pa.R.Crim.P. 1100.³

Accordingly, the Superior Court held the six-hour period did not begin to run until appellant gave the police his correct name, rather than at the time of his arrest, when he used a false name. The court also noted that the interrogation was not prolonged, and appellant did not allege his statement was coerced or involuntary. The majority concluded:

In view of the cause of the delay and the circumstances surrounding it in this case, suppression of the statements made to police by Perez would not comport with the spirit behind the rule or with this Court's previous rulings that a defendant should not profit from a delay which he himself has caused.

Perez, at 879.

Judge Johnson dissented, for three reasons. First, he concluded the majority erred in relying on Devan, which was not a majority opinion, and thus of no precedential value. He further concluded the cases cited in Devan were not analogous to this case because appellant's false information did not make him physically unavailable for arraignment, nor did appellant waive his right to prompt arraignment. Second, the dissent maintained, a defendant can be arraigned regardless of whether the police know his correct identity; indeed, a defendant who exercises his right to remain totally silent can still be promptly arraigned. Therefore, it was the police's decision to perform further investigation which caused the delay, not appellant's dishonesty.

Finally, Judge Johnson observed the majority's holding conflicted with Davenport and Duncan. Although some members of this Court have expressed dissatisfaction with the rule, see Commonwealth v. Bridges, 563 Pa. 1, 757 A.2d 859, 883 (2000) (Saylor, J., concurring; joined by Cappy, J.), cert. denied, 535 U.S. 1102, 122 S.Ct. 2306, 152 L.Ed.2d 1061 (2002), the dissent concluded it was beyond the Superior Court's authority to discard the rule as long as it remains binding precedent. Judge Johnson also concluded appellant's failure to allege his confession was coerced or involuntary was of no import, as the sixhour rule contemplated that the "`mere passage of time' while under arrest could have a coercive effect on a defendant." Perez, at 882 (Johnson, J., dissenting) (quoting Duncan, at 1182). Finding appellant had only to show his statement was made beyond the six-hour period, the dissent would have suppressed it.

In this appeal, appellant likewise argues the true cause of the delay was not his false information, but the police's decision to continue the initial investigation prior to interrogation; he argues they had sufficient information from the surveillance video, and there was no reason for the delay in questioning him. He further contends there is no need to incorporate an "excludable time" analysis into the sixhour rule, when the rule already allows for the exception of exigent circumstances.

The Commonwealth counters that police began interrogating appellant within the six-hour period, but were delayed for over an hour by appellant's false information, which made additional investigation and processing necessary. The Commonwealth further argues the six-hour rule should be reconsidered, citing the acknowledged shortcomings of a bright-line rule of exclusion, as well as case law from other jurisdictions which have abandoned a per se approach to exclusion in favor of a "totality of the circumstances" test.

In Pennsylvania, the right to prompt arraignment is set forth in the Rules of Criminal Procedure,⁴ which state that a person who has been arrested "shall be afforded a preliminary arraignment by the proper issuing authority without unnecessary delay." Pa.R.Crim.P. 516(A) (execution of arrest warrant within judicial district of issuance) (emphasis added); see also Pa.R.Crim.P. 517(A) (execution of arrest warrant outside judicial district of issuance); Pa.R.Crim.P. 518(A) (using advanced communication technology when arrest warrant executed outside judicial district of issuance); Pa.R.Crim.P. 519(A) (arrest without warrant). This requirement is not constitutionally mandated, but it ensures a defendant is afforded the constitutional rights protected by Pa. R.Crim.P. 540, which requires the issuing authority to: read the complaint to a defendant to inform him of the nature of the charges against him, Pa. Const. art. I, § 9; inform him of his right to counsel, U.S. Const. Amends. VI, XIV, Pa. Const. art. I, § 9; and inform him of his right to reasonable bail. Pa. Const. art. I, § 14. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 540(E)(1)-(3), (G). Prompt arraignment also protects a defendant's right to be free from unreasonable seizure of his person. U.S. Const. Amends. IV, XIV, Pa. Const. art. I, § 8.

Before Davenport, to enforce the prompt arraignment requirement, this Court held all evidence obtained during unnecessary delay between arrest and arraignment was inadmissible, unless the evidence bore no relationship to the delay. Commonwealth v. Futch, 447 Pa. 389, 290 A.2d 417, 419 (1972) (identification obtained during uncounselled line-up after unnecessary 13-hour delay was inadmissible, but harmless error, in light of other independent identification evidence). This holding was refined in Commonwealth v. Williams, 455 Pa. 569, 319 A.2d 419 (1974), where this Court developed a three-part test for determining whether evidence obtained during pre-arraignment delay would be suppressed: (1) the delay must be unnecessary; (2) the evidence must be prejudicial; and (3) the evidence must be reasonably related to the delay. Id., at 420.

Given the flood of cases that followed, this Court in Davenport sought to "simplify the task of determining the admissibility of statements taken before arraignment and thereby further judicial economy." Id., at 306. The Court adopted a rule that made the admissibility of statements obtained between arrest and arraignment dependent on the length of time between these events: "[i]f the accused is not arraigned within six hours of arrest, any statement obtained after arrest but before arraignment shall not be admissible at trial." Id. Six hours was chosen because there was no case where a delay of six or more hours was held to be "necessary" delay, and the National Advisory...