Com. v. Rodriquez

• Decision Date: 18 September 1992
• Citation: 532 Pa. 62,614 A.2d 1378
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Joanne RODRIQUEZ, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 1378

614 A.2d 1378

532 Pa. 62

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Joanne RODRIQUEZ, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued May 8, 1992.

Decided Sept. 18, 1992.

Robert Bruce Evanick, Public Defender, for appellant.

Christy H. Fawcett, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.

Before NIX, C.J., and LARSEN, FLAHERTY, MC DERMOTT, ZAPPALA, PAPADAKOS and CAPPY, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT

CAPPY, Justice.

This case comes before us on the question of whether police officers may detain a person in the vicinity of a drug raid absent probable cause or reasonable suspicion linking that individual to the criminal activity under investigation. For the reasons that follow we find detention of individuals under circumstances lacking probable cause to be unconstitutional.

History of the Case

The present appeal arises out of a confidential informant's tip to Lieutenant Flanagan of the York City Police Department, that a "drug vending operation" was being conducted in an apartment at 405 South George Street, York, Pennsylvania. The informant stated that there were several individuals involved in the operation, including a Puerto Rican female. The informant offered no further description of the woman.

Upon receiving this information, Lt. Flanagan attempted to make a controlled buy using the informant; however, this initial attempt was unsuccessful. The following evening a controlled buy was made. After purchasing the drugs, the informant told Lt. Flanagan that there were six or seven people in the apartment planning to leave immediately with the drugs to transact sales at a local speakeasy. The informant further described the person from whom he had purchased the drugs as a Puerto Rican male in his mid 20's, 5'7"' tall, 130 pounds, with a pig-tail down his back, whose name was "Cheeco." The informant offered no information at that time regarding the Puerto Rican female to whom he had referred earlier.

Acting on the tip that the occupants and drugs would quickly be vacating the apartment, Lt. Flanagan decided to conduct a search of the premises immediately, rather than first obtaining a search warrant. To that end, three officers approached from the rear of the apartment building, while two other officers entered the front of the building. As the two officers, MacBride and Mehring, approached the front of the building with guns drawn, a packet of drugs was thrown out of the window of the apartment in question and caught by Officer MacBride.

At the same time, Officer Mehring observed, what he described as three Puerto Rican females, sitting on the stoop in front of the entrance to the multi-family apartment building. Addressing the three women, he asked "Do you live here?" The appellant, Joanne Rodriquez, responded affirmatively. Officer Mehring then ordered all three women, at gunpoint, into the particular apartment that was being searched. As he followed them inside, he observed a purse lying on the stoop. He picked up the bag and carried it inside the apartment. All three women were detained for the duration of the search, along with the occupants of the apartment. Miranda ¹ warnings were given "en masse" to all of the individuals detained during the search.

Officer Mehring then inquired of the three women whether one of them owned the purse he had found. Appellant again responded affirmatively. Before returning the purse to appellant, Officer Mehring opened it, purportedly to search for weapons. Upon opening the purse, he observed several baggies and a prescription bottle, each containing illegal narcotics. Appellant was placed under arrest and charged with possession of narcotics with intent to deliver. ² After determining that no outstanding warrants existed for the other two women, Officer Mehring allowed them to leave the apartment.

Prior to trial, appellant moved to suppress introduction of the narcotics into evidence, asserting that they had been seized as a result of her illegal arrest at the scene of the drug raid. The trial court denied the motion to suppress, and, following a non-jury trial, appellant was convicted of possession with intent to deliver. On appeal to the Superior Court, judgment of sentence was affirmed, 387 Pa.Super. 271, 564 A.2d 174; a subsequent petition for reargument before the court en banc was denied. The petition for allowance of appeal to this Court was granted.

Discussion

The parties do not dispute that appellant was "seized" by Officer Mehring when she was taken at gunpoint from the stoop in front of the apartment building and detained by the officers inside the apartment for the duration of their search. Thus, we are not faced with determining whether a seizure occurred, but rather whether the seizure that did occur was justified under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

The trial court treated the detention of appellant as a "freeze," a police action falling somewhere below an arrest based upon probable cause and a "stop and frisk" justified on a showing of reasonable suspicion under the narrow exception to the constitutional probable cause requirement created by the United States Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).

The trial court, further, justified the "freeze" in the instant case by relying upon Commonwealth v. Carr, 334 Pa.Super. 459, 483 A.2d 542 (1984). In Carr, employees of a service station were detained at the station while police executed a warrant for controlled substances believed to be hidden therein. The Superior Court concluded that detention of the employees was constitutional during the execution of a search warrant. The Carr holding was based entirely upon the United States Supreme Court's decision in Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 101 S.Ct. 2587, 69 L.Ed.2d 340 (1981).

In the instant case, the Superior Court agreed with the trial court that, although there was no search warrant as in Carr, the detention of appellant was nonetheless justified as a reasonable police action under the circumstances. The Superior Court grounded its decision upon an extrapolation of the United States Supreme Court opinion in Summers. Although acknowledging that its decision constituted a considerable leap from the actual holding in Summers, the Superior Court argued that the exigencies of the circumstances in the case sub judice justified the police action in detaining appellant.

However, even assuming, arguendo, that the Supreme Court's decision in Summers accurately reflects Pennsylvania constitutional law, Summers is wholly inapplicable to this case. The police in Summers, armed with a valid warrant, stopped the defendant as they were approaching the house in which he resided. At the time, the defendant was walking down the front steps away from the premises. The officers had observed the defendant exit the house, identified themselves, and explained their purpose. The officers requested the defendant's assistance in gaining admission to the house. The defendant stated that he had left his keys inside, and admission was requested from another resident, who refused to open the door. Ultimately, the door was forced open and the defendant was detained inside the home along with the other residents while the search was conducted.

In Summers, the United States Supreme Court held "that a warrant to search for contraband founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to detain the occupants of the premises while a proper search is conducted." Id. at 705, 101 S.Ct. at 2595 (footnotes omitted). In reaching this conclusion, the Court placed significant emphasis upon the existence of a warrant: "[o]f prime importance in assessing the intrusion is the fact that the police had obtained a warrant to search respondent's house for contraband." Id. at 701, 101 S.Ct. at 2593.

The initial critical distinction between the instant case and Summers, is that here the police were not in possession of a valid warrant issued by a neutral and detached magistrate upon a finding of probable cause. ³ The second, and even more compelling distinction, is the absence in the instant case of a link between the appellant and the apartment from where the drugs were allegedly being distributed.

The importance of establishing a connection between suspected criminal activity in a targeted premises and the persons who reside in those premises was critical to the analysis of the Court in Summers:

It is also appropriate to consider the nature of the articulable and individualized suspicion on which the police base the detention of the occupant of a home subject to a search warrant. We have already noted that the detention represents only an incremental intrusion on personal liberty when the search of a home has been authorized by a valid warrant. The existence of a search warrant, however, also provides an objective justification for the detention. A judicial officer has determined that police have probable cause to believe that someone in the home is committing a crime. Thus a neutral magistrate rather than an officer in the field has made the critical determination that the police should be given a special authorization to thrust themselves into the privacy of a home. The connection of an occupant to that home gives the police officer an easily identifiable and certain basis for determining that suspicion of criminal activity justifies a detention of that occupant.

Id. at 703-04, 101 S.Ct. at 2594-95 (footnote omitted; emphasis added).

The Summers opinion was carefully and deliberately confined to the specific facts then before the court. ⁴ As the Summers Court repeatedly pointed out, what distinguished the police action in Summers from the illegal detention earlier condemned by the Court in Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979), ⁵ was that a warrant had been issued by a neutral and detached...