Com. v. Williams

• Citation: 287 Pa.Super. 19,429 A.2d 698
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. Tracey Lynn WILLIAMS and Maureen Zimmerman.
• Decision Date: 08 May 1981
• Court: Superior Court of Pennsylvania

Page 698

429 A.2d 698 287 Pa.Super. 19 COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant,
v.
Tracey Lynn WILLIAMS and Maureen Zimmerman. Superior Court of Pennsylvania. Submitted Nov. 11, 1980.
Filed May 8, 1981.

Page 699

[287 Pa.Super. 20] Robert L. Eberhardt, Deputy Dist. Atty., Pittsburgh, for Commonwealth, appellant.

George G. Mahfood, Pittsburgh, for Williams, appellee.

Joseph G. Kanfoush, Pittsburgh, for Zimmerman, appellee.

Before PRICE, CAVANAUGH, and HOFFMAN, JJ.

[287 Pa.Super. 21] HOFFMAN, Judge:

The Commonwealth contends that the lower court erred in suppressing a quantity of drugs seized from appellees. We disagree and, accordingly, affirm the order of the lower court.

At approximately 12:30 a.m. on September 23, 1979, Officer Harry Fruecht was on patrol in Upper St. Clair when he saw two cars parked in the middle of a dark, abandoned, private parking lot of a swimming pool which was being salvaged. The two cars were parallel to each other and were facing the street. Appellees were seated in the front of one of the cars, a Plymouth. Another person was standing at the right front door of that car. Officer Fruecht testified that because of the late hour and the fact that there had been recent reports of residential burglaries in the immediate area, he decided to approach the vehicle and ask the three people for identification. On cross-examination, however, he admitted that he had received no report of any criminal activity that evening nor had he observed anything indicating that criminal activity was afoot. Officer Fruecht parked his marked patrol car next to the Plymouth, approached the right side of it on foot, and asked the three what they had been doing. Someone replied that they had been talking. The officer then requested identification from all three. As appellee Tracey Lynn Williams (who was in the right front seat) opened her purse to get some identification, the officer shined his flashlight into her purse, and saw a small plastic bag containing a substance which he believed to be marijuana. ¹ After producing her identification, Ms. Williams closed her purse, whereupon Officer Fruecht questioned her about the bag. She denied that she possessed such a bag. The officer then reached into the car, grabbed the purse, took it to the front of the car, and emptied its contents onto the hood. In addition to the plastic bag containing marijuana, he found two plastic vials containing [287 Pa.Super. 22] some pills, and a number of small plastic bags containing white powder. Officer Fruecht asked Ms. Williams to get out of the car, and he arrested her. As she was getting out, she exposed a brown paper bag which had been on the floor at her feet. The bag had been tipped over and opened, revealing a second larger plastic bag of marijuana. The officer then confiscated the brown bag,

Page 700

ordered appellee Maureen J. Zimmerman from the car, and placed her under arrest.

Appellees were charged with several violations of the Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act. ² Appellees subsequently filed a motion to suppress, alleging that the drugs were seized unlawfully and that their arrests therefore lacked probable cause. After a hearing, at which Officer Fruecht was the only witness, the lower court granted appellees' motion. The lower court reasoned that because Officer Fruecht had forcibly detained appellees without adequate justification, the evidence which he seized must be suppressed. This appeal followed.

In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 13, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1875-76, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) (footnotes omitted), the United States Supreme Court stated:

Street encounters between citizens and police officers are incredibly rich in diversity. They range from wholly friendly exchanges of pleasantries or mutually useful information to hostile confrontations of armed men involving arrests, or injuries, or loss of life. Moreover, hostile confrontations are not all of a piece. Some of them begin in a friendly enough manner, only to take a different turn upon the injection of some unexpected element into the conversation. Encounters are initiated by the police for a wide variety of purposes, some of which are wholly unrelated to a desire to prosecute for crime. Doubtless some police "field interrogation" conduct violates the Fourth Amendment. But a stern refusal by this court to condone such activity does not necessarily render it responsive to the exclusionary rule.

[287 Pa.Super. 23] In striking the balance between the constitutionally protected interests of the private citizen to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures and the governmental interests which sometimes justify official intrusion upon those interests, see Terry v. Ohio, supra at 20-27, 88 S.Ct. at 1879-83, courts have identified three levels of governmental intrusion which require an increasing degree of justification to withstand constitutional scrutiny. See generally United States v. Wylie, 569 F.2d 62 (D.C. Cir. 1977); People...