Commonwealth v. Capriotti
| Decision Date | 10 January 2023 |
| Docket Number | 23 MAP 2022,J-82-2022 |
| Citation | 287 A.3d 810 (Mem) |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, Appellee v. ZACHARY CLAYTON CAPRIOTTI, Appellant |
Victoria Martin, Esq., Brann Williams Caldwell & Blaney, for Appellant.
Kenneth A. Osokow, Esq., Julie Gavitt Shaffer, Esq., Sullivan County District Attorney's Office, for Appellee.
Gopalakrishnan Balachandran, Esq., Penn State Law, for Amicus Curiae ACLU of PA and Public Defender Association of PA.
Kevin Francis McCarthy, Esq., Allegheny County District Attorney's Office, Kevin R. Steele, Esq., Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, for Amicus Curiae Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association.
AND NOW, this 10th day of January, 2023, the appeal is DISMISSED as having been improvidently granted. The Application for Amendment of Caption is DISMISSED as moot.
Justice Donohue files a dissenting statement in which Justice Wecht joins.
Justice Wecht files a dissenting statement in which Justice Donohue joins.
We granted Zachary Capriotti's petition for allowance of appeal to answer an important and novel constitutional question regarding the Superior Court's expansive application of the silver platter and/or private search doctrines in circumstances that strain any connection to the underlying rationale of those exceptions to the warrant requirement.1 I perceive no reason why we should not decide this case. I would also reach the merits of Capriotti's claim today and reverse the judgment of the Superior Court for the reasons set forth in Justice Wecht's Dissenting Statement.
I write separately to offer my additional perspective as to why this appeal was not improvidently granted. Orders of this Court dismissing appeals as improvidently granted are opaque and cause speculation by the bench and bar as to the reason for avoiding disposition of fully briefed and argued cases. Ordinarily, in such cases there are some facts or set of facts or some procedural irregularity (most often waiver) that present an impediment to our resolution of the important issue upon which we granted allowance of appeal.
Central to the viability of Capriotti's objection to the application of any exception to the warrant requirement is the existence of his privacy interest in the searched premises. If he lacked such an interest or his privacy interest was diminished or he failed to assert a privacy interest, the propriety of the application of the private search doctrine or the silver platter exception would necessarily escape our review. None of these impediments infect this case.
Capriotti has consistently maintained at every stage of the proceedings in this case, without exception, that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the apartment when Trooper Benjamin accompanied Capriotti's father to the location where the contraband was found. In his suppression motion, Capriotti asserted that he had a "possessory interest" in the "entire property" that was protected under both the Fourth Amendment and Article 1, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Motion to Suppress, 5/22/2019, ¶¶ 14-15. He claimed that his parents had no right to be on the property and, therefore, no "authority to let the police search protected areas of the building ...." Id. ¶ 14. Capriotti argued that his parents were trespassing on the date of the search, id. ¶ 16, that he was still "sleeping and living in that apartment[,]" that day, and that his father had "no right to search the upstairs apartment where" Capriotti resided, id. ¶ 22. Capriotti filed an omnibus post-sentence motion raising, inter alia, a challenge to the trial court's denial of his suppression motion. Despite having no knowledge as to why the court had denied it (because the trial court never issued findings of fact and conclusions of law), Capriotti challenged the decision, arguing that a search warrant was required in the circumstances of this case. Specifically, he asserted that the court erred by "allowing the prosecution to rely on the silver platter doctrine," and that no "exception to the search warrant requirement applied because [Capriotti] had an exclusive possessory interest as the properties searched were leased to him, there were no exigent circumstances, and the [t]roopers partook in the search." Post-Sentence Motion, 9/9/2020, at 2, ¶ 6 (emphasis added).
Capriotti preserved the issue in his Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) statement, see Rule 1925(b) Statement, 10/16/2020, at 1, ¶ 2, in his Superior Court brief, see Capriotti's Superior Court Brief at 26, 31-32, in his petition for allowance of appeal, see Petition for Allowance of Appeal at 8, and he did not waver from this position in his brief to this Court, see Capriotti's Brief at 9. Thus, Capriotti preserved the assertion of his privacy interest in the apartment.2
Although the trial court never made the legal conclusion that Capriotti abandoned his privacy interest in the apartment,3 the issue lurked in the background. In its opinion, the trial court stated that Capriotti "vacated the apartment approximately one (1) week prior to the incident." Trial Court Opinion, 11/30/20, at 5. As noted by Justice Wecht, the trial court made no attempt to justify this statement by citation to the record and nothing in the record could support that factual finding. Wecht's Dissenting Statement at 821 n.25. Nevertheless, Capriotti consistently challenged the finding that he had vacated the apartment at every stage of proceedings from the time that the trial court first made it in response to Capriotti's post-sentence motion. In his Rule 1925(b) statement, Capriotti refuted that finding by reasserting that he did, in fact, have "a right of privacy in ... his apartment," a claim wholly inconsistent with the notion of abandonment ostensibly implied by the trial court's finding that he had vacated the apartment prior to the incident. Rule 1925(b) Statement at 1, ¶ 2. In his brief to the Superior Court, he repeatedly maintained that he did not abandon the apartment. Capriotti's Superior Court Brief at 31, 33.4 Likewise, Capriotti challenged the trial court's factual finding in his Petition for Allowance of Appeal, Petition for Allowance of Appeal at 8 (), and in his brief to this Court, Capriotti's Brief at 15 (). It is patently clear that Capriotti had consistently challenged the trial court's factual finding that he had vacated the apartment prior to the contested search.5 ,6
As recognized in our grant of allowance of appeal,7 if the Commonwealth established that Capriotti's father possessed either the actual or apparent authority to consent to Trooper Benjamin's search of the apartment, the warrant requirement would not have applied. However, neither the trial court nor the Superior Court ever discussed authority to consent or apparent authority to consent, relying instead on the silver platter and/or private search doctrines, which are wholly inapplicable if Capriotti's father possessed the actual or apparent authority to authorize Trooper Benjamin's warrantless intrusion. Nevertheless, Capriotti consistently maintained that his father had no such authority to consent to a search. As noted by Justice Wecht, no such authority could legally stem from Capriotti's relationship to his father or his father's role as a landlord, nor do any other facts ascertainable from the suppression hearing suggest that Trooper Benjamin could have reasonably believed that Capriotti's father had the apparent authority to consent to a search of Capriotti's private residence. See Wecht Dissenting Statement at 827–28.
With respect to the father's authority to consent, neither the trial court nor the Superior Court concluded that an exigency exception to the warrant requirement applied in this case. Indeed, exigency was only vaguely suggested by the facts testified to at the suppression hearing in that the contraband was discovered inside Capriotti's son's bedroom closet, presumably thereby creating a safety concern. The Commonwealth sporadically and unconvincingly argues8 that this fact supported a legal conclusion that was never made by any lower court – that the risk to the child created an exigency, justifying a warrantless search. However, I fully agree with Justice Wecht that, if there was a concern for Capriotti's son, either Trooper Benjamin or Capriotti's father "could have secured the apartment against entry by Capriotti's son (or anyone else) while troopers obtained a search warrant." Wecht Dissenting Statement at 827. The Commonwealth never made any attempt to demonstrate that temporarily securing the premises was unfeasible, nor does the record independently reveal such a reason.
Finally, it was uncontested throughout the proceedings in this case that Capriotti was on parole at the time of the search, thus, under certain circumstances, he had a diminished expectation of privacy. However, any theory that Trooper Benjamin was permitted to dispense with the warrant requirement because of that status would require a total revamping of the applicable law governing warrantless searches of homes of parolees. The home of a parolee or probationer, "like anyone else's, is protected by the Fourth Amendment's requirement that searches be ‘reasonable.’ " Griffin v. Wisconsin , 483 U.S. 868, 873, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987). A warrant is generally required to satisfy the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness standard, however, the United States Supreme Court has "permitted exceptions when ‘special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable.’ " Id. (quoting New Jersey v. T.L.O. , 469 U.S....
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