Commonwealth v. Parker

• Decision Date: 01 May 2017
• Docket Number: No. 877 MDA 2016,877 MDA 2016
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Donte Lamar PARKER, Appellant
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

161 A.3d 357

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania

v.Donte Lamar PARKER, Appellant

No. 877 MDA 2016

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Submitted December 5, 2016

Filed May 1, 2017

Diana C. Kelleher, Public Defender, Lancaster, for appellant.

Craig W. Stedman, Assistant District Attorney, Lancaster, for Commonwealth, appellee.

Maria A. Cusick, Assistant District Attorney, Lancaster, for Commonwealth, appellee.

BEFORE: LAZARUS, RANSOM, and FITZGERALD,^* JJ.

OPINION BY FITZGERALD, J.:

Appellant, Donte Lamar Parker, appeals from the judgment of sentence entered in the Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas following his convictions for possession of a controlled substance with the intent to deliver ("PWID"),¹ criminal use of a communication facility² and criminal conspiracy.³ Appellant challenges the trial court's order denying his motion to suppress information that he provided to police officers during an encounter on the street on August 1, 2014. We reverse the order denying suppression.

On November 20, 2014, Appellant was arrested for committing drug-related offenses on June 24, 2014 and July 17, 2014. The Commonwealth filed (1) an information at No. 5814–2014 charging Appellant with committing PWID and criminal use of a communication facility on June 24, 2014, and (2) an information at No. 5837–2014 charging Appellant with committing PWID, criminal conspiracy and criminal use of a communication facility on July 17, 2014. Subsequently, the trial court granted the Commonwealth's motion to consolidate both informations for trial.

Prior to trial, Appellant filed a motion to suppress evidence that police officers obtained during an encounter on the street with Appellant on August 1, 2014.⁴ Mot. to Suppress, 7/17/15. On February 1, 2016, the trial court held an evidentiary hearing and denied the motion.

The trial court did not enter findings of fact and conclusions of law at the conclusion of the suppression hearing, but it found the following facts in its Pa.R.A.P. 1925(a) opinion:⁵

On June 24, 2014, Officer James Hagy was the secondary surveillance officer for a "buywalk" operation^[1] in the first block of West James Street in the City of Lancaster. The primary surveillance officer that day was Officer James Boas. Officer Hagy testified that the target of the investigation was a dealer that went by the street name of "Heart". Officer Boas radioed to his fellow officers the following description of the target that was received from the undercover officer involved in the drug buy: "black male, dreadlock style hair, wearing an orange shirt, [and] camo shorts." Officer Hagy testified that he then observed the individual leaving the location where the buy occurred, and noticed that he walked with a limp or "unique gait".

^[1] Officer Hagy described a "buy-walk" operation as one where the police utilize an undercover police officer and sometimes a confidential informant to go out and make street-level drug buys. After that buy, the individual that sold drugs to the undercover or the informant is allowed to leave and is identified at a later time, whether it's using investigatory means with cameras, researching databases with different addresses, phone numbers, et cetera. As an absolute last resort, they are stopped and identified.

On August 1, 2014, Officer Hagy was parked in a police van at the McDonald's parking lot on West King Street in the City of Lancaster when he observed the individual from June 24, 2014, whom he knew by the street name "Heart". Officer Hagy was "100 percent positive that [this man] was the same individual" he had observed on June 24th. Because "Heart" was the subject of an ongoing felony drug investigation by the Selective Enforcement Unit, Officer Hagy instructed Officer Boas, who was on bike patrol at the time, to stop the individual.

Officer Boas testified that on August 1, 2014, at approximately 10:00 p.m., he was on bike patrol in the vicinity of the McDonald's on West King Street. Officer Boas was informed by Officer Hagy at that time that their target, known on the street as "Heart," was observed walking from the McDonald's parking lot east on West King Street. Officer Boas followed this individual for a short time and then stopped him at the corner of Prince and King Streets. As a pretext for stopping him, Officer Boas testified that he told the individual "there was a disturbance at McDonald's and he was a part of the disturbance." Officer Boas asked for the man's name, date of birth, address, telephone number and Social Security number because the suspect did not have any identification on him at the time. After the suspect's identity was confirmed, he was released. At all times, the suspect was cooperative and provided the information requested of him. The detention lasted no longer than five minutes. Officer Boas conceded on cross-examination that the sole purpose for the stop was to identify the suspect for purposes of their felony drug investigation.

Trial Ct. Op., 7/18/16, at 5–7 (with minor grammatical revisions and record citations omitted). These findings of fact are accurate except for one omission. Officer Boas did not stop Appellant by himself on August 1, 2014. Instead, both Officer Boas and Officer Mease stopped Appellant by stationing their bicycles in front of him. N.T. Suppression Hr'g, 2/1/16, at 29–30.

Appellant moved to suppress the information that he gave Officer Boas on August 1, 2014, i.e. , his name, date of birth, address, telephone number and Social Security number, on the grounds that Officer Boas (1) lacked reasonable suspicion to detain Appellant, and (2) gave a pretextual reason for stopping Appellant. Id. at 3–4. Following an evidentiary hearing, the trial court found that Officer Boas had reasonable suspicion to stop Appellant and denied Appellant's motion. Id. at 37.

On February 2, 2016, a jury found Appellant guilty of all charges. The trial court sentenced Appellant on April 27, 2016 to an aggregate term of sixteen months' to three years' imprisonment followed by two years' probation. On May 27, 2016, Appellant timely appealed. Both Appellant and the trial court complied with Pa.R.A.P. 1925.

Appellant raises one issue in this appeal, a challenge to the evidence obtained from him on August 1, 2014:

Did the trial court err in denying [Appellant's] Motion to Suppress, where police subjected him to an investigative detention without reasonable suspicion that he was involved in any illegal activity on August 1, 2014?

Appellant's Brief at 5.

When this Court addresses a challenge to the denial of a suppression motion,

[we are] limited to determining whether the suppression court's factual findings are supported by the record and whether the legal conclusions drawn from those facts are correct. Because the Commonwealth prevailed before the suppression court, we may consider only the evidence of the Commonwealth and so much of the evidence for the defense as remains uncontradicted when read in the context of the record as a whole. Where the suppression court's factual findings are supported by the record, [the appellate court is] bound by [those] findings and may reverse only if the court's legal conclusions are erroneous. Where ... the appeal of the determination of the suppression court turns on allegations of legal error, the suppression court's legal conclusions are not binding on an appellate court, whose duty it is to determine if the suppression court properly applied the law to the facts. Thus, the conclusions of the courts below are subject to [ ] plenary review.

Commonwealth v. Jones , 121 A.3d 524, 526–27 (Pa. Super. 2015) (citation omitted). When reviewing the suppression court's rulings, we consider only the suppression record. In re L.J. , 622 Pa. 126,79 A.3d 1073, 1085 (2013) ("it is inappropriate to consider trial evidence as a matter of course, because it is simply not part of the suppression record, absent a finding that such evidence was unavailable during the suppression hearing").⁶

"The Fourth Amendment of the Federal Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution protect individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures." Commonwealth v. Walls , 53 A.3d 889, 892 (Pa. Super. 2012). In Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, there are three categories of interactions between citizens and the police:

The first [category] is a "mere encounter" (or request for information) which need not be supported by any level of suspicions, but carries no official compulsion to stop or respond. The second, an "investigative detention," must be supported by a reasonable suspicion; it subjects a suspect to a stop and a period of detention, but does not involve such coercive conditions as to constitute the functional equivalent of an arrest. Finally, an arrest or "custodial detention" must be supported by probable cause.

Commonwealth v. Gutierrez , 36 A.3d 1104, 1107 (Pa. Super. 2012) (citation omitted).

Reasonable suspicion is a less stringent standard than probable cause necessary to effectuate a warrantless arrest, and depends on the information possessed by police and its degree of reliability in the totality of the circumstances. In order to justify the seizure, a police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts leading him to suspect criminal activity is afoot. In assessing the totality of the circumstances, courts must also afford due weight to the specific, reasonable inferences drawn from the facts in light of the officer's experience and acknowledge that innocent facts, when considered collectively, may permit the investigative detention.

Commonwealth v. Clemens , 66 A.3d 373, 379 (Pa. Super. 2013) (citation omitted).

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has adopted the objective Jones/Mendenhall⁷ standard "in determining whether the conduct of the police amounts to a seizure or whether there is simply a mere encounter between citizen and police officer." Commonwealth v. Matos , 543 Pa. 449, 672 A.2d 769, 774 (1996) (citations omitted). The Matos co...