Commonwealth v. Stevens

• Decision Date: 04 November 2022
• Docket Number: 130 WDA 2022
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA v. SOLOMON MICHAEL STEVENS, Appellant
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA v. SOLOMON MICHAEL STEVENS, Appellant

No. 130 WDA 2022

Superior Court of Pennsylvania

November 4, 2022

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Entered January 18, 2022 In the Court of Common Pleas of Fayette County Criminal Division at CP-26-CR-0000396-2021.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq. Prothonotary

BEFORE: DUBOW, J., MURRAY, J., and PELLEGRINI J.^[*]

MEMORANDUM

MURRAY, J.

Solomon Michael Stevens (Appellant) appeals from the judgment of sentence imposed after a jury convicted him of possession of a firearm prohibited, firearms not to be carried without a license, possession of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, and possession of drug paraphernalia.^[1] We affirm.

The trial court summarized the underlying facts as follows:

On September 5^th, 2020, at approximately 9:52 a.m., Pennsylvania State Police received a report that a male individual was asleep in a running vehicle located in the vicinity of 17 Tuskeegee Terrace in Uniontown and that the vehicle had been in that location and running, with the male individual asleep inside it, since at least 7:00 a.m. Trooper [Cristen] Cindric was dispatched to the scene to perform a welfare check. Trooper Cindric arrived on the scene and located the vehicle. Trooper Cindric testified that Tuskegee Terrace is a high-crime area. Trooper Cindric performed a National Crime Information Center (NCIC) query on the vehicle and found that the vehicle was registered to a female with a listed address on West Main Street. Trooper Cindric approached the vehicle on foot and observed [Appellant] asleep in the driver's seat with the seat reclined significantly and the vehicle's engine running. Trooper Cindric knocked on the front window on the driver's side, but [Appellant] continued to sleep. Trooper Cindric knocked on the front window on the driver's side again, more forcefully, and [Appellant] woke up and rolled down the back window on the driver's side, at which time Trooper Cindric, "smelled the odor of marijuana emanating from inside the vehicle." Trooper Cindric identified herself and asked [Appellant] to roll down the front window on the driver's side, but [Appellant] did not comply. Trooper Cindric then asked [Appellant] what he was doing and [Appellant] did not answer her. Trooper Cindric [] asked [Appellant] if he knew where he was and [Appellant] answered that he was in Pershing Court. ([Appellant] was not in Pershing Court; Pershing Court is another housing project located on the opposite side of Route 40). Trooper Cindric then asked [Appellant] if he was visiting anyone in Tuskegee Terrace and he said that he was not. Trooper Cindric [] asked [Appellant] for his identification. Trooper Cindric testified that at this point [Appellant] became "upset" and "combative." Trooper Cindric called for backup. Trooper Cindric continued asking [Appellant] for his identification and [Appellant's] attitude continued to escalate until [Appellant] sat up in the seat and reached for the glove box, at which point Trooper Cindric asked him to step out of the vehicle. [Appellant] [] stepped out of the vehicle and gave her his ID, which had not been in the glove box but had, instead, been in his left front pocket. At this point, Trooper [Aaron] Hancheck arrived on the scene. Trooper Hancheck performed a Terry^[2] pat down on [Appellant]^[3] and, simultaneously, Trooper Cindric performed a wingspan search of the immediate area of the vehicle which [Appellant] had occupied in order to determine if weapons were present. Trooper Hancheck located a loaded hand gun in [Appellant's] left front pocket. Trooper Cindric located two smoking devices [during the wingspan search], [and a later search of the car uncovered] two mason jars containing drugs, a digital scale, and rolling paper. Trooper Cindric determined that [Appellant] was prohibited from possessing a firearm.

Trial Court Opinion, 5/28/21, at 1-3 (footnotes added).

The Commonwealth charged Appellant with the above crimes, and Appellant filed omnibus pre-trial motions to suppress and for writ of habeas corpus. Id. at 7. After conducting a hearing, the trial court denied the motions. Trial commenced and the jury rendered its guilty verdicts on January 6, 2022. On January 18, 2022, the trial court sentenced Appellant to 7 - 14 years in prison, followed by 1 year of probation. This timely appeal followed.^[4]

Appellant raises two issues for our review:

A. Did the court commit an error of law and/or abuse of discretion by denying Appellant's Omnibus Pre-Trial Motion to Suppress Evidence?

B. Did the court commit and error of law and/or abused [sic] its discretion by denying [Appellant's] Omnibus Pre-Trial Motion for a Writ of Habeas Corpus?

Appellant's Brief at 11.

In his first issue, Appellant contends the trial court erred by denying his suppression motion. Appellant's Brief at 22-49. Appellant challenges both the pat down of his person and the wingspan search of his vehicle.^[5] See id. Appellant relies on this Court's decision in Commonwealth v. Arrington, 233 A.3d 910 (Pa. Super. 2020), to support his claim that the troopers lacked the requisite reasonable suspicion to justify the searches. Id. at 40-49. Appellant argues this case is "substantially similar, both factually and legally to Arrington [and the cases it relied upon.]" Id. at 45. We disagree.

In reviewing a denial of a motion to suppress, this Court's role is to decide:

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, we are bound by these findings and may reverse only if the court's legal conclusions are erroneous. Where, as here, 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 law of the courts below are subject to our plenary review. ... Our scope of review is limited to the evidence presented at the suppression hearing.

Commonwealth v. Thran, 185 A.3d 1041, 1043 (Pa. Super. 2018) (citations omitted).

We begin by recognizing the three categories of interaction between police and citizens:

[T]he first of these is a "mere encounter" (or request for information) which need not be supported by any level of suspicion, but carries no official compulsion to stop or to 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. Way, 238 A.3d 515, 518 (Pa. Super. 2020) (citation omitted).

The encounter in this case was an investigative detention. When evaluating the legality of investigative detentions, Pennsylvania has adopted the holding of Terry, where the United States Supreme Court held that police may conduct an investigative detention if they have reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot. In re: D.M., 781 A.2d 1161, 1163 (Pa. 2001). These encounters are commonly known as Terry stops.

To prove reasonable suspicion, "the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts and reasonable inferences drawn from those facts in light of the officer's experience." Commonwealth v. Cook, 735 A.2d 673, 677 (Pa. 1999). "The determination of whether an officer had reasonable suspicion that criminality was afoot so as to justify an investigative detention is an objective one, which must be considered in light of the totality of the circumstances." Commonwealth v. Walls, 53 A.3d 889, 893 (Pa. Super. 2012).

This Court has explained:

It is well settled that an officer may pat-down an individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating on the basis of a reasonable belief that the individual is presently armed and dangerous to the officer or others. To validate a Terry frisk, the police officer must be able to articulate specific facts from which he reasonably inferred that the individual was armed and dangerous. In determining whether a Terry frisk was supported by a sufficient articulable basis, we examine the totality of the circumstances.

Commonwealth v. Gray, 896 A.2d 601, 605-06 (Pa. Super. 2006). Under this standard, police may conduct a limited pat-down of a person's outer clothing and/or a wingspan search of the passenger compartment of a vehicle "in an attempt to discover the presence of weapons which may be used to endanger the safety of police or others." Commonwealth v. Wilson, 927 A.2d 279, 285 (Pa. Super. 2007) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Commonwealth v. Morris, 644 A.2d 721, 723 (Pa. 1994) ("[A] reasonable belief based on specific articulable actions taken by appellant (i.e., specific articulable facts) entitles an officer to conduct a search of those portions of the passenger compartment of a suspect's vehicle in which a weapon could be placed.") (citation omitted).

Here, the trial court found the following circumstances justified the troopers' pat down of Appellant and the wingspan search of his car:

1) That [Appellant] had been asleep in a running vehicle since at least

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