Summary
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania dismissed the Commonwealth's appeal as improvidently granted in a per curiam order. The opinion text consists primarily of dissenting statements addressing the distinction between the independent source and inevitable discovery doctrines in a firearm suppression case involving an allegedly anonymous 911 call. The dissenting justices would have remanded for further development of the inevitable-discovery issue.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the Supreme Court should review the Commonwealth's challenge to the Superior Court's suppression ruling.
- Whether evidence obtained during an unlawful frisk could nevertheless be admitted under the inevitable-discovery doctrine.
- Whether the inevitable-discovery doctrine is distinct from, and broader than, the independent-source doctrine.
Holdings
- The appeal was dismissed as having been improvidently granted.
Key quotations
“The independent source and inevitable discovery doctrines thus differ in that the former focuses on what actually happened and the latter considers what would have happened in the absence of the initial search.” (909)
“If the prosecution can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means . . . then the deterrence rationale has so little basis that the evidence should be received.” (909)
Factual background
A witness saw Wiley carrying a handgun in a Philadelphia restaurant, followed him to a barbershop, and called 911 to report Wiley's description and location. Before the witness identified himself to police, an officer entered the barbershop, frisked Wiley, and recovered a loaded .22-caliber revolver. The witness identified himself approximately after Wiley had been arrested and the gun recovered.
Procedural history
Wiley moved to suppress a firearm seized during a police frisk. The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas denied suppression, and Wiley was convicted after a bench trial and sentenced to two to six months' incarceration followed by three years of reporting probation. The Superior Court vacated the sentence and remanded, holding that the police lacked reasonable suspicion based on an anonymous 911 call. The Supreme Court granted review and ultimately dismissed the appeal as improvidently granted; Justices Newman and Eakin dissented.