Search and Seizure Reasonable Suspicion Unknown Source Reliability

Commonwealth v. Morrison, PICS Case No. 17-1045 (Pa. Super. June 21, 2017) Fitzgerald, J. (15 pages).

The trial court erred in denying defendant's motion to suppress the discovery of a gun on his person where the quality and quantity of the information provided to the arresting police officers by an unknown source was insufficiently reliable to establish reasonable suspicion. The appellate court vacated defendant's judgment of sentence and remanded for further proceedings.

Defendant was convicted of certain firearm offenses, including persons not to possess firearms, firearms not to be carried without a license and carrying firearms in pubic in Philadelphia. The charges arose from an incident on Jan. 18, 2015, when police officers Joseph Hogan and Sean Parker received a radio call from an unknown source about a robbery with a firearm on Susquehanna Avenue in Philadelphia. The perpetrators were described as two black males wearing black hoodies, blue jeans and masks. The officers were on patrol about five blocks away from the location of the robbery when they saw defendant and another male walking together. Defendant was wearing gray sweatpants and a black hoodie. Hogan testified that he slowed his patrol vehicle and surveyed defendant and the other male. The officers stopped about five feet away from the two males and Parker got out of the patrol car. At that point, the other male stopped; however, defendant, who appeared nervous, turned his back toward the patrol car and started walking away. Hogan exited the patrol car and told defendant to stop. After defendant complied, Hogan approached him and noticed that defendant's pocket was weighed down. Hogan saw the handle of a black firearm protruding from defendant's pocket. The officer seized the firearm and arrested defendant. Prior to trial, defendant moved to suppress the discovery of the firearm. The trial court denied the motion and later found defendant guilty of the firearms offenses. On appeal, defendant argued that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress because he was stopped and frisked without reasonable suspicion. The appellate court first found that defendant was subjected to an investigative detention when police told him to stop, as a reasonable person in defendant's situation would not have felt free to terminate the encounter and leave the scene. The court then examined whether Hogan and Parker possessed reasonable suspicion that defendant and the other male were engaged in criminal conduct when they issued a command to stop. Hogan said defendant and the other male were merely walking down the street when the officers pulled over their patrol car. Moreover, defendant did not run. Hogan testified that the only reason he stopped defendant and the other male was because they matched the description of the robbery suspects. This description was provided by an unknown source on a radio call. Moreover, Hogan did not notice the gun handle until after he told defendant to stop, approached him and asked him to remove his hand form his pocket. The court found that under the totality of the circumstances, the quality and quantity of the information provided to police by the unknown source was insufficiently reliable to establish reasonable suspicion and, therefore, defendant was entitled to relief on appeal.