Com. v. Griffen-Jacobs, D. ( 2017 )

J-A22001-17
NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
PENNSYLVANIA
v.
DEMONTAE GRIFFEN-JACOBS
Appellant No. 1891 EDA 2016
Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence May 2, 2016
In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-51-CR-0005075-2015
BEFORE: BOWES, LAZARUS AND PLATT,* JJ.
MEMORANDUM BY BOWES, J.: FILED NOVEMBER 01, 2017
Demontae Griffen-Jacobs appeals from the judgment of sentence of
five to ten years incarceration, followed by five years probation, imposed
after he was convicted of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person,
firearms not be carried without a license, and carrying firearms in public in
Philadelphia. We affirm.
Shortly after midnight on April 30, 2015, Philadelphia police officers
Philip Scratchard and Daniel Mimm were patrolling in an unmarked vehicle
near the 700 block of West Huntingdon Street, Philadelphia County. The
officers were responding to an unrelated report of an individual with a
firearm when they heard three or four gunshots fired from approximately
* Retired Senior Judge specially assigned to the Superior Court.
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one block to the west. The officers, traveling west, immediately turned
northbound onto North Darien Street, at which point they witnessed
Appellant walking northbound while talking on a cellphone. Appellant had
his left hand in his pocket. There were no other people in the vicinity.
Officer Scratchard pulled his vehicle alongside Appellant, identified
himself as a police officer, and requested that he stop. Appellant ignored
the officer’s directive and continued walking. After Appellant ignored
multiple other commands to stop walking, Officer Mimm exited the vehicle
and followed him. Officer Scratchard drove the police cruiser onto the
sidewalk, blocking Appellant’s path. Officer Scratchard then exited the
vehicle, and Appellant fled southbound. As he ran, Appellant pulled a silver
revolver from his pocket and threw it into a vacant lot. He was apprehended
shortly thereafter.
Appellant was arrested and charged with the aforementioned offenses.
He filed an omnibus pre-trial motion to suppress the handgun, arguing that
the officers lacked reasonable suspicion to stop him, and that as a result of
this illegal seizure, he was forced to abandon the firearm as he fled. After
hearing testimony on August 27, 2015, the trial court denied Appellant’s
motion to suppress. Following a bench trial on February 22, 2016, Appellant
was found guilty on all three counts. Thereafter, the court sentenced
Appellant to an aggregate sentence of five to ten years imprisonment, plus
five years probation.
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After the trial court denied his post-sentence motion, Appellant filed a
timely notice of appeal to this Court. Appellant complied with the trial
court’s order to file a Rule 1925(b) concise statement of matters complained
of on appeal, and the trial court authored its Rule 1925(a) opinion. This
matter is now ready for our review.
Appellant raises a single question for our consideration: “Did the trial
court commit an error of law when it determined that the police had the
legal authority to engage in an investigative detention of [Appellant], and
ruled that the firearm in his possession therefore should not be suppressed
under the ‘forced abandonment’ theory described fully in Commonwealth
v. Matos[, 672 A.2d 769 (Pa. 1996)]?” Appellant’s brief at 4.
Appellant challenges the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress
based on its finding that the police had reasonable suspicion to stop him.
Our analysis is guided by the following:
Our standard of review for a challenge to the trial court’s denial
of a suppression motion is limited to determining whether the
factual findings are supported by the record and whether the
legal conclusions drawn from those facts are correct. We are
bound by the suppression court’s factual findings so long as they
are supported by the record; our standard of review on
questions of law is de novo. Where, as here, the defendant is
appealing the ruling of the suppression court, we may consider
only the evidence of the Commonwealth and so much of the
evidence for the defense as remains uncontradicted. Our scope
of review of suppression rulings includes only the suppression
hearing record and excludes evidence elicited at trial.
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Commonwealth v. Yandamuri, 159 A.3d 503, 516 (Pa. 2017) (internal
citations omitted).
It is well-established that there are three categories of encounters
between citizens and the police:
(1) A mere encounter, (2) an investigative detention, and (3)
custodial detentions. The first of these, 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. Second, an “investigative detention” must be
supported by 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. Baldwin, 147 A.3d 1200, 1202 (Pa.Super. 2016)
(citation omitted). In order to establish reasonable suspicion, an officer
“must be able to articulate something more than an inchoate and
unparticularized suspicion or hunch” that a defendant committed a crime.
Commonwealth v. Williams, 125 A.3d 425, 432 (Pa.Super. 2015) (citation
omitted). In making this determination, we consider the totality of the
circumstances. Id.
Appellant’s argument is two-fold. First, he contends his conduct on
the night in question did not justify an investigative detention. Appellant
notes that he was merely walking while talking on the cell phone, with his
hand in his pocket. He asserts that the police officers did not observe a
bulge in his pocket, and his actions did not evince furtive movements.
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Further, Appellant claims that when the police first approached him, he was
free to ignore them and continue walking, since the police had not yet
elevated the encounter. He argues that the trial court erroneously relied on
this behavior in support of its finding that the police had reasonable
suspicion to stop him. Moreover, Appellant claims that the trial court erred
in finding that he was in a high crime area, as Officer Scratchard never
mentioned that phrase in his testimony. Second, Appellant contends,
pursuant to Matos, supra, since the police did not have reasonable
suspicion to support an investigative detention, that the contraband he was
forced to abandon while fleeing should have been suppressed.
The trial court found that the police officers had sufficient grounds to
stop Appellant. It observed that the officers had reasonable suspicion to
believe that Appellant was engaged in criminal activity “given the late hour,
the recent sound of gunfire, the high crime location, Appellant’s solitary
presence in the vicinity from where the sound of gunfire originated, and
Appellant’s refusal to acknowledge the presence of two police officers, who
engaged Appellant almost immediately after the officers heard the gunfire.”
Trial Court Opinion, 12/8/16, at 10. As such, the trial court found that the
principle of forced abandonment, as outlined in Matos, supra, was
inapplicable, and denied Appellant relief. We find that the trial court’s
factual findings are supported by the record, and that it did not err in
concluding that the officers had reasonable suspicion to detain Appellant.
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Instantly, Officer Scratchard testified that he had been a police officer
for approximately eight-and-one-half years when he and Officer Mimm were
patrolling in an unmarked vehicle near West Huntington Street and North
Darien Street in Philadelphia. N.T. Suppression Hearing, 8/27/15, 9-10. By
way of background information, the officer stated that he had made
numerous arrests in that area, including arrests for narcotics and firearms
violations. Id. at 19-20. He stated that, while on patrol, he heard three or
four gunshots, and that “[t]hey sounded like they were fairly close.” Id. at
10, 12. Seconds later, the officers turned onto North Darien Street, which
was where they believed the gunshots originated, and observed Appellant
walking northbound. Id. at 14. Officer Scratchard described the street as a
well-lit, residential neighborhood. Id. at 13. Appellant was the only person
in the area. Id. at 15. The officer stated that Appellant had his left hand in
his pocket, and confirmed that although “[h]e looked like he was playing
around with something,” the officer, “didn’t see any bulge.” Id.
Officer Scratchard testified that after they announced themselves as
police officers, Appellant ignored numerous commands to stop, which caused
Officer Mimm to exit the vehicle behind Appellant while Officer Scratchard
pulled in front of Appellant, blocking his path. Id. at 15-16. At that point,
Appellant fled. Id. at 16. While the officers were chasing him, Appellant
removed a silver revolver from his pocket and threw it into an empty lot.
Id. at 16.
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Officer Scratchard’s testimony included sufficient specific and
articulable facts that Appellant was engaged in criminal activity, thus
justifying an investigatory stop to determine whether he was responsible for
the gunshots fired only moments before. The officers heard gunfire in their
immediate vicinity late at night. They quickly closed in on the location from
which the sounds emanated. Appellant was the only individual present at
this location, and he appeared to be manipulating something hidden in his
pocket. This alone was sufficient for the officers to briefly detain Appellant
while they determined the source of the gunshots, notwithstanding
Appellant’s contention that the officers did not observe him engaging in
criminal activity at that very moment.
Further, the trial court determined the neighborhood was a high crime
area, and we find that this conclusion is supported by the record. Although
Officer Scratchard never explicitly referred to the neighborhood as a “high
crime area,” he testified to his familiarity with the area due to the numerous
drug and firearms arrests he made there. Thus, it was reasonable for the
trial court to find that the area was a high crime area.
Moreover, the trial court relied on Commonwealth v. Bryant, 866
A.2d 1143, 1146 (Pa.Super. 2005), in rendering its decision. In Bryant, a
Philadelphia police officer was on patrol when he heard six gunshots nearby.
Moments later, he observed three men running from the direction that the
gunshots originated, while other people on the street were not similarly
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fleeing. The officer conducted a stop, patted the individuals down, and
discovered narcotics. On appeal, we determined that the stop was
supported by reasonable suspicion since the defendant was in a high crime
area, the officer heard gunshots in the vicinity, and shortly thereafter, he
witnessed the defendant running away from the source of the noise. We
found that the officer could have “concluded reasonably that [the defendant]
was a perpetrator, victim, or eyewitness of a possible shooting,” and
therefore, the officer’s actions were justified. Bryant, supra at 1147.
Appellant argues that this matter is distinguishable from Bryant since
he did not engage in any suspicious behavior. Rather, he maintains that it
was his right to ignore the police officers and to continue along his way. As
such, he asserts that this matter is more closely analogous to
Commonwealth v. Jeffries, 311 A.2d 914 (Pa. 1973). In Jeffries, the
police observed Jeffries walking down the street. When Jeffries saw the
officers following him, he quickened his pace, and then began to run. While
fleeing from the officers, the defendant discarded a cigarette package. He
was subsequently apprehended, and when the officers retrieved the
cigarette package, they found it contained several small packages of heroin.
The trial court determined that the defendant’s flight supplied probable
cause, and permitted the evidence to be entered into the record. Our High
Court reversed, finding “there is not one fact which would give rise to the
reasonable belief Jeffries was involved in criminal activity. Jeffries was
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simply walking along a public street in Pittsburgh in broad daylight and when
he saw a police officer he knew, he ‘quickened his pace’ and started to run
when the officer began to chase him.” Jeffries, supra at 917.
Although Jeffries bears some similarity to the instant matter, we find
it is readily distinguishable. Unlike in Jeffries, there are numerous facts
which support the reasonable belief that Appellant was engaged in criminal
activity. Despite Appellant’s assertions that he was merely walking down the
street exercising his constitutional rights, he was the only person in the
location where gunshots had just been fired, in the middle of the night, and
in a high crime area. Thus, we find this case more closely parallels Bryant,
supra, since Officer Scratchard could reasonably conclude that Appellant
“was a perpetrator . . . of a possible shooting.” Bryant, supra at 1147.
In summary, when considering the totality of the circumstances, we
find that the police had reasonable suspicion to detain Appellant before he
fled. Since we find that Appellant’s seizure was not the result of illegal
police conduct, we need not reach the second facet of his argument.
Judgment of sentence affirmed.
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Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 11/1/2017
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