J.A21008/15
NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
Appellee :
:
v. :
:
CAMATA MCNEIL, :
:
Appellant : No. 2826 EDA 2014
Appeal from the Order September 23, 2014
In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County
Criminal Division No(s).: MC-51-CR-0000695-2014
BEFORE: ALLEN, MUNDY, and FITZGERALD,* JJ.
MEMORANDUM BY FITZGERALD, J.: FILED AUGUST 28, 2015
Appellant, Camata McNeil, appeals from the Philadelphia County Court
of Common Pleas’ order denying his petition for writ of certiorari from his
conviction in the Philadelphia Municipal Court. He argues he was entitled to
the suppression of evidence because the arresting officer did not have the
requisite reasonable suspicion or probable cause to remove him from his car,
question him, or conduct a search. We affirm.
We restate the facts as summarized by the Court of Common Pleas:
On January 8, 2014 at approximately 11:50 a.m.,
Officer Cziepel and his partner, Officer Cahill, were on
patrol in the area of 35 East Chelten Avenue in a marked
police vehicle. Officer Cziepel described this area of
Philadelphia as “high drugs, high any type of illegal activity
*
Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court.
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that you can think of,” and has made well over 2,300
arrests in that general area since 2001. The officers saw
Appellant driving his vehicle with a broken center brake
light. They stopped the vehicle and Officer Cziepel
approached Appellant’s window to request his license and
registration. While Appellant’s initial reaction of reaching
towards his pocket seemed to be responsive to the officer’s
request, it was unrebutted that he quickly began behaving
in an aggressive, nervous, and furtive manner. He began
“making movements in and out of all of his pockets, a little
more than normal into his inner right jacket pocket.”
Notably, he was nervously fumbling around in his pockets
for more than thirty seconds—long enough for the officers
to believe that he was reaching for something other than
his license and registration. In fact, the way in which he
was behaving led the officer to suspect that he was
reaching for something larger than the requested vehicle
cards.
Fearing that Appellant was armed, the officers told him
that he was going to be frisked and removed him from the
vehicle. Appellant then told the officers that he had two
bags of marijuana on his person, which the officers
subsequently recovered from his left jacket pocket.
Appellant was placed under arrest and a search incident to
arrest revealed [he was carrying] another bag of
marijuana along with sixteen bags of cocaine.
Trial Ct. Op., 12/22/14, 1-2 (record citations omitted).
Appellant was charged with possession of controlled substances. 1 On
April 16, 2014, the Municipal Court denied Appellant’s motion to suppress
after a hearing. On June 25, 2014, the Municipal Court found Appellant
guilty and sentenced him to eighteen months’ reporting probation. On July
24, Appellant timely filed a writ of certiorari in the Court of Common Pleas,
which denied relief on September 23, 2014. Appellant timely filed his notice
1
35 P.S. § 780-113(a)(16).
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of appeal and complied with the trial court’s order to submit a Pa.R.A.P.
1925(b) statement.
Appellant presents the following issue for review:
Did not [A]ppellant’s attempted compliance with police
directives to display license, ownership and insurance
papers by reaching for them on his person during a traffic
stop provide neither reasonable suspicion nor probable
cause to support the subsequent search in violation of the
Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States
Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania
Constitution and therefore should not the drugs
subsequently seized by police have been suppressed and
the petition for Writ of Certiorari granted?
Appellant's Brief at 3.
Appellant argues that “the mere act of placing his hand in his pocket to
produce the documents requested by the officer during a traffic stop was not
sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion that [he] was armed and
dangerous to remove him from the car and frisk his person for weapons.”
Id. at 7. Additionally, the Commonwealth did not “provide any information
about the area of the traffic stop, save for his assertion that it was a high
crime area.” Id. at 12. Further, “the fact that the stop was midday . . .
combined with a lack of testimony of any furtive movements, all coalesce to
show there was no reasonable suspicion to frisk [him].” Id. at 13.
Appellant thus claims that the trial court erred in relying on
Commonwealth v. Scarborough, 89 A.3d 679 (Pa. Super.), appeal
denied, 102 A.3d 679 (Pa. 2014), and he was entitled to suppression based
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on Commonwealth v. Cartagena, 63 A.3d 294 (Pa. Super.) (en banc),
appeal denied, 70 A.3d 808 (Pa. 2013). No relief is due.
Our review is governed by the following standards:
[An appellate court’s] standard of review in addressing a
challenge to the denial of a suppression motion is 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 law of the courts
below are subject to [ ] plenary review.
Commonwealth v. Garibay, 106 A.3d 136, 138-39 (Pa. Super. 2014) (en
banc) (alterations in original and citations omitted). The Commonwealth
bears the initial burden of demonstrating the discovery of evidence did not
violate a defendant’s constitutional rights. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 581(H).
However, the defendant, in an appeal from an adverse ruling, bears the
burden of demonstrating reversible error. Commonwealth v. Wrecks, 931
A.2d 717, 722 (Pa. Super. 2007).
Preliminarily, we note an officer may lawfully conduct a traffic stop “for
the purpose of checking the vehicle’s registration, proof of financial
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responsibility . . . or the driver’s license” whenever he “has reasonable
suspicion that a violation of [the Motion Vehicle Code] has occurred[.]” 75
Pa.C.S. § 6308(b). Moreover, “following a lawful traffic stop, an officer may
order both the driver and passengers of a vehicle to exit the vehicle until the
traffic stop is completed, even absent a reasonable suspicion that criminal
activity is afoot.” Commonwealth v. Pratt, 930 A.2d 561, 564 (Pa. Super.
2007). With respect to a request to frisk an individual, this Court recognizes
that “[t]o conduct a pat down for weapons, a limited search or ‘frisk’ of the
suspect, the officer must reasonably believe that his safety or the safety of
others is threatened.” Commonwealth v. Simmons, 17 A.3d 399, 403
(Pa. Super. 2011) (citations omitted).
Instantly, as in the Court of Common Pleas, Appellant concedes the
initial traffic stop was lawful, but argues the arresting officer lacked
reasonable suspicion to frisk him by framing the record in a light most
favorable to himself. See Appellant’s Brief at 6. However, he ignores the
Commonwealth’s evidence that the officer told Appellant he “going to be
frisked and brought out of the vehicle and he said he had two bags of weed.”
N.T. Suppression, 4/16/14, at 6. Thus, Appellant seeks relief on a basis that
disregards our standard and scope of review.2 See Garibay, 106 A.3d at
138.
2
We note, however, Appellant testified at the suppression hearing that he
did not make this statement and claimed the officer began to frisk him while
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In light of the foregoing, we have no basis to grant Appellant relief.
Even if we were to agree there the officer lacked a reasonable basis to
believe Appellant was armed and dangerous, we could only conclude it was
unreasonable for the officer to issue a verbal order to submit to a frisk
during an otherwise lawful traffic stop. Appellant provides no further legal
argument that his statement was tainted by the verbal order or the
contraband seized by the officer was fruit of a poisonous tree. See
generally Commonwealth v. Santiago, 980 A.2d 659, 665 (Pa. Super.
2009) (discussing admissibility of derivative physical evidence despite
suppression of defendant’s statements). Because we cannot disregard the
Commonwealth’s evidence that Appellant admitted possessing marijuana
before a physical search took place, we conclude Appellant has not carried
his appellate burden of demonstrating reversible error by the trial court.
See Wrecks, 931 A.2d at 722. Thus, we affirm.
Order affirmed. Judgment of sentence affirmed.
Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 8/28/2015
he was seated in the vehicle. Nevertheless, we cannot consider Appellant’s
testimony as it was contradicted by the Commonwealth’s evidence. See
Garibay, 106 A.3d at 138-39.
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Com. v. McNeil, C.
Combined Opinion