Criminal defendants do not need to prove a reasonable expectation of privacy in order to suppress evidence collected by police in an illegal search, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled.
In a unanimous July 19 ruling in Commonwealth v. Shabezz, the justices found that evidence gathered from a seizure deemed to be illegal is barred outright as "fruit of the poisonous tree."
"The contested evidence, tainted by the initial illegality, must be suppressed, even absent a demonstrable expectation of privacy in the locations where the evidence was found," Justice David N. Wecht wrote for the court.
Saleem Shabezz was charged with several crimes, including possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver and carrying a concealed weapon without a license, following an incident at a McDonald's restaurant at Cottman Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia, Wecht said. While the case was pending, the driver of the vehicle where the evidence at issue was found filed a suppression motion, which Shabezz joined.
The trial court granted the motion, finding that nothing had prevented the officers from obtaining a search warrant before seizing the two vehicles involved in the incident and that certain testimony from the officers was untruthful. The Superior Court affirmed, and, for the purposes of its decision, the Supreme Court accepted that the stop that led to the evidence was unconstitutional.
The justices' review dealt solely with the question of whether, following an unconstitutional vehicle stop, the Fourth Amendment requires a passenger to demonstrate a reasonable expectation of privacy in the areas that yielded incriminating evidence, or if the evidence is automatically suppressible regardless of that expectation.
The state, represented by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, argued that an illegal traffic stop of a car occupied by a driver and passenger constitutes two separate constitutional violations, each with one victim who must individually seek to suppress the fruits of the violation, Wecht said. Shabezz, meanwhile, argued that a stop constitutes one violation with two victims, each of whom can seek to suppress all fruits of the violation.
The state argued accurately that a defendant must demonstrate an expectation of privacy before a search can be proved unconstitutional, Wecht said, but "these principles nonetheless are beside the point," because in the case of an illegal seizure, the issue at hand is whether the evidence was fruit of the poisonous tree. The state's view showed a "misapprehension of the character of this case," which was about an illegal seizure, rather than a vehicle search.