Com. v. Jones, S.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania·Decided November 6, 2020·No. 3284 EDA 2019·Unpublished

Opinion

J-A26033-20

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF : PENNSYLVANIA : v. : : : SADEEN JONES : : Appellant : No. 3284 EDA 2019

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Entered May 23, 2019 In the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County Criminal Division at No(s): CP-09-CR-0000806-2018

BEFORE: BENDER, P.J.E., LAZARUS, J., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*

MEMORANDUM BY STEVENS, P.J.E.: FILED NOVEMBER 06, 2020

Appellant, Sadeen Jones, appeals from the judgment of sentence

entered in the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County after a jury convicted

him of, inter alia, robbery, burglary, and conspiracy committed in connection

with an armed home invasion. After careful review, we affirm.

We summarize the relevant factual and procedural history as follows:

In the early morning hours of August 21, 2017, Appellant and two co-

conspirators, Brandon Eugene Davis and Raymond Anthony Daniels,1 ____________________________________________

* Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court.

1 Appellant’s co-conspirators, Brandon Eugene Davis and Raymond Anthony Daniels, were also arrested in connection with the home invasion. Davis proceeded to a jury trial as co-defendant with Appellant, and he was convicted of numerous crimes, including robbery, burglary, and conspiracy. See infra. He received an aggregate sentence of 40 years to 80 years in prison. Davis filed a direct appeal from his judgment of sentence, and this Court affirmed J-A26033-20

executed an armed home invasion of the Bucks County residence of Emily and

Jonatan Nadav. Present during the invasion were the Nadavs, their two

daughters, ages twenty-five and twelve, and Mrs. Nadav’s seventy-three-

year-old mother. N.T., 1/28/19, at 35-37, 62-64, 77-78, 120-122.

Masked, gloved, and dressed in dark clothing, the men terrorized the

Nadavs with handguns throughout the extended encounter—at times holding

a gun to the head of each Nadav daughter—and threatened to shoot until the

family revealed where it kept its safe containing money and jewelry. Before

the trio absconded with over $300,000 in cash and personal property, they

used their cellular telephones multiple times in the home to update one

another on their progress. N.T. 1/28/19, at 48.

On November 16, 2017, the Newtown Township Police Department

arrested and charged Appellant for his alleged role in the home invasion. On

September 17, 2018, Appellant filed a counseled omnibus pre-trial motion

seeking suppression of the police department’s seizure of his cell phone

records, including his cell site location records relating to the time that he and

his co-conspirators were allegedly at the Nadav residence.

While Appellant conceded in his motion that the Commonwealth had

obtained a November 3, 2017 court order supported by reasonable grounds ____________________________________________

judgment of sentence in a published opinion, Commonwealth v. Davis, --- A.3d. ----, 2020 WL 6252080 (Pa.Super. filed 10/23/20). Daniels pled guilty to, inter alia, robbery, burglary, and conspiracy. He received an aggregate sentence of 40 years to 80 years in prison, and on direct appeal, this Court affirmed his judgment of sentence. See Commonwealth v. Daniels, No. 1618 EDA 2019 (Pa.Super. filed 4/7/20) (unpublished memorandum).

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for disclosure of his cell phone records, he nevertheless argued the execution

of the order constituted a search for which a warrant supported by probable

cause was required. Omnibus Pre-trial Motion, 9/17/18, at 1 (citing

Carpenter v. U.S., ___ U.S. ____, 138 S.Ct. 2206 (2018) (holding requests

for historical cell site records from wireless carriers constituted Fourth

Amendment search requiring warrant). As police had obtained no warrant,

Appellant asserted his records were seized unlawfully and, thus, subject to

exclusion under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I,

Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

On November 5, 2018, the Commonwealth filed a motion in opposition

to Appellant’s omnibus pre-trial suppression motion. Therein, the

Commonwealth admitted it had secured a court order directing the wireless

carrier to provide the requested cell phone records, including the historical

cell-site location records for Appellant’s cellular telephone, from August 1,

2017, to October 31, 2017. Commonwealth’s Motion in Opposition, filed

11/5/18, at 1-2. The Commonwealth averred it had sought the order pursuant

to Pennsylvania’s Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, 18

Pa.C.S.A. § 5743, and the federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. §

2703(d), which required only a showing of reasonable grounds to believe that

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the requested records were relevant and material to the ongoing

investigation.2

The Commonwealth acknowledged that, subsequent to the court’s

order, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Carpenter opinion holding

police seizure of historical cell-site location records constitutes a search for

which a warrant supported by probable cause is generally required.

Commonwealth’s Motion in Opposition at 2. Accordingly, in the wake of

Carpenter, on July 5, 2018, the police secured a search warrant for the

historical cell-site location records with regard to Appellant’s cell phone.3 Id.

The Commonwealth averred the search warrant was supported by

probable cause and served upon T-Mobile/Metro PC, which released to the

police the same cell phone records previously secured via the court order. Id.

The Commonwealth argued the seizure of the cell phone records via the

execution of the search warrant purged any taint associated with the pre-

Carpenter seizure. Id. at 11. The Commonwealth reasoned that since the

cell phone records would have been (and in fact were) ultimately discovered

____________________________________________

2 We note that a Bucks County Assistant District Attorney filed a petition in support of the request for disclosure of the cell phone records pursuant to 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5743 and 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d). In support thereof, the assistant district attorney attached an affidavit completed by Newtown Township Police Detective Chris Bush.

3Specifically, on July 3, 2018, Detective Bush completed an application for a search warrant for the disclosure of records for cell phone number (***) ***- 3735, which was determined to be Appellant’s cell phone number. Detective Bush attached to the application his affidavit of probable cause.

-4- J-A26033-20

by lawful means, the inevitable discovery doctrine should insulate the records

from exclusion. Id. at 11-12.

On November 7, 2018, and December 19, 2018, the trial court held

hearings on Appellant’s suppression motion. Initially, counsel for co-

defendant Davis requested permission to amend the suppression motion to

include the argument that the search warrant secured by the Commonwealth

after Carpenter was not supported by probable cause, and thus, the cell

phone records were fruits of the poisonous tree. N.T., 11/7/18, at 6.

Appellant had raised this issue in his suppression motion previously. After the

assistant district attorney indicated she had no objection to such an

amendment, the trial court permitted co-defendant Davis to amend his

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