Commonwealth v. Garcia

746 A.2d 632, 2000 Pa. Super. 28, 2000 Pa. Super. LEXIS 77
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedFebruary 2, 2000
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 746 A.2d 632 (Commonwealth v. Garcia) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. Garcia, 746 A.2d 632, 2000 Pa. Super. 28, 2000 Pa. Super. LEXIS 77 (Pa. Ct. App. 2000).

Opinions

TAMILIA, J.:

¶ 1 The Commonwealth appeals the March 20, 1998 Order granting appellee’s motion in limine to suppress all evidence to be offered by the Commonwealth on the basis of collateral estoppel.

¶ 2 The facts and procedure detailed by the trial court’s Opinion are as follows.

Ricky Garcia was charged with selling crack cocaine on Ontario Street, a well-known drug street in Philadelphia. There were two pre-trial motions filed and hearings were held on both. The first was to protect a “confidential location” from which Officer Henry said he witnessed the defendant selling drugs on the street and then going to his “stash” in the back of a vacant lot at a spot near a chain link fence. The Motion to Suppress only went to the drugs found on Garcia when he was arrested. It did not apply to the drugs found in possession of the driver stopped a few blocks away (the person whom the officer said bought the drugs from Garcia); or the drugs found at the location of the stash in the vacant lot.
The Court found that the officer’s testimony initially was that he made his observations in a building 50 feet from the corner, not from a garage across the street. However, an investigator for the defense went to the scene, and determined that it was impossible to see the location of the stash from that building. It was then that Officer Henry changed his testimony so that his confidential [634]*634location was not the building near the corner but a garage across the street from the vacant lot.
Because the Court found Officer Henry was not forthright, the Court chose to disbelieve all of the testimony of the officer and granted the motion to suppress the drugs found on the defendant and concluded that none of Officer Henry’s testimony could be believed.
The initial testimony pointed conclusively to the building closer to the corner that had no view of the back of the vacant lot. That testimony did not fit for the garage across the street.

(Trial Court Opinion, 6/16/98 at 2-3, Klein, J.)

¶ 3 At the initial suppression hearing, only the drugs found on appellee were suppressed, while the stash and the drugs passed to a buyer were not. This is not a ease where the same evidence as previously suppressed is to be admitted, but is a case which turns on the nexus of suppressed evidence to the admissibility of other evidence. At trial, the Commonwealth should be given the opportunity to establish that the evidence, supporting constructive possession by appellee of the stash and drugs transferred to a buyer, was clear of the taint of the testimony of the officer which was not believed and which resulted in the drugs found in appellee’s hand being suppressed. Because the view of a transaction by Officer Henry was suppressed but the independently standing stash and possession by appellee were not suppressed, they were trial issues, and their suppression prior to commencement of the trial extends the doctrine of collateral estoppel beyond the very limited parameters of that concept. It is conceivable that at trial witnesses, claimed to be available to the Commonwealth, could establish that the evidence of the stash and constructive possession by appellee were independently and properly obtained.

¶ 4 Prior to commencement of the trial, the Commonwealth moved for recusal of the trial judge, offering evidence that Officer Mitchell saw the defendant sell drugs and that Detective Heeney saw defendant enter the vacant lot carrying the same bag of drugs, later recovered from the lot, and then return from the lot without the bag. (Commonwealth’s Brief at 5.) While the trial judge, in previously suppressing drugs possessed by appellee, discredits this testimony based on the nexus between the discredited testimony of Officer Henry’s surveillance as the basis for the backup officer’s actions in seizing the drugs and arresting appellee and a buyer, it is conceivable that the Commonwealth can produce credible evidence of the discovery of the stash and transfer of drugs untainted by the discredited testimony of Officer Henry. If the Commonwealth fails to establish the independent admissibility of the evidence, it will result in the application of finality of findings by a judge of coordinate jurisdiction and dismissal of the charges. In view of the overwhelming evidence presented here, however, and the possibility that the testimony of the officers or additional evidence could present an independent basis for admission of the evidence relating to the stash and sale of the drugs, the case should be permitted to go forward.

¶ 5 This case must be approached from the point of view that collateral estoppel, a very limited concept as it applies to suppression motions, should apply only where the precise facts introduced as evidence could not be subsequently admitted to establish proof of the identical matter at a later time. The trial judge, when initially reviewing this issue pursuant to a motion to dismiss based on collateral estoppel, mentally walked through the motion making cogent observations which, if carried to their conclusion, would mitigate against applying collateral estoppel.

¶ 6 Prior to trial on March 2, 1998, the court was considering whether an oral motion or motion in limine would be more productive of resolution of this matter on appeal, rather than quashing the appeal based on the previous suppression Order [635]*635entered on December 9, 1998. The court first ruminated mentally as to whether the findings made at the earlier suppression hearings were matters of law or fact (Motion Hearing, 3/20/98, at 4). Thereafter, the court went on to consider whether the drugs sold on the street and taken to the stash initially were excludable as evidence under the collateral estoppel doctrine simply because the trial court did not find Officer Henry credible (id. at 5).

¶ 7 In the March 2, 1998, hearing, when appellee’s motion to suppress was denied, at least preliminarily, the court conjectured:

[THE COURT]: Suppose the officer got his facts mixed up, he got called away and was looking somewhere else and didn’t see anything. He might not have lied, just mixed it up with another case.
I said he was unworthy of belief, not consciously lying. He could have made a mistake. There are a lot of reasons.
MR. MINGES [COMMONWEALTH]: If the Court is supposing now that the officer made an honest mistake, why is the Court then practicing the notion of falcus [sic] in uno, falcus [sic] in omnibus?
THE COURT: Because you didn’t call in any other witnesses. One of the facts that you had to establish to make your case was that there was the transaction, and you didn’t make it.
... that the burden on the Commonwealth was to prove that Garcia sold drugs on the street. If he didn’t sell drugs on the street, you couldn’t go catch the buyer then go back and arrest him. Okay? It was not only that the officer saw him do that, he had to do that....
MR. MINGES: It was also agreed by counsel that the defendant did not own, nor did he have an interest in the drugs that were received in the lot. Thereafter, the decision that the Court made was to suppress the drugs that were received from the person of the defendant in this case.

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Commonwealth v. Garcia
746 A.2d 632 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 2000)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
746 A.2d 632, 2000 Pa. Super. 28, 2000 Pa. Super. LEXIS 77, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-garcia-pasuperct-2000.