Commonwealth v. Moore

928 A.2d 1092, 2007 Pa. Super. 207, 2007 Pa. Super. LEXIS 2082
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedJuly 12, 2007
StatusPublished
Cited by32 cases

This text of 928 A.2d 1092 (Commonwealth v. Moore) 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. Moore, 928 A.2d 1092, 2007 Pa. Super. 207, 2007 Pa. Super. LEXIS 2082 (Pa. Ct. App. 2007).

Opinion

OPINION BY

GANTMAN, J.:

¶ 1 Appellant, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, appeals from the order entered in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, which granted a motion to suppress the Commonwealth’s evidence on behalf of Appellee, Emmanuel Moore. 1 The Commonwealth asks us to determine whether, as a prisoner, Appellee can claim a constitutional right to privacy in his non-privileged prison mail. We hold Appellee has no constitutional right to privacy in his non-privileged prison mail. Accordingly, we reverse the trial court’s suppression order and remand for further proceedings.

¶ 2 The trial court opinion sets forth the relevant facts of this case as follows:

On December 8, 2004, Lt. Raymond Knauer of the Internal Security Department (hereinafter, “Security Office”) of the Department of Corrections at Gra-terford was contacted telephonically by Philadelphia Homicide Detective John Keen regarding an inmate at SCI-Gra-terford, [Appellee Emmanuel Moore]. [2] Detective Keen ... asked that Lt. Knauer copy all incoming and outgoing mail of [Appellee] because they were looking for [Moore’s] brother, [Ronald Bethea (“Bethea”) ], to arrest him for the September 16, 2004 murder of one Dante Jones and injury of Anthony Hall. Detective Keen wanted to get copies of *1095 [Appellee’s correspondence to locate Be-thea]. Lt. Knauer directed Detective Keen to submit his request in writing, setting forth the facts that had been conveyed to [Lt. Knauer] regarding the need for the mail intercepts, and the Detective did so. [Lt. Knauer] advised Detective Keen that he would have to first secure authorization from Regional Deputy Secretary Donald T. Vaughn because any request that mail be read and reproduced required his approval.
On December 8, 2004, Lt. Knauer submitted to Regional Deputy Secretary Vaughn a “Request for Mail Scrutiny” requesting “[scrutiny of non-privileged incoming and outgoing mail for [Appel-lee, pursuant to] DC-ADM 808, Section VI.D 1, paragraph c.” In support of that request, [Lt. Knauer] indicated that “[t]here is reason to believe that: Security may be impaired in that this inmate may be using this directive to conduct Criminal Activity.”
Regional Deputy Secretary Vaughn authorized the “scrutiny” of [Appellee’s] mail on December 3, 2004, ... and every 30 days thereafter based on [Lt. Knauer’s] continuing requests, which did not at any time contain new or additional information other than what had been initially submitted by Lt. Knauer’s initial request to scrutinize [Appellee’s] mail on December 3, 2004.
After the approval from the Regional Deputy Secretary was received, the mailroom was notified. The mailroom pulled the mail for the Security Office; this mail did not include privileged mail. After making copies of the non-privileged mail, the mail continued on its course. On [Lt. Knauer’s] copies of the mail, [he] noted whether it was incoming or outgoing, and the date he scrutinized it. He received copies of the contents as well as of the envelopes the mail came (or went) in. He made notations as to the addressee/return address of the scrutinized mail. Lt. Knauer usually faxed or mailed the copied material to [homicide detectives].
[Bethea] was taken into custody on December 8, 2004. Investigative leads from two items of mad received by the Detectives from [Lt. Knauer] did assist in locating [Bethea] in Wilmington, Delaware.

(Trial Court Opinion, filed August 7, 2006, at 2-4) (emphasis in original) (internal citations omitted). Appellee and his acquaintances employed codes to conceal their messages. They also used blank lines to conceal names; for instance, they used “T —” or “-” to conceal the name “Tone,” a common nickname for Anthony.

¶ 3 On May 5, 2006, the Commonwealth filed a motion in limine seeking admission of the letters obtained pursuant to Lt. Knauer’s efforts. The Commonwealth argued the letters demonstrated Appellee and Bethea’s objective to prevent Anthony Hall from presenting inculpatory evidence at trial. Anthony Hall was released from custody sometime in January 2005. On March 9, 2005, Hall asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege when called to testify at a preliminary hearing. On May 17, 2005, he recanted his statements identifying Appellee and Bethea; following his recantation, Hall eluded service of process. The Commonwealth concluded the letters obtained by Lt. Knauer demonstrate an objective to compel Hall’s silence by threat of force.

¶4 On May 9, 2006, Appellee filed a motion for an evidentiary hearing to determine the extent to which scrutiny of his letters violated the attorney-client and work product privileges. On May 11, 2006, Appellee filed a motion to suppress *1096 his mail and its evidentiary fruits. Generally, Appellee conceded prisoners have no constitutional protection from searches in furtherance of legitimate prison security concerns. However, Appellee argued prisoners enjoy constitutional protections from searches initiated to pursue criminal investigations unrelated to security concerns. When prison officials seized and copied his mail at the request of detectives investigating a murder, they violated his constitutional rights. Appellee concluded the letters and their evidentiary fruits should be suppressed because they were obtained without a warrant, in violation of his constitutional rights.

¶ 5 The hearing on the parties’ pre-trial motions continued for three (8) days, May 15-18, 2006. Appellee and Bethea did not present evidence at the hearing to support the motion to suppress. On the first day of the suppression hearings, Lt. Knauer testified that all inmates receive a prison handbook which states “[a]ll mail coming into the State Correctional Institution is opened and inspected for contraband.” (N.T. Suppression Hearing, 5/15/06, at 45). The handbook directed prisoners to administrative policy directive DC-ADM 803, which further explains the prison’s mail handling policy. (Id. at 89). Lt. Knauer made copies of the original letters, which were sent “to their destination; whether it’s incoming, they would go to [Appellee]; if they were outgoing, ... the letters would be sealed and sent on their destination.” (Id. at 54).

¶ 6 On May 18, 2006, the suppression court issued a memorandum, which included the following conclusion of law:

Because [Appellee’s] non-legal incoming and outgoing mail was seized, scrutinized and copied at the instigation of non-prison officials for non-institutional reasons, these actions violated [Appel-lee’s] rights pursuant to not only Article 1, [Section] 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, but even of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. A search warrant would have been necessary for Detectives ... to obtain the evidence they sought, had they even been able to gather the requisite probable cause. Accordingly, all of [Appel-lee’s] mail ... is hereby ordered suppressed.

(Trial Court Memorandum, filed May 18, 2006, at 3) (emphasis in original).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
928 A.2d 1092, 2007 Pa. Super. 207, 2007 Pa. Super. LEXIS 2082, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-moore-pasuperct-2007.