Commonwealth v. Williams

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA v. ERNEST WILLIAMS, Appellant.

J-A17016-18

No. 1569 WDA 2016

SUPERIOR COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA

AUGUST 28, 2018

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence, July 5, 2016, in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Criminal Division at No(s): CP-02-CR-0016085-2013.

BEFORE: OTT, J., KUNSELMAN, J., and MUSMANNO, J.

MEMORANDUM BY KUNSELMAN, J.:

Ernest Williams appeals from his judgment of sentence. Because the suppression judge violated the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure, we must remand for a new suppression hearing and, if necessary, a new trial.

Factual Background

At around 7:00 AM, on a cold, November 2013 morning, the Allegheny County Police arrested Ernest Williams without a warrant. They suspected him of involvement in Jeremy Fields' death.

Three-and-half hours earlier, two Munhall police officers had received a report of "shots fired." They jumped in their squad car and headed for the scene. Headlights appeared in the opposing lane of traffic and moved towards them at a high rate of speed. The police turned their cruiser around, pursued, and observed the vehicle run a stop sign. The officers pulled it over.

The car turned out to be a black Ford Five Hundred, with a unique, ragtop roof and a gray, metallic stripe on its sides. Williams, the driver, was alone in his car. Despite the temperature being 30 degrees that morning, he was perspiring. The police also described him as nervous.

When the officers asked Williams his travel plans, his explanation did not jive with Munhall's geography. Thus, the officers inferred that he was lying. But he consented to a vehicle search, which uncovered no evidence of a crime, so they let him go.

The police then continued on their way to investigate the shooting. They found Mr. Fields' corpse laying face up in the road, with multiple bullet wounds and a trail of blood running into the gutter.

Investigators noticed a security camera on Hruska Plumbing, a local business, pointing right at the body. The officers, hoping that surveillance video had captured the murder, contacted Hruska's owner and asked to view his security footage. The owner agreed and took them into his office, where he played two recordings from his outdoor cameras.

According to the officer's suppression-hearing testimony, one camera recorded the killing. And, while it did not show Williams' face, the police testified that they saw the image of a black sedan stop in front of Hruska Plumbing. According to the officers, both a ragtop roof and a gray, metallic stripe on the side of the sedan were clearly visible on the video. In theiropinions, the roof and the stripe on screen matched those on Williams' Ford Five Hundred. An officer specifically identified the car in the video as the "black sedan I stopped with Ernie Williams in it." N.T., 5/19/14, at 35.

So Allegheny County Police alerted all personnel to "be on the lookout for that vehicle." Id. at 43. As fate would have it, when a detective left the scene around 7:00 AM, he spotted a Ford Five Hundred matching that exact description coming in the opposite direction. The detective made a U-turn and confirmed from the license plate that the car was Williams' automobile. The detective and another marked car stopped Williams and arrested him.

Police then towed his Ford Five Hundred to their headquarters, where the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office recovered DNA evidence from the car's exterior. The police also interrogated Williams for most of the day without giving him his constitutionally required warnings under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). From their interrogation, the police learned where to secure additional video evidence against Williams. That new video evidence revealed that Williams had been with Mr. Fields for several hours prior to the murder.

Williams moved to suppress all of the Commonwealth's post-arrest evidence on the grounds that his warrantless arrest was unconstitutional and that all of the evidence uncovered thereafter was fruit of a poisoned tree. In his motion to suppress, Williams' attorney clearly stated that he was "unable to open the Hruska video . . . Although the District Attorney's Office hasagreed to provide a viewable CD, that has not occurred as of the filing of this motion." Williams' Omnibus Pretrial Motion, 4/4/14, at 5.

The Commonwealth never moved to admit the Hruska Plumbing video into evidence at the suppression hearing. Instead, it rested upon the police officers' testimony of what they recalled from the video.

After two days of testimony, Court of Common Pleas Judge Randal B. Todd partially denied the motion and partially granted it. He suppressed all of Williams' pre-Miranda statements, but the judge declined to suppress any of the Commonwealth's physical evidence. In the suppression court's judgment, the Commonwealth had probable cause to stop Williams' car at 7:00 AM and to arrest him, on a likelihood that he was involved in Mr. Fields' murder. The judge credited the officers' recollections of what they had seen on the surveillance video, and he believed that they had recognized Williams' Ford Five Hundred in the recordings. Critically, though, Judge Todd had never seen the surveillance video when he made those credibility findings.

According to Williams' attorney, after Judge Todd refused to suppress:

Assistant District Attorney Summer Carroll [and he] viewed the shooting video in her office. [They agreed] that it does not show that the vehicle in question had a ragtop roof, nor can a viewer determine that it was a Ford Five Hundred. The only thing visible about the car is that it is black and seems to have a stripe on the side.

Williams' Motion for Reconsideration, 11/19/14, at 2.

Judge Todd summarily denied Williams' motion for reconsideration the next day.

The following spring, Williams renewed his motion for reconsideration and, alternatively, asked Judge Todd to reopen the record and admit the video surveillance as a part of the suppression court's evidence. Again, the judge summarily denied the motion without a hearing, on March 31, 2015.

Ten days later, Williams moved for Judge Todd to recuse himself. The judge granted that motion, and Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County Judge Philip A. Ignelzi assumed jurisdiction.

Williams then asked Judge Ignelzi to admit the surveillance video into evidence. Pointing out that the video itself was the "Best Evidence," Williams argued that the video must be admitted and considered to disprove that the police had probable cause to arrest him. The Commonwealth argued that, under the coordinate jurisdiction rule, Judge Ignelzi could not overrule another common pleas judge's denial of suppression, even if he disagreed with it. Thus, the Commonwealth contended that Judge Todd's denial of suppression constituted law of the case, which bound Judge Ignelzi.

In preparation for an oral argument on Williams' motion, Judge Ignelzi reviewed the surveillance video in camera. After in camera review, Judge Ignelzi found that the coordinate jurisdiction rule and the doctrine of the law of the case barred him from reconsidering the denial of suppression.

The case then proceeded to a jury trial.

The jury convicted Williams of murder of the first degree¹ and carrying a firearm without a license.² Judge Ignelzi sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole, and this appeal followed.

Analysis

Williams raises three appellate issues. First, he claims Judge Todd's refusal to suppress the Commonwealth's physical evidence was an error of law, because the police arrested him without probable cause. See Williams' Brief at 6. Second, Williams argues that Judge Todd erred "in refusing to grant [his] request to reopen the record so that [Judge Todd] could receive and view the video." Id. Third, Williams says that Judge Ignelzi erred by not dismissing a juror. Id.

We address only issue number two - i.e., whether Judge Todd erred in denying Williams' motion to reopen the suppression record - because our disposition of that question ends this appeal.

The trial court directed Williams to file a statement of alleged errors under Pennsylvania Rule of Appellate Procedure 1925(b). Williams complied, and Judges Todd and Ignelzi jointly authored a detailed 1925(a) Opinion. In it, the judges acknowledged that Judge Todd should have granted Williams' motions to reopen the suppression record. However, they think that JudgeIgnelzi rectified that error. "While the suppression court erred in not reopening the record, admitting, and reviewing the shooting video, the error was remedied. The Trial Court, Judge Ignelzi, admitted and viewed the video in ruling upon [Williams'] motion to review and/or reconsider the suppression court's ruling." Trial Court Opinion, 8/9/17, at 29.

When, as here, police have acted without a warrant, "determinations of reasonable suspicion and probable cause should be reviewed de novo on appeal." Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996). But "a reviewing court should take care both to review findings of historical fact only for clear error and to give due weight to inferences drawn from those facts by resident judges and local law enforcement officers." Id.

Because the Commonwealth prevailed at the suppression hearing, we may examine "only the Commonwealth's evidence and so much of the evidence for the defense as remains uncontradicted when read in the context of the record as a whole." Commonwealth v. Russo, 934 A.2d 1199, 1203 (Pa. 2007) (internal quotations and citations omitted). As for the subject matter, "our scope of review is limited to the factual findings and legal conclusions of the suppression court." In re L.J., 79 A.3d 1073, 1080 (Pa. 2013). Additionally, citing to L.J., this Court has said "our scope of review from a suppression ruling is limited to the evidentiary record that was created at the suppression hearing." Commonwealth v. Cruz, 166 A.3d...