Commonwealth v. ScattoneCommonwealth v. Scattone
Thе appellant, James Scattone, appeals the judgment of sentence ($200 fine and cost of prosecution) for Fleeing or Attempting to Elude a Police Officer. We affirm.
A trial was held in which the court found the following facts:
On April 11, 1992, Officer James Boettger of the Doylestown Township Police Department was on routine patrol in the area of Route 202 and Lamp Post Road. At approximately 1:45 a.m., the officer observed a stopped vehicle some fifty yards west of the intersection. As he approached the vehicle, a woman standing along side the car motioned fоr the officer to stop. As a result of a conversation with the woman, Officer Boettger turned his car around and pulled in behind the stopped vehicle. The officer described the vehicle as an older blue Ford Mustang with a Pennsylvania license plate number ZNT-151. The officer also observed a person sitting in the driver’s seat of the Mustang, whom he later identified as the Defendant. Once the officer рulled his patrol car behind the Mustang, he heard the driver trying to start the car. The car started and pulled out onto the road. Officer Boettger activated the overhead emergency lights, and the outside spotlight of his patrol car. He also activated the siren intermittently. Thiswas done in an attempt to perform a traffic stop of the Mustang. The officer radioed for assistance and was jоined in the chase by three other patrol cars. The four police vehicles pursued the Mustang for approximately three miles with emergency lights activated the entire time. At some point in the chase Officer Boettger determined that he could identify the driver based upon the information already obtained and, therefore, ended the pursuit. A ticket was sent to Defendant through the mail to an address obtained via a PennDOT search of the license plate number.
The citation mailed to the appellant was followed by a conviction after a hearing before a district justicе. With the appellant’s appeal, a trial de novo was conducted and resulted in the appellant being ordered to pay a fine, and costs. This appeal followed and raises the issue of whether the trial court erred in convicting the appellant of violating Section 3733(a) of the Motor Vehicle Code where the prosecution failed to present any evidence of probable cause for pursuing or attempting to stop the appellant’s vehicle.
The statute under review provides that:
Any driver of a motor vehicle who willfully fails or refuses to bring his vehicle to a stop, or who' otherwise flees or attеmpts to elude a pursuing police vehicle, when given visual or audible signal to bring the vehicle to a stop, commits a misdemeanor of the second degree.
Amended December 27, 1994, P.L. 1337, No. 154, § 3;
The appellant espouses a position, which has yet to be addressed in this Commonwealth, that the police must prove that probable cause existed in advаnce of initiating or maintaining pursuit of a vehicle before an accused can be convicted
In support of his argument, the appellant points to
At bar, we had no police stop of the appellant or evidence seized which is sought to be suppressed. Rather, it is the citation of the appellant which is sought to be labelled tainted as originating from a polluted source — no probable cause or articulable suspicion of criminal activity to justify the pоlice’s pursuit.
Generally, it is not a crime
(malum in
se) to operate a vehicle and refuse to stop when directed to do so. However, the act of avoiding
police
direction to stop has been criminalized
(malum in
prohibitum) by the Legislature without the additional condition that the pоlice have probable cause to act prior to directing a stop or initiating a chase. Contrast
Consistent with the Statutory Construction Act, i.e., giving effect to a statute as a whole and that the Legislature would not seek an absurd result by enacting legislation,
2
we find that the General Assembly did not make “probable cause” or “articulable suspicion” a condition precedent to sustaining a conviction of
Further, we hold that, just as a citizen is not permitted a defense to a resisting arrest charge to assert the
unlawfulness
of the arrest,
4
a citizen is not permitted to avoid a violation of
To reiterate, nothing in
Sub judice, there is no evidence that Officer Boettger was not in uniform or that any of the four pursuing vehicles were not marked and identifiable as police cruisеrs with flashing dome lights and sirens blaring over the two-three-mile chase route.
Given the lateness of the hour, the signal for assistance by a female adjacent to the stopped Ford Mustang, the police acted properly in pursuing the appellant. Conversely, the appellant’s conduct, in light of the totality of the circumstances, was consistent with a “willful” failure to bring his vehicle to a stop (ovеr a two-three-mile chase) and eluding police. See Commonwealth v. Welsh, 15 Pa.D. & C.3d 471 (Adams Cty., 1980).
Judgment of sentence affirmed. 5
Notes
.
.
. Under such a maxim, if a statute specifies one exception to a general rule or assumes to specify the effects of a certain provision, other exceptions or effects are excluded. Black's Law Dictionary 692 (Rev. 4th ed. 1968).
. Parenthetically, the unlawfulness of an arrest may be raised in a federal lawsuit under Section 1983 (excessive use of force by public servant in performance of his/her duty exposes governmental entity to liability for actions of its employees/agents).
. For edification purposes, we would note that a police stop of a motorist without probable cause or articulable suspicion of criminal activity would taint the seizure of any evidence as "fruit of the poisonous tree” and render it supрressible. See
Wong Sun
v.
United States,
This is not the case here where the police neither stopped the appellant nor seized any incriminating evidence as a result of a stop.