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465 Pa. 323

350 A.2d 788

Commonwealth v. Sams

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided January 29, 1976

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1976-01-29

Relies on Wong Sun v. United States · Brown v. Illinois · Commonwealth v. Whitaker

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1976-01-29

How this case has been cited

Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently February 1995

20 state decisions

80197619801990decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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ROBERTS, Justice

¶1(concurring).

¶2 The facts of this case are similar to those of Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975). It is important to note, therefore, as Mr. Justice Blackmun did in Brown, that when statements are given as the result of an arrest without probable cause a court must consider fourth amendment rights as well as the fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. See also Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). Thus the required inquiry goes beyond the mere voluntariness of the statements or waiver of fifth amendment rights. As Mr. Justice Blackmun stated for the Court in Brown v. Illinois:

“[E]ven if the statements in this case were found to be voluntary under the Fifth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment issue remains. In order for the causal *329chain, between the illegal arrest and the statements made subsequent thereto, to be broken [,] Wong Sunrequires not merely that the statement meet the Fifth Amendment standard of voluntariness but that it be "sufficiently the act of free will to purge the primary taint.’ ”

¶3Applying such an analysis to the facts of this case, there can be no. doubt that, as the majority concludes, the statement should not be admitted into evidence. See Commonwealth v. Whitaker, Pa., 336 A.2d 603 (1975). I, therefore, concur in the result.

POMEROY, J., joins in this concurring opinion.
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