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547 Pa. 31

688 A.2d 698

Commonwealth v. Selby

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided January 14, 1997

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1997-01-14

Relies on Commonwealth v. Cabeza · Commonwealth v. Brion

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1997-01-14

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently December 2014

8 state decisions

60199720002010decided

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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¶1*33OPINION ANNOUNCING THE JUDGMENT OF THE COURT

FLAHERTY, Chief Justice.

¶2As in Commonwealth v. Brion, 539 Pa. 256, 652 A.2d 287 (1994), the sole issue in this case is whether an informer wearing a consensual wiretap may, without judicial approval, enter another individual’s home to record his conversations electronically for use by the police in an undercover investigation. We held in Brionthat under Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, an individual’s right to privacy in his home should remain inviolate. The judgment of the Superior Court is reversed in part and affirmed in part.

¶3The facts in Brionare virtually identical to those in the present case. In Brion, the police sent a confidential informer, wearing a wiretap, to Michael Brion’s home to purchase illegal drugs. The police failed to obtain judicial approval for the informer’s body wire. The informer entered Brion’s home and made the purchase, all the while transmitting the conversation to monitoring agents who recorded it and introduced it in Brion’s trial after the trial court denied a pretrial suppression motion.

¶4Brion was found guilty on all charges. Post-verdict motions were filed alleging that the trial court erred when it failed to suppress the taped conversation, and the trial court granted Brion’s motion for a new trial. Superior Court reversed and we granted allocatur. On appeal, we held that “[bjecause there was no determination of probable cause by a neutral judicial authority, the ... body wire violated Article I, Section 8 and the tape recording ... should have been suppressed.” Brion at 262, 652 A.2d at 289. Accordingly, we reversed.

¶5Appellant in the present case, Jerry Leon Selby, was charged with twenty-two criminal counts resulting from an investigation of drug trafficking in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In the course of the investigation, the police sent an informer, wearing a consensual wiretap, into the appellant’s residence. The police failed to obtain judicial approval for the informer’s body wire.

¶6*34At trial, the Commonwealth and defense counsel stipulated that the Commonwealth would proceed with only counts three and four. In count three, the Commonwealth alleged that appellant delivered a packet of heroin to a police informant at the informant’s home. In count four, the Commonwealth alleged that appellant delivered ten packets of heroin to the same individual (wearing a body wire), at appellant’s home.

¶7Appellant filed an omnibus pretrial motion to suppress the tape recording of the transaction in count four on the basis that the recording was obtained in violation of both the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions. The trial court denied the motion and after a jury trial appellant was convicted of both counts. The trial court denied appellant’s post-verdict motions and sentenced him to five to ten years imprisonment on count three and six to twelve years imprisonment on count four. The Superior Court affirmed and appellant filed a timely petition for allowance of appeal to this court. We granted allocatur, but held disposition of the case pending the outcome of Brion.

¶8The Commonwealth mischaracterizes the issue as one not of constitutional rights but as one of retroactivity in the application of Brionand then engages in a laborious analysis of retroactivity. Since we held this case pending the outcome of Brion, it is clear that we expected this case to be controlled by the outcome of Brion. If this were not so, then retroactivity would be an issue.

¶9Even if retroactivity were the issue, the general rule is that a “new rule is to be applied retroactively to cases where the issue in question is properly preserved at all stages of adjudication up to and including any direct appeal.” Commonwealth v. Cabeza, 503 Pa. 228, 233, 469 A.2d 146, 148 (1983).

¶10Considered in the light of the Cabezarule, the illogic of holding this case pending Brionand then reaching the opposite result in an analytically indistinguishable situation defies explanation. For these reasons, the order of the Superior Court with respect to count four is reversed and remanded for *35proceedings consistent with this opinion. The order of the Superior Court with respect to count three is affirmed.

NIGRO, J., concurs in the result.CASTILLE, J., files a dissenting opinion.NEWMAN, J., files a dissenting opinion in which CASTILLE, J., joins.
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