Commonwealth v. Chase

In Commonwealth v. Chase, 394 Pa. Super. 168, 575 A.2d 574 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1990) Pennsylvania's Superior Court reached the same result. There, an undercover officer radioed his partner to tell him that he had just purchased drugs from a black man in a blue shirt at the corner of Tackawanna and Orthodox. The other officer then arrived at the scene, where he saw two black men, both in blue shirts. The defendant ran, and the officer arrested him. The court found that the officer had probable cause to arrest the defendant. The court pointed out that "in dealing with questions of probable cause, we are not dealing with certainties. We are dealing with the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men act. This is not the same 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard which we apply in determining guilt or innocence at trial." The court there specifically rejected the trial court's statement that "you cannot have probable cause to think that both are guilty when it is clearly a crime committed only by one person." In rejecting that conclusion, the superior court stated: "We do not agree that the police could never have probable cause to arrest two persons if only one person has committed the crime. While the law requires that probable cause have a fairly narrow focus, thereby precluding, for example, dragnet operations, we do not believe that the focus must in all situations narrow down to a single suspect. . . Under some circumstances, there may be probable cause to believe that either of two suspects was the perpetrator of the criminal act."