Commonwealth v. Matos: Pennsylvania’s Landmark Rule on Police Pursuit, Seizure, and Suppression

Commonwealth v. Matos, 672 A.2d 769 (Pa. 1996)

Pennsylvania Rejects Hodari D. and Treats Unjustified Police Pursuit as a Seizure

Facts of the Case

Matos is three consolidated appeals, all out of Philadelphia, all built on the same street-level pattern: uniformed officers approach, the suspect runs, police chase, contraband gets tossed during flight, and the prosecution argues “abandonment.”

Matos: Officers responded to a narcotics call near Reese Street. They approached three men in a playground; all fled. During the chase, Matos threw a plastic bag. Police recovered it, caught Matos, and found 12 vials of cocaine in the bag plus five more in his pocket after he was taken into custody.

McFadden: Two uniformed officers in a marked car approached McFadden. He looked at them and immediately ran. An officer chased him, and before being physically stopped, McFadden tossed a handgun into bushes. It was recovered and he was arrested for carrying an unlicensed firearm.

Carroll: Two uniformed officers in a marked vehicle saw two men on Olive Street. One officer spoke to one man; the other approached Carroll, who kept his hands in his jacket pockets. The officer approached with his hand over his gun and began asking Carroll to remove his hands. Carroll ran into an alley, slipped, and two drug packets fell out. The pursuing officer drew his gun, ordered Carroll to stay down, arrested him, and found 45 more packets in his pockets.

In all three cases, the officers started pursuit without probable cause and without reasonable suspicion. The only trigger was flight.

Lower Court Decisions

Trial courts: Each suppression court granted suppression. The reasoning was consistent across the cases: police had no lawful basis to chase, the chase was coercive state action, and contraband discarded during a coercive, unjustified pursuit is not voluntary abandonment. The trial courts relied heavily on Pennsylvania precedent like Commonwealth v. Jeffries and Commonwealth v. Barnett.

Superior Court: The Superior Court reversed all three suppression orders. It treated the pursuits as non-seizures and therefore treated the tossed items as abandoned. In effect, the Superior Court aligned itself with the federal approach later formalized in California v. Hodari D.—that no seizure occurs until physical force or submission.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Decision (the Core Holding)

The Supreme Court reverses the Superior Court across the board and suppresses the evidence in every case. The Court frames the issue in a clean binary:

• If pursuit is not a seizure → contraband is abandoned → admissible.

• If pursuit is a seizure → abandonment is coerced → police need RS/PC → no RS/PC here → suppress.

The Court holds that police pursuit is a seizure under Article I, Section 8, and it refuses to adopt Hodari D. for Pennsylvania.

Why the Court Rejects Hodari D.

The majority doesn’t just say “we disagree.” It builds a full state-constitutional justification using the Edmunds framework and Pennsylvania’s privacy tradition.

Pennsylvania’s Constitution isn’t a mirror of the Fourth Amendment

Even though Article I, Section 8 shares almost identical text with the Fourth Amendment, the Court stresses that identical language doesn’t require identical meaning. Pennsylvania courts are free—indeed obligated—to interpret Section 8 independently.

Article I, Section 8 is grounded in privacy in a way federal law is not

The Court leans hard on Commonwealth v. Edmunds, emphasizing that Pennsylvania’s exclusionary rule and search-and-seizure doctrine are tied to a right of privacy, not just deterrence. That privacy interest is what makes unjustified pursuit constitutionally intolerable here.

In other words, Pennsylvania isn’t only asking whether cops behaved badly; it’s asking whether the person’s liberty and privacy were invaded without lawful justification.

Prior Pennsylvania precedent already treated pursuit as coercive seizure

The majority sees Jeffries as basically controlling. In Jeffries, police chased a man with no suspicion; he discarded drugs; the Court suppressed them because the chase itself was coercive and unlawful. Same with Barnett, where a discarded gun was suppressed because the weapon was abandoned due to coercive police conduct.

Those cases reflect Pennsylvania’s long-standing view that people don’t have to stop for police unless the Constitution allows it, and police can’t create “abandonment” by unlawfully pressuring someone into flight.

Pennsylvania uses the objective “not free to leave” seizure test

The Court anchors seizure doctrine in the Jones/Mendenhall objective test: would a reasonable innocent person feel free to leave? In a chase scenario the answer is obviously no. If police are running you down, the encounter has moved past “mere encounter” into a forced detention.

So the majority treats the start of pursuit as the moment constitutional seizure begins.

Policy: Pennsylvania refuses “end justifies the means” policing

The Court ties this to its recent line of cases like Rodriquez: drug enforcement doesn’t authorize cutting constitutional corners. The majority sees Hodari D. as inviting exactly that—unlawful shows of authority to provoke flight and create recoverable evidence. The Court quotes the Hodari dissent’s warning that the federal rule encourages unconstitutional intimidation.

So Pennsylvania chooses the opposite incentive structure: if officers chase without RS, the Commonwealth loses the evidence.

The Rule Matos Creates

The decision is blunt and defense-friendly:

• The initiation of a police pursuit is a seizure under Article I, Section 8.

• Police must have reasonable suspicion (at minimum) before starting pursuit.

• If they don’t, contraband discarded during that unlawful chase is fruit of an illegal seizure and must be suppressed.

• Flight alone is not reasonable suspicion.

Applied to these facts: because the officers had no RS before they chased, everything tossed or recovered as a result of the chase gets suppressed.

The Dissent (Castille)

Castille’s dissent basically argues three things:

• A chase isn’t a seizure; it’s at most a mere encounter or lawful observation.

• Adopting the majority rule will cripple street policing and reward suspicious flight.

• Hodari D. should control, and Pennsylvania shouldn’t elevate Section 8 beyond federal doctrine here.

The majority rejects that worldview as inconsistent with Pennsylvania’s privacy tradition and prior seizure jurisprudence.

Practical Takeaway for Suppression Litigation

Matos is one of the cleanest suppression tools in PA street cases:

If the Commonwealth’s case depends on drugs or a gun tossed during flight, the defense focuses on the moment pursuit began.

• What did police have before they chased?

• If the answer is “nothing but flight / high-crime area / nervousness,” then Matos says the chase was illegal and the evidence is out.

That’s why Matos remains central in Philadelphia VUFA and narcotics suppression practice almost 30 years later.

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