Commonwealth v. Anthony Lewis

Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to adopt stringent test, advocated by the defendant, for the evidence required to designate an area “high crime,” in order for that fact to be considered as part of the “totality of the circumstances” analysis used to assess whether reasonable suspicion exists for a police stop. The majority instead left it to the discretion of the suppression court to determine if the state has met its burden of proving a high-crime area, as well as how much weight to assign that factor in the totality of the circumstances analysis. The majority did reiterate that it is not enough for the state just to call an area “high crime” and that the label is overused. In a dissent from that holding, Justice Wecht opined that the court should have taken the opportunity to depart from federal precedent and hold the neighborhood in which a stop occurs has no bearing on the reasonable suspicion anaylsis for purposes of the state’s search and seizure clause.