Commonwealth v. Hugel

Full title: COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, Appellee v. CHRISTIAN CHARLES HUGEL…

Court: SUPERIOR COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA

Date published: Apr 9, 2014

No. J-A10026-14 (Pa. Super. Ct. Apr. 9, 2014)

Opinion

J-A10026-14 No. 1543 MDA 2013

04-09-2014

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, Appellee v. CHRISTIAN CHARLES HUGEL, Appellant

ALLEN

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence entered July 30, 2013,

in the Court of Common Pleas of Cumberland County,

Criminal Division, at No(s): CP-21-SA-0000071-2013

BEFORE: DONOHUE, ALLEN, and MUNDY, JJ. MEMORANDUM BY ALLEN, J.:

Christian Charles Hugel ("Appellant") appeals from the judgment of sentence imposed, following a summary appeal, at which the trial court convicted him of disorderly conduct.¹ We affirm.

1 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5503(a)(2).

The trial court summarized the pertinent facts as follows:

The [July 30, 2013] hearing involved two citations for disorderly conduct arising from separate incidents occurring on February 4, 2012 and March 3, 2012. The parties agreed that the citations would be consolidated for trial.
The evidence presented at the hearing showed that [Appellant] lived in one side of a duplex and the victims in the other. For more than a year [Appellant] made loud and unreasonable noises at all hours with the specific
intent to annoy and alarm his neighbors. He would play loud music, yell and scream, call them names, pound on the walls, and dare them to call police.
After a year of trying to reason with [Appellant], the neighbors were finally forced to get the police involved. The pattern of unreasonable noise at unreasonable hours was repeated both on February 4, 2012 and March 3, 2012.

Trial Court Opinion, 11/20/13, at 1.

Upon hearing all of the testimony, and considering case law submitted by Appellant, the trial court issued its ruling from the bench:

I have reviewed your cases as well as some other cases, [defense counsel], and I am satisfied that as far as the February 4^th incident that the requisite element of public [annoyance] has not been proven. While your client is a complete bore, based upon the evidence that I heard, the appropriate charge would have been harassment rather than disorderly conduct.
However, with regard to the March 3^rd incident, I'm satisfied that [Appellant] made unreasonable noise. He did so with the specific intent of causing inconvenience to his neighbors, but he recklessly created a risk of annoyance or alarm in the neighborhood, and that was proven by the officer's testimony that he could hear the unreasonable noise outside.

N.T., 7/30/13, at 23.

That same day, the trial court imposed a $300 fine upon Appellant, and sentenced him to ninety-day probationary period "on the condition that he be and remain on good behavior. A special condition of probation shall be that he not have any direct or intentional contact with his neighbors at 500 Market Street in Lemoyne." Id. at 24-25. Appellant filed this timely appeal. Both Appellant and the trial court have complied with Pa.R.A.P. 1925.

Appellant frames his single issue as follows:

DISORDERLY CONDUCT. [Appellant] committed disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm, or recklessly creating risk thereof, he made unreasonable noise. While [Appellant] is not the ideal neighbor, in this case, he was playing music and yelling in his own home after 8:00 a.m. Does [Appellant's] playing music and yelling in his own home create a public incident and was the noise within his duplex unreasonable?

Appellant's Brief at 4.

Appellant presents a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his disorderly conduct conviction. Our standard of review is well settled:

The standard we apply in reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence is whether viewing all the evidence admitted at trial in the light most favorable to the verdict winner, there is sufficient evidence to enable the fact-finder to find every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. In applying the above test, we may not weigh the evidence and substitute our judgment for the fact-finder. In addition, we note that the facts and circumstances established by the Commonwealth need not preclude every possibility of innocence. Any doubts regarding a defendant's guilt may be resolved by the fact-finder unless the evidence is so weak and inconclusive that as a matter of law no probability of fact may be drawn from the combined circumstances. The Commonwealth may sustain its burden of proving every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt by means of wholly circumstantial evidence. Moreover, in applying the above test, the entire record must be evaluated and all evidence actually received must be considered. Finally, the [finder] of fact while passing upon the credibility of
witnesses and the weight of the evidence produced, is free to believe all, part or none of the evidence.

Commonwealth v. Jones, 886 A.2d 689, 704 (Pa. Super. 2005).

Appellant was convicted of summary disorderly conduct, which reads, in pertinent part, as follows:

§ Disorderly Conduct

(a) Offense defined.—A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he:

***

(2) makes unreasonable noise[.]

18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5503(a)(2). As used in this section, "'public' means affecting or likely to affect persons in a place to which the public or a substantial group has access; among the places included are . . . apartment houses [or] any neighborhood[.]" 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5503(c).

Appellant argues that the evidence presented by the Commonwealth was insufficient to support his disorderly conduct conviction because the Commonwealth failed to prove that his music rose to the level of unreasonable noise necessary pursuant to the statute, and failed to prove that the music caused public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm. We disagree.

This Court has summarized:

"The offense of disorderly conduct is not intended as a catchall for every act which annoys or disturbs people; it is not to be used as a dragnet for all the irritations which
breed in the ferment of a community. It has a specific purpose; it has a definite objection, it is intended to preserve the public peace." Commonwealth v. Hock, 556 Pa. 409, 728 A.2d 943 (Pa. 1999).
"The mens rea requirement of Section 5503 demands proof that [the] appellant by her actions intentionally or recklessly created a risk of causing or caused a public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm." Commonwealth v. Gilbert, 449 Pa. Super. 450, 674 A.2d 284 (Pa. Super. 1996). The specific intent requirement of this statute "may be met by a showing of a reckless disregard of the risk of public inconvenience," annoyance, or alarm, even if the appellant's intent was to send a message to a certain individual, rather than to cause public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm. See Commonwealth v. Kidd, 296 Pa. Super. 393, 442 A.2d 826 (Pa. Super. 1982).
In disorderly [conduct] cases based on one's making unreasonable noise, this Court has looked to the language content only to infer whether the speaker intended to cause public annoyance, alarm, etc. Ultimately, however, what constitutes the actus reus of "unreasonable noise" under the disorderly conduct statute is determined solely by the volume of the speech, not by its content.

Commonwealth v. Maerz, 879 A.2d 1267, 1269 (Pa. Super. 2005). In addition, "Pennsylvania law defines unreasonable noise as 'not fitting or proper in respect to the conventional standards of organized society or a legally constituted community.'" Id., at 1270.

In Commonwealth v. Alpha Epsilon Pi, 540 A.2d 580 (Pa. Super. 1988), this Court rejected the claim that the evidence was insufficient to support a summary unreasonable noise disorderly conduct conviction. With regard to "unreasonable noise," this Court concluded:

In the case before us, the police officer had proceeded to a borough neighborhood at 11:20 p.m. on a Wednesday night. He went to the area after receiving a complaint
from a resident of that neighborhood. Stopping in his car some fifty yards from [the defen dant's] premises, he heard the sound of music coming from the fraternity house. He observed and overheard a group of thirty or forty people outside the house, on the lawn, laughing, talking and drinking beer. The noise continued up to the time [the officer] requested that the volume of the music be turned down. Given the time of day, the officer's ability to hear the noise from a distance of fifty yards during a warm, summer night, and the initial complaint to the officer which was made by a resident living at least one block away, we cannot say that the trier of fact could not have found the noise to have been unreasonable.

Alpha Epsilon Pi, 540 A.2d at 583.

In response the defendant's argument that "one unverified complaint, involving noise coming from a fraternity house along 'fraternity row' can hardly be considered inconvenient, annoying or alarming to the general public," we opined:

We would first observe that our focus here is not on the general public, or even on the traveling public, as may have been the case under the since-repealed Penal Code. Rather, our focus is on the neighborhood in which the alleged offense occurred.
[The police officer] testified that there are other fraternity houses within the immediate neighborhood. But he also testified that within fifteen yards of the subject fraternity house, and in fact just across [the street], non-fraternity house residences are found. We are satisfied that any residence near enough to receive the noise emanating from the fraternity house are within the "neighborhood" for purposes of establishing disorderly conduct.

Id. Finally, this Court in Alpha Epsilon Pi concluded that the facts of the case were "sufficient to permit the finder of fact to find a reckless disregard for public inconvenience and annoyance." Id. at 584.

Here, although the facts do not involve a fraternity party, we conclude our decision in Alpha Epsilon Pi nevertheless supports a similar result. The couple who own the other side of the duplex, which shares a common wall with Appellant's side of the duplex, testified at the summary appeal hearing. According to Mr. Hubner, the loud music and yelling began in the early morning hours on the day they called the police. N.T., 7/30/13, at 17. In addition, Ms. Bushman testified that Appellant played his music so loud that "it could be heard clearly at any area in our house including outside." N.T., 7/30/13, at 10.

Patrolman John Paul Woodring of the West Shore Regional Police Department testified that, as he "walked up to the residence" he was "able to hear music coming from" Appellant's side of the duplex. N.T., 7/30/13, at 20. According to Patrolman Woodring, when Mr. Hubner opened the door to his side of the duplex, "you could hear the music even more from inside his residen ce in the mutual wall that the two shared" and that he "could hear somebody talking very loudly on top of the music and everthing like that." N.T., 7/30/13, at 20. Patrolman Woodring next testified that he went back outside and was able to hear the music "along the side of the house as well." Id. at 21. He testified that about one minute after knocking on Appellant's door, Appellant "opened the door and yelled, 'You get out of here,' and then slammed the door." Id. Finally, when asked about the volume of the music, Patrolman Woodring explained:

it was pretty loud. I had to talk louder to speak with Mr. Hubner. We had to talk pretty loud back and forth between each other. [Mr. Hubner] had the TV on, and the volume was pretty loud. He turned that off when I came in, but you could definitely hear [the music] from inside his residence.

Id.

The above testimony was sufficient for the trial court, as factfinder, to conclude that the noise made by Appellant was unreasonable. Although Appellant complains of the absence of testimony from Patrolman Woodring concerning his distance from the music, the weight to be accorded Patrolman Woodring's testimony was within the exclusive province of the trial court as factfinder. Jones, supra. In addition, Patrolman Woodring's testimony supports the trial court's conclusion that Appellant "recklessly created a risk of annoyance or alarm in the neighborhood[.]" Trial Court Opinion, 11/20/13, at 2 (citation omitted). Clearly the location of the residence of Ms. Bushman and Mr. Hubner constituted part of the "neighborhood" for purposes of the disorderly conduct statute. Alpha Epsilon, supra.

In sum, because our review of the record provides sufficient evidence to support Appellant's disorderly conduct conviction, we affirm his judgment of sentence.

Judgment of sentence affirmed. Judgment Entered. __________
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary