Commonwealth v. Mora (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-115-17)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us SJC-12170 COMMONWEALTH vs. STEVEN MORA. Suffolk. February 6, 2017. – June 29, 2017. Present: Gants, C.J., Lenk, Hines, Gaziano, Lowy, & Budd, JJ. Firearms. Motor Vehicle, Firearms. Search and Seizure, Motor vehicle, Warrant, Probable cause. Practice, Criminal, Interlocutory appeal, Judicial discretion, Motion to suppress, Warrant, Grand jury proceedings, Indictment, Sentence. Probable Cause. Evidence, Grand jury proceedings. Grand Jury. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on October 22, 2014. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by James R. Lemire, J. An application for leave to file an interlocutory appeal was allowed by Botsford, J., in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk, and the appeal was reported by her. Civil action commenced in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk on June 20, 2016. The case was reported by Botsford, J. Richard J. Shea for the defendant. Ellyn H. Lazar-Moore, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. BUDD, J. This case is here on the reservation and report of two related matters involving the defendant, Steven Mora, who was indicted on various charges in connection with the possession of an unlicensed firearm. Two of those charges included sentence enhancement as an armed career criminal pursuant to G. L. c. 269, § 10G (b). We conclude that the search warrant that yielded the gun, a magazine, and ammunition lacked probable cause and that the Commonwealth failed to present sufficient evidence to the grand jury to support the armed career criminal enhancements. Background. a. The search. We summarize the facts provided in the affidavit that a Worcester police officer filed in support of an application for a warrant to search a safe found in a motor vehicle driven by the defendant. See Commonwealth v. O’Day, 440 Mass. 296, 297 (2003) (“our inquiry as to the sufficiency of the search warrant application always begins and ends with the ‘four corners of the affidavit’” [citation omitted]). One summer evening in 2014, that police officer was conducting surveillance and observed a man engaged in what appeared to be hand-to-hand drug transactions in the parking lot of a convenience store. This lot was known to be a location where “numerous drug arrests” had occurred. Approximately thirty minutes into the surveillance, the defendant drove […]