Commonwealth v. Barbosa (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-001-18)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 16-P-1030 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. ADERITO BARBOSA. No. 16-P-1030. Suffolk. September 8, 2017. – January 3, 2018. Present: Rubin, Neyman, & Henry, JJ. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure. Search and Seizure, Search incident to lawful arrest. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on June 30, 2015. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Kenneth W. Salinger, J. An application for leave to prosecute an interlocutory appeal was allowed by Fernande R.V. Duffly, J., in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk, and the appeal was reported by her to the Appeals Court. Donna Jalbert Patalano, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. Michael P. Doolin for the defendant. NEYMAN, J. After an evidentiary hearing, a Superior Court judge allowed, in part, the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence. A single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court allowed the Commonwealth’s application for leave to file an interlocutory appeal, and reported the matter to this court. See Mass.R.Crim.P. 15(a)(2), as appearing in 422 Mass. 1501 (1996). The sole issue is whether the judge erred in suppressing a statement made by the defendant based on limitations set forth in G. L. c. 276, § 1, and Commonwealth v. Blevines, 438 Mass. 604 (2003), regarding the use of evidence seized incident to an arrest. We reverse. Background. The parties do not contest the judge’s comprehensive findings of fact, which we summarize, supplemented where appropriate by the testimony from the motion hearing.[1] See Commonwealth v. Jones-Pannell, 472 Mass. 429, 431 (2015). This case stems from an investigation into the crime of trafficking of persons for sexual servitude, G. L. c. 265, § 50 (human trafficking),[2] which was prompted by an illicit online advertisement on the Web site Backpage.com (Backpage). On May 7, 2015, as part of that investigation, Detective Ludwik Bartkiewicz, along with State and Federal law enforcement officers, went to the Park Plaza Hotel (hotel) in Boston to locate the person who had posted the advertisement on Backpage.[3] Around 10:00 A.M., the officers met the hotel’s head of security on the first floor of the hotel. One of the officers, Agent Tony Freitas, telephoned the number listed in the Backpage advertisement. A woman answered and told him to come to the fifth floor via the service […]