Commonwealth v. Shane S., a juvenile (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-126-17)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 15-P-1746 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. SHANE S., a juvenile. No. 15-P-1746. Suffolk. February 14, 2017. – September 27, 2017. Present: Green, Meade, & Agnes, JJ. Firearms. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure, Reasonable suspicion. Search and Seizure, Pursuit, Reasonable suspicion. Complaint received and sworn to in the Suffolk County Division of the Juvenile Court Department on January 7, 2015. Indictment found and returned in the Superior Court Department on March 12, 2015. Following joinder of the delinquency complaint and youthful offender indictment, a pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard in the Juvenile Court by Peter M. Coyne, J., and the case was heard by him. Rebecca L. Rose for the juvenile. Teresa K. Anderson, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. AGNES, J. This appeal follows a jury-waived trial which resulted in a determination that the juvenile was a youthful offender by unlawfully possessing a firearm in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10(a), and delinquent by reason of carrying a loaded firearm without a firearm identification card in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10(n). The juvenile was committed to the custody of the Department of Youth Services until age twenty-one. The sole question on appeal is whether the motion judge, who also was the trial judge, erred in denying the juvenile’s pretrial motion to suppress evidence. More particularly, the juvenile contends that he was unlawfully seized by the police without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, and that the firearm and ammunition offered in evidence at his trial should have been suppressed as the fruits of that claimed unlawful seizure. We affirm. Background. Two Boston police officers testified at the hearing on the juvenile’s motion to suppress. The following account is based on the judge’s findings of fact and other testimony by the officers, which the judge implicitly credited. See Commonwealth v. Jones-Pannell, 472 Mass. 429, 431 (2015). On January 6, 2015, Officer Eric Merner responded to a radio broadcast that a person on conditional release from a pending criminal charge, Dion Ruiz, was in a global positioning system (GPS) exclusion zone in the area of Washington and Ruggles Streets in Boston.[1] Officer Merner received a picture of Ruiz on his cellular telephone (cell phone), and proceeded to the area to search […]