Commonwealth v. Charley (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-033-17)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 16-P-501 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. JARRIS CHARLEY. No. 16-P-501. Suffolk. February 14, 2017. – March 24, 2017. Present: Green, Meade, & Agnes, JJ. Arrest. Probable Cause. Search and Seizure, Arrest, Probable cause. Constitutional Law, Arrest, Probable cause, Search and seizure. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on March 2, 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 Geraldine S. Hines, J., in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk, and the appeal was reported by her to the Appeals Court. Zachary Hillman, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. Anne Rousseve, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for the defendant. GREEN, J. After hearing a police radio dispatch report of a robbery and shooting at a nearby convenience store, Boston police Officer Monica Quinonez observed the defendant walking toward her from the general direction of the convenience store, sweating profusely on a cool November evening. The defendant’s build and clothing fit the general description included in the dispatch. Suspecting that the defendant may have been involved in the convenience store incident, Quinonez watched the defendant’s movements for a few minutes, then went to the convenience store to view surveillance video of the robbery and shooting. Her observations of the video corroborated her suspicion that the defendant had committed the crime; as a result, several police units were dispatched to the address where Quinonez had last seen the defendant. When police officers approached that address, just under an hour after the robbery and shooting, the defendant came down from the front porch to meet them. Informed that there had been “an incident up the street,” the defendant said, “I had nothing to do with the shooting.” The officers took him into custody and transported him to the police station, where he was interviewed. After developing additional inculpatory evidence, the police placed him under arrest. A judge of the Superior Court allowed the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence[1] obtained after the police took him into custody, and the Commonwealth appealed.[2] We reverse. Background. We summarize the subsidiary findings of fact entered by the motion judge, which we accept absent clear error, reserving for independent review his […]