Commonwealth v. Ramos (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-031-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-11680 COMMONWEALTH vs. ALEX RAMOS. Essex. November 4, 2014. – February 26, 2015. Present: Gants, C.J., Spina, Cordy, Botsford, Duffly, Lenk, & Hines, JJ. Motor Vehicle, Receiving stolen motor vehicle. Receiving Stolen Goods. Search and Seizure, Exigent circumstances. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress. Evidence, Telephone conversation. Telephone. Indictment found and returned in the Superior Court Department on May 2, 2007. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Howard J. Whitehead, J., and the case was tried before David A. Lowy, J. The Supreme Judicial Court on its own initiative transferred the case from the Appeals Court. Todd C. Pomerleau for the defendant. Quentin Weld, Assistant District Attorney (Elin H. Graydon, Assistant District Attorney, with him) for the Commonwealth. DUFFLY, J. The defendant was indicted on a charge of receiving a stolen motor vehicle, G. L. c. 266, § 28; a codefendant was indicted on charges of receiving a stolen motor vehicle and of receiving stolen property with a value exceeding $ 250. The defendant sought to suppress evidence seized as a result of a warrantless search of his garage. A Superior Court judge, who was not the trial judge, denied the motion, concluding that the warrantless search of the defendant’s garage was permissible due to exigent circumstances, and also that the search was permissible under what he termed an “accomplice sweep” exception to the warrant requirement, a concept that has not been adopted in the Commonwealth. Following a joint trial, a Superior Court jury convicted the defendant and acquitted the codefendant. The defendant appealed, and we transferred the case to this court on our own motion. On appeal, the defendant claims error in the denial of his motion to suppress evidence seized during the warrantless search of his garage, and the admission in evidence of inculpatory statements made during recorded telephone conversations between the defendant and the codefendant. Additionally, the defendant argues that the Commonwealth’s evidence was insufficient to support his conviction. We conclude that there was no error in the denial of the defendant’s motion to suppress because police entry into the garage was justified based on exigent circumstances, there was no error in the admission of recordings of the jailhouse telephone calls, and the evidence was sufficient to support the defendant’s conviction. Evidence at […]