Commonwealth v. Abdallah (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-108-16)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-12001 COMMONWEALTH vs. JARED ABDALLAH. Bristol. February 11, 2016. – July 28, 2016. Present: Gants, C.J., Spina, Cordy, Botsford, Duffly, Lenk, & Hines, JJ.[1] Constitutional Law, Search and seizure. Search and Seizure, Inventory. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on June 19 and 20, 2013, and March 6, 2014. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Raymond P. Veary, Jr., J. An application for leave to prosecute an interlocutory appeal was allowed by Hines, J., in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk, and the appeal was reported by her to the Appeals Court. The Supreme Judicial Court on its own initiative transferred the case from the Appeals Court. Tara L. Blackman, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. Michael J. Fellows for the defendant. DUFFLY, J. After causing a disturbance, the defendant was arrested outside his hotel room in the town of Raynham on an outstanding warrant for larceny of $ 250 or less. Raynham police took possession of a small backpack (a cloth drawstring bag with shoulder straps made of rope) that the defendant had been carrying on his person and transported the bag, along with the defendant, to the police station, where it was searched pursuant to the Raynham police department’s inventory policy. The search of the bag uncovered several thousand dollars in cash, glassine bags containing what appeared to be cocaine, and several hundred Percocet pills. The defendant was indicted on charges of trafficking in a class B substance (cocaine), G. L. c. 94C, § 32E (b) (1); trafficking in a class B substance (Percocet), G. L. c. 94C, § 32E (c) (2); and possession with the intent to distribute a Class B substance (Percocet), G. L. c. 94C, § 32A (a).[2] Following an evidentiary hearing, the defendant’s motion to suppress the items found during the search was allowed by a Superior Court judge. A single justice of this court granted the Commonwealth’s application for interlocutory appeal and reported the matter to the Appeals Court. We transferred the case to this court on our own motion. We conclude that, in the circumstances presented here, there was no error in the allowance of the defendant’s motion to suppress. Accordingly, we affirm the allowance of the motion, although for reasons that differ somewhat from those relied upon by the motion judge. […]