Commonwealth v. Abdul-Alim (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-026-17)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-1219 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. AYYUB N. ABDUL-ALIM. No. 15-P-1219. Hampden. December 13, 2016. – March 9, 2017. Present: Milkey, Massing, & Sacks, JJ. Firearms. Search and Seizure, Probable cause, Protective frisk. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure, Probable cause. Probable Cause. Evidence, Exculpatory. Jury and Jurors. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress, Continuance, Jury and jurors, Deliberation of jury, Record. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on January 19, 2012. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by John S. Ferrara, J., and the cases were tried before Constance M. Sweeney, J. James B. Krasnoo for the defendant. Alyson Yorlano, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. MASSING, J. The defendant, Ayyub Adbul-Alim, appeals from his convictions of unlawful possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition, aggravated by previous convictions of a serious drug offense and a firearms violation. See G. L. c. 269, §§ 10(a), 10(d), 10(h), 10G(a). He claims, as he did at trial, that his prosecution was the result of a joint Federal and State effort designed to coerce him to provide information about the activities of potential Islamic terrorists in the Springfield area. In light of this claim, he argues specifically that (1) his motion to suppress the firearm and ammunition should have been allowed, (2) the trial judge wrongly denied his request for a continuance of the trial, (3) a mistrial ought to have been declared after the jury reported a deadlock, and (4) the trial judge thwarted appellate counsel’s efforts to obtain record documents. We affirm. Motion to suppress. a. Background. The motion judge found the following facts — which the record supports and the defendant does not challenge as clearly erroneous — regarding the search of the defendant’s person. The defendant had been married to Siham Nafi Stewart for about two years. They lived with their young child in a second-floor apartment on State Street in Springfield. During the investigation of a murder in the apartment building, Stewart and the defendant were identified as witnesses; Stewart met with a Springfield police lieutenant. Days later, after hearing gunfire in the apartment building, she called 911 and spoke with the Springfield police officers who responded to her apartment. “[C]oncerned for the well-being of her child and herself if they continued to […]