Commonwealth v. Gonzalez (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-028-18)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-1035 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. RADHAMES GONZALEZ. No. 16-P-1035. Middlesex. September 12, 2017. – March 12, 2018. Present: Rubin, Neyman, & Henry, JJ. Controlled Substances. Firearms. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress, Confrontation of witnesses. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure, Investigatory stop, Reasonable suspicion, Confrontation of witnesses. Search and Seizure, Motor vehicle, Reasonable suspicion, Threshold police inquiry. Threshold Police Inquiry. Motor Vehicle, Firearms. Witness, Expert. Evidence, Expert opinion, Scientific test. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on October 31, 2013. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Thomas P. Billings, J., and the cases were tried before him. Steven J. Rappaport for the defendant. Clarence H. Brown, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. HENRY, J. After a jury trial in Superior Court, the defendant, Radhames Gonzalez, was convicted of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, carrying a firearm without a license, possession of ammunition without a firearm identification card, possession of a large capacity feeding device, and possession of a large capacity weapon during the commission of a felony.[1] The defendant argues that (1) his motion to suppress should have been allowed because the information supplied by a confidential informant (CI) did not justify the investigatory stop of his motor vehicle; and (2) the admission in evidence of a substitute chemist’s testimony deprived the defendant of his right to “confront” the witness. We affirm. Background. We set forth the facts as found by the motion judge, supplemented where necessary with uncontroverted evidence drawn from the record of the suppression hearing. See Commonwealth v. Watson, 430 Mass. 725, 726 n.5 (2000). Sergeant William West of the Billerica police department testified that he had been a patrol sergeant for two years, and that he had formerly been a detective in the criminal bureau for sixteen years. As a detective, he had investigated all types of crimes including narcotics offenses and had worked with informants “no less than a hundred times.” In June, 2013, about one year after he had become a sergeant, West was contacted by a CI with whom West had worked on more than one occasion when he was a detective. On this occasion, the CI provided a description of a man who went by the name of “Eddie,” later identified as the […]