Commonwealth v. Warren (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-060-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 13-P-820 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. JIMMY WARREN. No. 13-P-820. Suffolk. October 2, 2014. – June 10, 2015. Present: Rapoza, C.J., Cypher, Green, Rubin, & Agnes, JJ.[1] Firearms. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure, Investigatory stop, Reasonable suspicion. Search and Seizure, Threshold police inquiry, Reasonable suspicion. Threshold Police Inquiry. Complaint received and sworn to in the Roxbury Division of the Boston Municipal Court Department on December 19, 2011. After transfer to the Central Division, a pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Tracy-Lee Lyons, J., and the case was heard by Annette Forde, J. Nelson P. Lovins for the defendant. Michael Glennon, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. GREEN, J. On appeal from his conviction of carrying a firearm, the defendant claims error in the denial of his motion to suppress a firearm. The firearm was recovered near the sidewalk on which the defendant ran from police who sought to question him concerning a breaking and entering that had occurred at a nearby residence earlier that evening. At issue is whether there was reasonable suspicion to justify the directive to stop issued by one of the officers during his pursuit of the defendant. We conclude that reasonable suspicion justified the stop, and therefore affirm. Background. We summarize the facts from the motion judge’s careful findings, supplemented by evidence in the record that is uncontroverted and that was implicitly credited by the motion judge.[2] See Commonwealth v. Isaiah I., 448 Mass. 334, 337 (2007), S.C., 450 Mass. 818 (2008). On Sunday, December 18, 2011, Boston police Officer Luis Anjos was on duty and in uniform, traveling alone in a marked police cruiser, in area B-2 in the Roxbury section of Boston. At 9:20 P.M. he received a radio call “that there was a breaking and entry in progress and the suspects were fleeing the area.” The dispatcher gave “several paths of flight” from Hutchings Street — where the breaking and entering had occurred — one toward Seaver Street and one toward Jackson Square.[3] Anjos went to the scene of the breaking and entering and spoke with the victims, a teenage male and his foster mother. The male victim told Anjos that he had left his room to go to the bathroom and that, when he was returning, […]