Commonwealth v. Suriel (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-068-17)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 16-P-254 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. JUAN G. SURIEL. No. 16-P-254. Hampden. March 1, 2017. – May 26, 2017. Present: Green, Wolohojian, & Sullivan, JJ. Firearms. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure, Reasonable suspicion. Search and Seizure, Automobile, Reasonable suspicion. Complaint received and sworn to in the Springfield Division of the District Court Department on December 2, 2013. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Robert A. Gordon, J., and the case was tried before Charles W. Groce, III, J. William M. Driscoll for the defendant. Kelsey A. Baran, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. SULLIVAN, J. The defendant, Juan G. Suriel, appeals from his convictions of possession of a firearm without a license in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10(a), and possession of ammunition without a firearm identification card in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10(h)(1).[1] He contends that his motion to suppress should have been allowed because the police lacked reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigatory stop. We affirm. Background. We recite the motion judge’s factual findings, supplemented by uncontroverted evidence in the record that is consistent with those findings. See Commonwealth v. Edwards, 476 Mass. 341, 342 (2017). On November 30, 2013, at about 5:30 P.M., a police officer from the narcotics division of the Springfield police department was surveilling a local barbershop. The narcotics officer was parked across the street from the barbershop, in the parking lot of Springfield Technical Community College on State Street. At around 6:20 P.M., the narcotics officer saw two men go into the barbershop. A short time later, another man, later identified as codefendant Glidden Gotay, went into the barbershop holding a blue bag. The three men were talking by the front door and a fourth man, later identified as the defendant, joined the conversation. The men then went into a back area of the barbershop, out of sight of the narcotics officer. Within a short period of time, the four men came out of the barbershop, walked about ten to fifteen feet down the driveway next to the barbershop, and began to talk.[2] Another man, later identified as codefendant Jose L. Vicente, remained at the head of the driveway near the street and sidewalk. The narcotics officer then saw Gotay hand a gun to […]