Commonwealth v. Gonzalez (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-111-16)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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 14-P-1626 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. HECTOR GONZALEZ. No. 14-P-1626. Hampden. December 4, 2015. – August 29, 2016. Present: Cohen, Trainor, & Katzmann, JJ. Controlled Substances. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure, Probable cause. Search and Seizure, Probable cause. Probable Cause. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on July 11, 2013. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by C. Jeffrey Kinder, J. An application for leave to prosecute an interlocutory appeal was allowed by Fernande R. V. Duffly, J., in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk, and the appeal was reported by her to the Appeals Court. Thomas E. Robinson for the defendant. Bethany C. Lynch, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. KATZMANN, J. In the instant appeal from the denial by a Superior Court judge of the defendant’s motion to suppress, the defendant challenges the warrantless search of his person and arrest based on information police received from a confidential informant. A single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court allowed the defendant’s application for leave to pursue an interlocutory appeal of the Superior Court’s order and reported the matter to this court. The primary issue posed by this appeal is whether the exclusionary rule precludes a judge from considering evidence of a prior incident in an unrelated case in evaluating the accuracy of a confidential informant’s “track record” where that evidence was suppressed in the unrelated case after a finding by a different judge that the informant’s veracity had not been adequately established. On the record before us, we answer that question in the negative and affirm the order denying the motion to suppress. Background. We recite the facts as found by the motion judge after an evidentiary hearing. On June 14, 2013, at approximately 7:40 P.M., Detective Edward Kalish, an experienced narcotics detective with the Springfield police department, received information from a confidential informant (CI) that, at that moment, a Hispanic male named Hector Gonzalez was in possession of a large quantity of heroin on Knox Street in Springfield. The CI further stated that Gonzalez was wearing dark shorts, dark shoes, and a light blue basketball jersey bearing number “8” with the name “Bryant” on the back. The CI said that Gonzalez was a passenger in a blue […]