Commonwealth v. Luna (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-151-17)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-1021 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. GIOVANNIE LUNA. No. 16-P-1021. Hampden. October 2, 2017. – December 5, 2017. Present: Vuono, Meade, & Kinder, JJ. Controlled Substances. Firearms. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress. Probable Cause. Search and Seizure, Probable cause, Motor vehicle, Inevitable discovery. Constitutional Law, Probable cause, Search and seizure. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on May 12, 2015. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Edward J. McDonough, Jr., J. An application for leave to prosecute an interlocutory appeal was allowed by Barbara A. Lenk, J., in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk, and the appeal was reported by her to the Appeals Court. James R. Goodhines for the defendant. Benjamin Shorey, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. KINDER, J. The defendant has been charged with various narcotics and firearm offenses. Following an evidentiary hearing, a Superior Court judge denied, in large part, the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence. The defendant’s application to pursue an interlocutory appeal was allowed by a single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, who reported the matter to this court. On appeal, the defendant claims that (1) the judge erred in concluding that the Springfield police officers had reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant’s vehicle and to pat frisk him, (2) the subsequent warrantless search and seizure of heroin and a firearm from a second motor vehicle was not supported by probable cause or any exception to the warrant requirement, and (3) the police officers lacked authority to conduct the second search outside the city of Springfield. Because we conclude that the Springfield police exceeded their territorial jurisdiction in the execution of the second vehicle search, we reverse so much of the order as denied the motion to suppress evidence seized during that search. Background. We summarize the pertinent facts from the judge’s findings on the motion to suppress, supplemented where appropriate by uncontroverted suppression hearing testimony that the judge explicitly or implicitly credited. See Commonwealth v. Jones-Pannell, 472 Mass. 429, 431 (2015). In April of 2015, Springfield police Officer Jaime Bruno, a narcotics investigator with fifteen years’ experience, was told by a confidential informant that on April 15, 2015, an individual named “Gio,” later identified as the defendant, would make a […]