Commonwealth v. Komnenus (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-071-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-1457 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. WALTER KOMNENUS. No. 13-P-1457. Middlesex. November 13, 2014. – June 30, 2015. Present: Green, Wolohojian, & Blake, JJ. Controlled Substances. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress, Required finding, Instructions to jury. Consent. Search and Seizure, Consent, Fruits of illegal search, Protective sweep. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure. Indictment found and returned in the Superior Court Department on November 15, 2011. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Elizabeth M. Fahey, J., and the case was tried before Kimberly S. Budd, J. Julie A. Baker for the defendant. Matthew Bailey, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. GREEN, J. On appeal from his conviction of trafficking in cocaine in violation of G. L. c. 94C, § 32E(b)(1), the defendant claims error in the denial of his motion to suppress evidence seized from his apartment following a warrantless entry by police. We conclude that the motion judge correctly denied the defendant’s motion to suppress, and affirm the judgment.[1] Background.[2] At approximately 8:15 P.M. on August 3, 2011, Detective Robert Hall of the Everett police department received a call from Sergeant James Hyde of the Somerville police department. Sergeant Hyde reported that he had just arrested two individuals on cocaine-related charges and that one of the individuals told Hyde that he had, within the previous thirty minutes, purchased cocaine from the defendant. That arrestee also said that the sale occurred in the defendant’s third-floor apartment of a brown three-family home on Broadway in Everett, which he described as having a sign reading “Sonny and Sons Construction” (or words to that effect), and that the defendant had a criminal history, including a Federal cocaine trafficking offense. Detective Hall ran the defendant’s board of probation (BOP) record, which contained more than eighty entries, and confirmed that the defendant had a Federal cocaine trafficking offense on his record. Though the BOP reflected a Boston residence for the defendant, an internal Everett police department database and the defendant’s registry of motor vehicles record both listed his Everett residence at 171 Broadway, third floor. Detective Hall, in plain clothes, drove to that address and confirmed that it was a two and one-half story brown home. On arrival, he observed that the third-floor lights were on,[3] and ran the records for a Honda Accord automobile […]