Commonwealth v. Polanco (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-019-18)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports.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-1217 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. JORGE POLANCO. No. 16-P-1217. Middlesex. October 11, 2017. – February 20, 2018. Present: Milkey, Massing, & Ditkoff, JJ. Controlled Substances. Practice, Criminal, Speedy trial, Dismissal, Motion to suppress, Required finding. District Court, Arraignment. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure. Search and Seizure, Exigent circumstances. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on August 7, 2014. A motion to dismiss was heard by Kathe M. Tuttman, J.; a pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by her; and the cases were tried before her. Murat Erkan for the defendant. Sandra Weisberger, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. DITKOFF, J. The defendant, Jorge Polanco, appeals from his Superior Court convictions of trafficking in heroin, G. L. c. 94C, § 32E(c), and a school zone violation, G. L. c. 94C, § 32J. We must decide whether to consider time spent in District Court when calculating the time to be included for purposes of a speedy trial under Mass.R.Crim.P. 36(b), 378 Mass. 909 (1979), in Superior Court. Consistent with the plain language of the rule, we conclude that the time the charges were pending in District Court should not be included in the calculation. Accordingly, the motion judge properly denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss. Rejecting the defendant’s challenges to the denial of his motion to suppress and the sufficiency of the evidence, we affirm. Background. In April and May of 2013, law enforcement including the Billerica police department were conducting an investigation of a suspected heroin trafficker known as “Johnny,” later identified as the defendant. As part of that investigation, Billerica police conducted controlled narcotics purchases using an informant. When the police approached the sellers in those controlled purchases, the sellers admitted to being “runners” for “Johnny,” whom they identified as the source of the narcotics. One of the runners agreed to cooperate with the investigation. Shortly thereafter, the cooperating runner received a telephone call from “Johnny,” directing him to customers at a house located at 48 Rogers Street.[1] Prior to that day, that residence had not been a target of the investigation, and the police had not yet identified “Johnny” as the defendant. The police followed the runner to the residence. A motor vehicle pulled up outside the residence, and two men exited the vehicle and spoke […]