Case Title: Commonwealth v. Crowley-Chester

Citation: 

Docket Number: SJC-12128

State: massachusetts

Court: Massachusetts Supreme Court

Date: 2017-03-09T00:00:00Z

Document:
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SJC-12128 
 
COMMONWEALTH  vs.  ATREYO CROWLEY-CHESTER. 
 
 
March 9, 2017. 
 
 
Constitutional Law, Search and seizure.  Search and Seizure, 
Motor vehicle, Impoundment of vehicle. 
 
 
 
The defendant, Atreyo Crowley-Chester, was charged in a 
complaint with carrying a firearm without a license, in 
violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10 (a), and possession of a firearm 
or ammunition without a firearm identification card, in 
violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10 (h).  The charges stem from the 
recovery of a loaded firearm from a motor vehicle after police 
officers impounded and conducted an inventory search of the 
vehicle.  The defendant filed a motion to suppress, which a 
judge in the District Court allowed after an evidentiary 
hearing.  A single justice of this court granted the 
Commonwealth leave to pursue an interlocutory appeal, and the 
Appeals Court reversed.  See Commonwealth v. Crowley-Chester, 86 
Mass. App. Ct. 804 (2015).  The case is now before this court on 
further appellate review.1  Because we conclude that the motion 
judge properly allowed the motion to suppress, we affirm. 
                                                 
 
1 The defendant initially filed his application for further 
appellate review in January, 2015.  In the application he 
argued, among other things, that the Appeals Court had engaged 
in improper appellate fact finding.  In light of our decisions 
in Commonwealth v. Jones-Pannell, 472 Mass. 429 (2015), and 
Commonwealth v. Douglas, 472 Mass. 439 (2015), which address 
that issue and which we decided while the defendant's 
application for further review was pending, we denied the 
application without prejudice and remanded the case to the 
Appeals Court for reconsideration.  The Appeals Court 
reconsidered the appeal and reached the same result as it had 
2 
 
 
 
 
 
Background.  At approximately 3 A.M. on March 15, 2011, 
Springfield police Officers Matthew Longo and Jose Canini were 
on routine patrol on Williams Street when they observed a Honda 
Accord automobile parked on the street in front of a vacant lot 
and across the street from a church.  The vehicle's engine was 
running, and its lights were off.2  Using the police cruiser's 
spotlight, Officer Longo observed two individuals seated in the 
front of the vehicle, both of whom appeared to be making furtive 
type movements.  The defendant was the front seat passenger.  
The officers approached the vehicle and, after observing an 
unknown object in the defendant's hand and a knife in the center 
console, ordered the driver out of the vehicle.  When the driver 
got out of the vehicle, a white rock-like substance fell to the 
ground.  Officer Longo recognized the object to be consistent 
with "crack" cocaine, and the driver was placed under arrest.  
At this point, the defendant was also ordered out of the 
vehicle.  After the defendant got out of the vehicle, Officer 
Longo retrieved and secured the knife.3 
 
 
The driver then asked that the defendant, who was not yet 
under arrest and who was free to leave the scene, be allowed to 
drive the vehicle.  Officer Longo determined, however, that the 
defendant did not have a driver's license.  The officers then 
decided to impound the vehicle.  In the course of the resultant 
inventory search, Officer Longo found a backpack containing a 
firearm.  The backpack, which had the name "Atreyo" written on 
it, also contained a pay stub with the defendant's name. 
 
 
At the hearing on the motion to suppress, the defendant 
introduced in evidence a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) log of 
telephone calls made to the Springfield police department 
reporting criminal activity for three streets in the area 
                                                                                                                                                             
previously, reversing the order allowing the motion to suppress.  
The defendant then sought further appellate review again, and we 
allowed his application. 
 
 
2 There is no indication in the record as to how long the 
vehicle had been parked in that location or how long the engine 
had been running.  Officer Longo testified that it was cold and 
that he knew that the engine was running because he could see 
exhaust from the vehicle. 
 
 
3 The knife recovered from the vehicle was a Swiss Army 
knife, presumably something that the officers were able to 
ascertain as soon as they retrieved the knife, if not before. 
3 
 
 
 
around, and including, Williams Street.  The log included 
activity for a six-month period dating back from the date of the 
incident and reflected only telephone calls concerning criminal 
activity; it did not include criminal activity that might have 
been otherwise reported to the police or observed in person by a 
police officer. 
 
 
Discussion.  The motion judge concluded that the police 
officers' threshold inquiry of, and subsequent exit order to, 
the driver and the defendant were proper.  The defendant does 
not argue otherwise.  Rather, he focuses on the officers' 
decision to impound and inventory the motor vehicle.  Our 
starting point, then, and our primary concern, is whether the 
decision to impound -- to seize -- the vehicle was lawful.  See, 
e.g., Commonwealth v. Oliveira, 474 Mass. 10, 13 (2016), citing 
Commonwealth v. Eddington, 459 Mass. 102, 108 (2011).  More 
specifically, the question is whether impoundment "was 
reasonably necessary based on the totality of the evidence."  
Oliveira, supra at 14, citing Eddington, supra at 108-110.4  In 
reviewing the judge's decision on this point, "we accept [his] 
subsidiary findings of fact absent clear error 'but conduct an 
independent review of his ultimate findings and conclusions of 
law'" (citation omitted).  Eddington, supra at 104, and cases 
cited. 
 
 
The Commonwealth argues that impoundment was reasonable 
because it was 3 A.M. and the vehicle was parked in a "high 
crime" area.5  Officer Longo testified that the crimes in the 
                                                 
 
4 "Where the police's true purpose for searching the vehicle 
is investigative, the seizure of the vehicle may not be 
justified as a precursor to an inventory search, and must 
instead be justified as an investigative search."  Commonwealth 
v. Oliveira, 474 Mass. 10, 14 (2016), and cases cited.  See 
Commonwealth v. Ortiz, 88 Mass. App. Ct. 573, 575-576 (2015) 
(discussing difference between investigatory search and 
inventory search).  The defendant in this case made no claim, 
and the judge did not find, that the police impounded the motor 
vehicle as a pretext for the true purpose of conducting an 
investigatory search. 
 
 
5 In his decision, the judge stated that the Commonwealth 
failed to meet its burden to establish that it was "necessary" 
to impound the vehicle.  The proper standard is not whether an 
impoundment was absolutely necessary but whether it was 
"reasonably necessary," as set forth in Oliveira, 474 Mass. at 
14.  Although the judge used only the word "necessary" in his 
4 
 
 
 
area included drug and firearm offenses, gang activity, domestic 
violence, and breaking and entering of both motor vehicles and 
businesses.  What matters for purposes of considering the 
propriety of a motor vehicle impoundment, however, is not the 
over-all frequency of crime in the vicinity but the risk of 
vandalism, theft, or a break-in to the motor vehicle.  The 
number and frequency of other types of crimes does not directly 
bear on the question whether impoundment is reasonably necessary 
to safeguard the vehicle or to protect the public.  Here, the 
judge noted that the CAD log contains only one entry indicating 
such a motor vehicle-related crime.6 
 
 
Furthermore, in prior cases in which impoundment was deemed 
reasonable because the vehicle was located in a "high crime" 
area, other factors have been at play.  In the Eddington case, 
for example, where the motor vehicle stop and subsequent 
impoundment took place in a "high crime" neighborhood, the 
police dictated the location of the stop (by signaling the 
driver to pull over).  Eddington, 459 Mass. at 104-105, 109.  
Here, by contrast, the vehicle was already stopped, and legally 
parked, before the police became involved, i.e., it was in a 
location of the driver's choosing, rather than in a location 
dictated by the police.  Similarly, in Commonwealth v. Ellerbe, 
430 Mass. 769, 775 (2000), which also involved a neighborhood 
where motor vehicle crimes were prevalent, the vehicle was 
parked in a private lot, not on a public street.  We noted that 
it was "appropriate for the police to spare the private parking 
lot owner the burden of dealing with the vehicle's presence when 
the driver ha[d] been arrested."  Id. at 776. 
 
                                                                                                                                                             
written decision, he used the word "reasonable" throughout the 
hearing when addressing the propriety of the officers' decision 
to approach the vehicle and to issue the exit order.  It is 
evident, and we are satisfied, that he knew that the concerns 
here relate to the reasonableness of the officers' actions, and 
that this is what he had in mind when he reached his decision to 
allow the motion to suppress. 
 
 
6 Although a police officer trying to determine whether to 
impound a motor vehicle cannot be expected to know the exact 
number or nature of all vehicle-related crimes that have 
occurred in a particular neighborhood, an officer who believes 
an area to be "high crime" should have at least some general 
knowledge on this point sufficient to inform whether impoundment 
is reasonably necessary to safeguard the vehicle or protect the 
public. 
5 
 
 
 
 
No such circumstances were present here.  The vehicle was 
legally parked on a city street in a location of the driver's 
choosing.  The neighborhood was at least partially residential 
and other vehicles were also lawfully parked on the same street.  
As we cautioned in the Eddington case, "to justify a decision to 
impound, the police need more than the circumstance of a vehicle 
being stopped, and its driver arrested, in a 'high crime' area."  
Eddington, 459 Mass. at 106 n.10.  Because the police did not 
have more than that here, it was not reasonable for them to 
impound the vehicle for the purpose of protecting it from theft 
or vandalism. 
 
 
The judge based his decision that impoundment was improper 
solely on his findings that the vehicle was not in danger of 
damage or theft.  As the Appeals Court noted, he did not address 
the public safety rationale -- that is, whether there was any 
concern that there might be dangerous items in the vehicle from 
which the public needed protecting.  See Chester-Crowley, 86 
Mass. App. Ct. at 808 n.6.  The Commonwealth did not raise the 
public safety issue at the hearing on the motion to suppress 
(and mentioned it only in passing in its written opposition to 
the motion in the trial court) and focused instead on the "high 
crime" issue.  The judge's similar focus is thus not surprising. 
 
 
In any event, to the extent that the Commonwealth argues in 
this court that impoundment was warranted to protect the public 
because the officers recovered a knife from the vehicle, we find 
the argument unavailing.  The Commonwealth does not argue that 
the mere presence of the Swiss Army knife in the vehicle by 
itself created a threat to public safety.  Indeed, because the 
officers had already retrieved and secured the knife prior to 
making the decision to impound, such an argument would not be 
plausible.  Although public safety is unquestionably a 
legitimate concern, it is not enough to say, as the Commonwealth 
does, that because a Swiss Army knife was found in the vehicle, 
the vehicle "could have" contained other weapons.  The 
Commonwealth has not developed the public safety argument 
further, and we do not find that impoundment on that basis would 
have been reasonable.7 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Order allowing motion to  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  suppress affirmed. 
 
                                                 
 
7 Because we conclude that the police should not have 
impounded the vehicle, we need not consider whether the 
resulting inventory search was properly conducted. 
6 
 
 
 
 
 
Patrick A. Michaud for the defendant. 
 
Cynthia Cullen Payne, Assistant District Attorney, for the 
Commonwealth.