Title: Commonwealth v. Dilworth

State: massachusetts

Issuer: Massachusetts Supreme Court

Document:

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SJC-12764 
 
COMMONWEALTH  vs.  RICHARD DILWORTH. 
 
 
June 16, 2020. 
 
 
Supreme Judicial Court, Superintendence of inferior courts. 
 
 
 
The Commonwealth appeals from a judgment of a single 
justice of this court denying its petition, filed pursuant to 
G. L. c. 211, § 3, for relief from an interlocutory order of the 
Superior Court in an underlying criminal case.  We affirm. 
 
 
Background.  The defendant, Richard Dilworth, has been 
indicted on numerous firearm and ammunition charges including 
carrying a firearm without a license, in violation of G. L. 
c. 269, § 10 (a); possession of ammunition without a firearm 
identification card, in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10 (h) (1); 
and possession of a large capacity feeding device, in violation 
of G. L. c. 269, § 10 (m).  The charges resulted after Boston 
police officers, acting in an undercover capacity, became 
"friends" with Dilworth on the social media application Snapchat 
and viewed videos of Dilworth with what appeared to be a 
firearm.  In January 2018, officers arrested Dilworth and 
recovered a loaded firearm from his waistband.  Dilworth was 
charged with several crimes as a result of the seizure of the 
firearm and released on bail.  He was then seen again on 
Snapchat with what appeared to be a firearm and was again 
arrested, in May 2018.  Police officers found a firearm in his 
possession at the time of the second arrest, and he was again 
charged with several crimes as a result. 
 
 
Dilworth subsequently filed, in the trial court, a "Rule 17 
Summons Motion for Discovery:  Selective Prosecution" pursuant 
to Mass. R. Crim. P. 17 (a) (2), 378 Mass. 885 (1979), seeking 
Boston police department records concerning social media 
2 
 
 
surveillance on Snapchat.1  He maintained that the department was 
using Snapchat as an investigatory tool almost exclusively 
against black males, and he sought discovery that he believed 
would support a claim of racial discrimination.  More 
specifically, he sought "police/incident reports or Form 26 
reports . . . from June 1st, 2016 to October 1, 2018 for 
investigation that involve the use of 'Snapchat' social media 
monitoring."  In his motion he stated that "[b]ased on 
preliminary information gathered by the defense, the targets of 
this type of investigation are almost exclusively people of 
color, and within this are also disproportionately Black." 
 
 
A judge in the Superior Court concluded that Dilworth had 
made the necessary threshold showing that the evidence sought is 
material and relevant to his defense.  The judge allowed the 
motion, with certain modifications.  He ordered that a summons 
issue directing the Boston police department to provide all Form 
26 reports prepared by the department between August 1, 2017, 
and July 31, 2018, that reference use of Snapchat as an 
investigative tool in cases where the subject of Snapchat 
monitoring has been charged with an offense as a result of that 
monitoring.2  The Commonwealth thereafter filed a motion for 
reconsideration, which the judge denied, and then subsequently 
filed its G. L. c. 211, § 3, petition.3  In the petition, the 
Commonwealth argued that the judge erred in concluding that 
Dilworth had met his initial burden in asserting selective 
prosecution that would warrant the discovery requested.  The 
single justice denied the petition without a hearing on the 
basis that the matter does not warrant the exercise of this 
Court's extraordinary power pursuant to G. L. c. 211, § 3. 
 
 
Discussion.  A single justice considering a petition filed 
pursuant to G. L. c. 211, § 3, performs a two-step inquiry.  See 
Commonwealth v. Fontanez, 482 Mass. 22, 24 (2019).  The first 
                                                 
 
1 The defendant also filed a motion for discovery pursuant 
to Mass. R. Crim. P. 14, as appearing in 442 Mass. 1518 (2004).  
The judge denied that motion and it is not at issue here. 
 
 
2 The judge excluded from the summons all documents from 
investigations related to human trafficking, sexual assault, and 
murder (most of which the defendant had previously agreed to 
exclude from his request). 
 
 
3 The Commonwealth also filed a motion to stay production of 
the relevant discovery; that motion appears to still be pending 
in the trial court. 
3 
 
 
step requires the single justice to decide "whether to employ 
the court's power of general superintendence to become involved 
in the matter," id., or, stated differently, to "decide, in his 
or her discretion, whether to review 'the substantive merits of 
the . . . petition," id., quoting Commonwealth v. Baldwin, 476 
Mass. 1041, 1042 n. 2 (2017).  The single justice need not take 
the second step (which is to resolve the petition on its 
substantive merits) "if the petitioner has an adequate 
alternative remedy or if the single justice determines, in his 
or her discretion, that the subject of the petition is not 
sufficiently important and extraordinary as to require general 
superintendence intervention."  Fontanez, supra at 24-25.  See 
Commonwealth v. Rodriguez, 484 Mass. 1047, 1049 (2020). 
 
 
Our role on appeal, then, in reviewing the single justice's 
decision in this case, is to determine whether she abused her 
discretion by declining to intervene.  Where a single justice 
has "expressly declined to exercise this court's general 
superintendence powers to consider the alleged errors on the 
merits," the appeal to the full court "is strictly limited to a 
review of that ruling."  Commonwealth v. Samuels, 456 Mass. 
1025, 1027 n.1 (2010).  We give considerable deference to the 
single justice's exercise of discretion, and it is not for us to 
substitute our judgment for that of the single justice.  See, 
e.g., L.L. v. Commonwealth, 470 Mass. 169, 185 n.27 (2014) ("An 
appellate court's review of a . . . judge's decision for abuse 
of discretion must give great deference to the judge's exercise 
of discretion; it is plainly not an abuse of discretion simply 
because a reviewing court would have reached a different 
result").  See also Rodriguez, 484 Mass. at 1049; Fontanez, 482 
Mass. at 24-25.  Having conducted this narrow review, we 
conclude that the single justice did not abuse her discretion in 
denying the Commonwealth's petition. 
 
 
The Commonwealth argues that the single justice abused her 
discretion because the petition presented a novel issue and 
because the motion judge's ruling has had an effect on other 
cases in the trial court.4  While a single justice might be 
                                                 
 
4 In its petition, the Commonwealth alleged that in at least 
seven other pending cases in Suffolk County, judges had ordered 
or requested "similar discovery" on the basis of the judge's 
ruling in this case.  Now, on appeal, the Commonwealth states 
that the number of such cases has grown to at least twenty-two.  
The Commonwealth provides no details about these other cases, 
and provided none to the single justice, other than to aver 
generally that the number of cases indicates that the judge's 
4 
 
 
warranted in finding exceptional circumstances when, for 
example, the Commonwealth's petition raises a novel or systemic 
issue or concerns a ruling that effectively forecloses the 
prosecution, Fontanez, 482 Mass. at 26, the single justice is 
not compelled do so every time one of those criteria is present.  
Each case must be examined by the single justice on its own, to 
determine whether general superintendence intervention is 
necessary in that particular case. 
 
 
Here the motion judge did not rule on the substantive 
merits of Dilworth's selective prosecution claim.  All he did at 
this interlocutory juncture was to make a discretionary 
discovery ruling that enabled Dilworth to gather information 
that would substantiate his claim (or not).  That was the 
limited matter before the single justice.  The motion judge's 
ruling did not "foreclose[] the Commonwealth's ability to 
prosecute a serious crime" or, for that matter, have any 
detrimental effect on the prosecution at all.  Fontanez, 482 
Mass. at 26.  Should Dilworth, at some later point, present a 
selective prosecution defense that leads to a successful motion 
to suppress or a motion to dismiss, the Commonwealth will be 
free to appeal from any such ruling.  At this early juncture, 
however, the Commonwealth has not demonstrated that the judge's 
ruling presents the type of exceptional circumstances that 
required the single justice to employ the court's extraordinary 
general superintendence power.5 
                                                 
ruling has had a systemic impact.  See Commonwealth v. 
Rodriguez, 484 Mass. 1047, 1049 n.2 (2020), citing Gorod v. 
Tabachnick, 428 Mass. 1001, 1001, cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1003 
(1998) ("No less than on other litigants, it is incumbent on the 
Commonwealth not merely to make allegations but to substantiate 
them in the record before the single justice"). 
 
 
5 The legal issue in this case, as the Commonwealth 
articulates it, is whether a defendant seeking discovery 
pursuant to Mass. R. Crim. P. 17, 378 Mass. 885 (1979), for 
purposes of a possible selective prosecution defense must 
demonstrate that an undercover police officer's "friending" of 
an individual on Snapchat implicates the Fourth Amendment to the 
United States Constitution or art. 14 of the Massachusetts 
Declaration of Rights.  Dilworth counters that this framing of 
the issue, and the principal basis of the Commonwealth's 
opposition to the motion, puts the "cart before the horse" by 
claiming that Snapchat friending does not implicate any 
constitutional right and by suggesting, therefore, that there 
5 
 
 
 
 
Conclusion.  The single justice did not abuse her 
discretion in denying the Commonwealth's petition without 
reaching the merits. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Judgment affirmed. 
 
 
 
The case was submitted on briefs. 
 
Cailin M. Campbell, Assistant District Attorney, for the 
Commonwealth. 
 
Matthew Spurlock, Committee for Public Counsel Services, 
for the defendant. 
                                                 
could never be an equal protection violation (in the form of 
selective prosecution) in such a case. 
 
 
In ruling as we do that the single justice did not abuse 
her discretion by declining to intervene at the discovery stage, 
we express no view on the merits of the Commonwealth's claim, on 
the motion judge's statement that a claim of selective 
prosecution might lie even if there has been no infringement of 
the defendant's constitutional rights, or on the judge's 
assessment that Dilworth has made the necessary threshold 
showing for obtaining discovery under rule 17.