Title: Commonwealth v. Meneus

State: massachusetts

Issuer: Massachusetts Supreme Court

Document:

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SJC-12105 
 
COMMONWEALTH  vs.  McGREGORY MENEUS. 
 
 
 
Middlesex.     September 8, 2016. - January 11, 2017. 
 
Present:  Gants, C.J., Botsford, Lenk, Hines, Gaziano, Lowy, & 
Budd, JJ. 
 
 
Firearms.  Constitutional Law, Investigatory stop, Stop and 
frisk, Reasonable suspicion, Search and seizure.  Search 
and Seizure, Threshold police inquiry, Protective frisk, 
Reasonable suspicion.  Practice, Criminal, Motion to 
suppress. 
 
 
 
 
Complaint received and sworn to in the Cambridge Division 
of the District Court Department on June 30, 2006. 
 
 
A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by James 
L. LaMothe, Jr., J., and a motion for reconsideration was 
considered by him; and the case was heard by Michele B. Hogan, 
J. 
 
 
After review by the Appeals Court, the Supreme Judicial 
Court granted leave to obtain further appellate review. 
 
 
 
David Gerson for the defendant. 
 
Randall F. Maas, Assistant District Attorney, for the 
Commonwealth. 
 
 
2 
 
 
HINES, J.  After a jury-waived trial in the Cambridge 
District Court, the defendant was convicted of various firearms 
charges.  The firearm was discovered after the defendant and a 
group of young black males were stopped by Cambridge police 
officers to investigate a report of shots fired at a vehicle.  
The defendant filed a motion to suppress the firearm, claiming 
that the police lacked reasonable suspicion for the stop.  The 
motion judge denied the motion, as well as a motion for 
reconsideration thereof filed in light of our decisions in 
Commonwealth v. Martin, 457 Mass. 14 (2010), and Commonwealth v. 
Narcisse, 457 Mass. 1 (2010).1  The defendant appealed from his 
convictions and the Appeals Court affirmed in an unpublished 
memorandum and order issued pursuant to its rule 1:28.  We 
allowed the defendant's application for further appellate 
review.  We conclude that the police lacked reasonable suspicion 
for the stop and that the denial of the motion to suppress was 
error.  Therefore, we vacate the conviction and remand for a new 
trial. 
                     
 
1 The defendant argued that the judge's decision on the 
motion to suppress conflicted with our holdings in Commonwealth 
v. Martin, 457 Mass. 14, 19-20 (2010), and Commonwealth v. 
Narcisse, 457 Mass. 1, 9 (2010), that police officers may not 
progress from a consensual encounter to a protective frisk 
without reasonable suspicion that the individual is engaged in 
criminal activity and is armed and dangerous. The judge denied 
the motion. 
3 
 
 
Background.  We summarize the facts as found by the motion 
judge, supplemented by uncontroverted evidence drawn from the 
record of the suppression hearing and evidence that was 
implicitly credited by the judge.2  Commonwealth v. Melo, 472 
Mass. 278, 286 (2015). 
 
In the late evening hours of April 29, 2006, Debra Santos 
reported to police that a gunshot struck her vehicle as she was 
driving on Windsor Street in Cambridge.  At approximately 10:50 
P.M., Cambridge police officers Janie Munro and David Porter met 
Santos at the intersection of Windsor and Washington Streets, 
near the location where the shots allegedly were fired.  Santos 
told the police that she heard a loud noise that she believed 
was a gunshot and that immediately thereafter she saw a group of 
young black males run into the courtyard of the Washington Elms 
housing complex.  She did not indicate to the police that this 
group was involved in the shooting at her vehicle, and she 
provided no additional descriptive information about the 
individuals she had seen running into the courtyard. 
 
While speaking to Santos, Officer Munro observed a group of 
young black males who were standing on a sidewalk near the 
                     
 
2 While assembling the record for the appeal, appellate 
counsel learned that the recording of the January 16, 2009, 
proceeding on the motion to suppress, consisting of Officer 
Janie Munro's testimony on direct examination, could not be 
located.  After a hearing on the defendant's motion to perfect 
the record, the motion judge issued written findings as to the 
content of Officer Munro's direct testimony. 
4 
 
Washington Street entrance to the housing complex.  The group 
was "[l]iterally right around the corner" from where Santos had 
stopped after hearing what she believed to be gunshots.   
Officer Munro's attention was drawn to the group by one of the 
males who "st[u]ck his head outside [of the courtyard] and 
st[u]ck his head back inside."  The officers drove their cruiser 
to where the group was standing and approached the group on 
foot.  The defendant, one of five or six young black males in 
the group, was wearing a black bomber jacket with a visibly 
distinctive orange lining.  The officers asked if anyone had 
information about gunshots being fired in the area.  They denied 
any knowledge of a shooting. 
 
After questioning the group, the officers requested 
permission to pat frisk them for "officer safety."  At the time 
of this request, the police officers had had no prior 
interaction with any of the young men in the group and no 
information that anyone previously had been involved in criminal 
activity.  The judge made no finding that the defendant or 
anyone else in the group engaged in suspicious or potentially 
threatening conduct toward the police at any time during the 
encounter.  Up until the request to pat frisk the group, the 
tone had been conversational.  But thereafter, the young men 
expressed their displeasure with the stop and with being asked 
to submit to a patfrisk.  Some of them submitted to the 
5 
 
officers' request but they were "unhappy" about it.  The judge 
made no finding that the defendant consented to the patfrisk. 
 
The defendant became argumentative when the police began 
pat frisking some members of the group, and he attempted to 
terminate the encounter by walking away.  As the defendant 
"started moving backwards" away from the group, one of the 
officers started pursuing him.  The defendant turned and began 
running away from the area.  The officers yelled, "Cambridge 
police, stop," and pursued the defendant into the housing 
complex.  The defendant ignored the order to stop and continued 
running.  During the chase, the defendant passed Santos, who 
grabbed his clothing, slowing his flight from the area.  After a 
brief chase, the police eventually caught up to the defendant on 
Windsor Street where he was "assisted to the ground" by Officer 
Porter.  As the defendant was being brought to his feet, the 
officers discovered a firearm that had been underneath his body.   
Although Santos remained on the scene while the police 
investigated the group, the police did not ask if she could 
identify anyone as being in the group of young men she observed 
running into the courtyard after hearing the gunshots. 
 
The judge explicitly credited Officer Munro's testimony 
that, at the time the police initiated the pursuit of the 
defendant into the courtyard, she had "no information" that the 
defendant was a suspect in the shots fired call or any other 
6 
 
crime.  Consistent with this finding, Officer Porter 
acknowledged that, at the time of the request to pat frisk the 
group, he had no information implicating the defendant or any of 
the other young black males in criminal activity.  Officer 
Porter agreed that at the time of the pursuit, the defendant was 
not a suspect in a crime and that he was merely "a person in 
question." 
 
Discussion.  1.  Standard of review.  "In reviewing a 
ruling on a motion to suppress evidence, we accept the judge's 
subsidiary findings of fact absent clear error and leave to the 
judge the responsibility of determining the weight and 
credibility to be given . . . testimony presented at the motion 
hearing."  Commonwealth v. Wilson, 441 Mass. 390, 393 (2004).  
However, "[w]e review independently the application of 
constitutional principles to the facts found."  Id.  The 
Commonwealth bears the burden of demonstrating that the actions 
of the police officers were within constitutional limits.  
Commonwealth v. DePeiza, 449 Mass. 367, 369 (2007). 
 
The analysis of the constitutional propriety of the police 
officers' conduct focuses on two questions:  (1) whether and 
when the defendant was seized in a constitutional sense; and (2) 
whether the facts known to the police at the time of the seizure 
establish reasonable suspicion that the defendant had committed, 
was committing, or was about to commit a crime.  Commonwealth v. 
7 
 
Depina, 456 Mass. 238, 241-242 (2010).  The defendant argues 
that the police effected a seizure of his person when they 
manifested their intent to pat frisk the group and, at that 
moment, the police lacked reasonable suspicion of criminal 
activity.  The Commonwealth counters that the seizure occurred 
when the police commanded the defendant to stop and, at that 
point, the information known to the police justified their 
inquiry. 
 
2.  The seizure.  A person is seized under art. 14 of the 
Massachusetts Declaration of Rights "only if, in view of all the 
circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person 
would have believed that he was not free to leave."  
Commonwealth v. Barros, 435 Mass. 171, 173-174, (2001), quoting 
United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554 (1980).  The 
judge's ruling on the motion to suppress did not specifically 
identify the moment at which the defendant was seized.  We are 
persuaded, however, that a seizure for constitutional purposes  
occurred when one of the police officers advanced toward the 
defendant as he turned to leave the area in an apparent attempt 
to avoid an imminent patfrisk. 
 
As the judge found, the young men in the group initially 
were cooperative with the police in responding to the inquiry 
about the alleged shooting.  Their willingness to cooperate 
changed, however, when the police requested permission to pat 
8 
 
frisk the group "for officer safety."  Some members of the group 
eventually acquiesced to the patfrisk request, albeit 
reluctantly.  The defendant, however, remained defiant and 
"argumentative" during the encounter, never manifesting any 
intent to submit to the patfrisk.  Observing that the police 
were intent on pat frisking the group, the defendant attempted 
to leave the scene.  The police officer's response, pursuing the 
defendant as he backed away, communicated unequivocally that 
refusing to submit to the "request" was not an option.  That act 
added a "compulsory dimension" to the encounter, transforming it 
from consensual to obligatory.  See Barros, 435 Mass. at 174.  
Thus, where the police officer's conduct impeded the defendant's 
freedom of movement, he was seized for constitutional purposes, 
as "a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free 
to leave" at that point in the encounter.  Id. at 175-176. 
 
3.  Reasonable suspicion.  Once a seizure has occurred, the 
issue for the court is "whether the stop was based on an 
officer's reasonable suspicion that the person was committing, 
had committed, or was about to commit a crime."  Commonwealth v. 
Martin, 467 Mass. 291, 303 (2014).  "That suspicion must be 
grounded in 'specific, articulable facts and reasonable 
inferences [drawn] therefrom' rather than on a 'hunch.'"  
DePeiza, 449 Mass. at 371, quoting Commonwealth v. Scott, 440 
Mass. 642, 646 (2004).  Reasonable suspicion is measured by an 
9 
 
objective standard, Commonwealth v. Mercado, 422 Mass. 367, 369 
(1996) and the totality of the facts on which the seizure is 
based must establish "an individualized suspicion that the 
person seized by the police is the perpetrator" of the crime 
under investigation.  Commonwealth v. Warren, 475 Mass. 530, 534 
(2016). 
 
The motion judge ruled that police had reasonable suspicion 
for the seizure based on a combination of factors:  (1) the 
defendant was part of a group of black males matching the 
description provided to police by the victim; (2) the stop 
occurred in a "high crime" area; (3) the purpose of the stop was 
to investigate a report of shots fired, a crime posing an 
imminent threat to public safety; (4) the defendant and his 
companions were in close geographical and temporal proximity to 
the alleged crime at the time of the stop; (5) the defendant 
fled from the scene; and (6) the officers' safety justified the 
patfrisk.  We review the judge's findings as a whole, bearing in 
mind that "a combination of factors that are each innocent of 
themselves may, when taken together, amount to the requisite 
reasonable belief" that a person has, is, or will commit a 
particular crime.  Commonwealth v. Feyenord, 445 Mass. 72, 77 
(2005), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 1187 (2006), quoting Commonwealth 
v. Fraser, 410 Mass. 541, 545 (1991).  Assessing the totality of 
the circumstances leading to the stop of the defendant, we 
10 
 
conclude that the facts known to the police at the time of the 
seizure were not sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion 
that the defendant was connected to the alleged shooting at the 
victim's vehicle. 
 
a.  The description of the suspects.  Neither the initial 
dispatch about the alleged shooting nor the police interview of 
Santos produced anything more than a very general description of 
the possible perpetrators.  Consequently, when the police 
stopped the defendant and the other members of the group, they 
knew only that "a group of young black males" had run into the 
Washington Elms housing complex immediately after Santos heard 
what she assumed to be gunfire.  Other than the race and age of 
the group seen running into the housing complex, the police had 
none of the usual descriptive information such as distinctive 
clothing, facial features, hairstyles, skin tone, height, 
weight, or other physical characteristics that would have 
permitted them to reasonably and rationally narrow the universe 
of possible suspects. 
 
"We have no hard and fast rule governing the required level 
of particularity [of a description]; our constitutional analysis 
ultimately is practical, balancing the risk that an innocent 
person . . . will be needlessly stopped with the risk that a 
guilty person will be allowed to escape."  Commonwealth v. 
Lopes, 455 Mass. 147, 158 (2009).  Nonetheless, we have been 
11 
 
consistent in the view that a general description such as "a 
group of young black males" falls far short of the particularity 
necessary to establish individualized suspicion that a suspect 
is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a crime.  
See e.g., Warren, 475 Mass. at 535 (description of suspects as 
"two black males" wearing "dark clothing" and "one black male" 
wearing a "red hoodie," without any information as to other 
physical characteristics, lacked sufficient detail to constitute 
particularized reasonable suspicion); Commonwealth v. Walker, 
443 Mass. 867, 872-873, cert. denied, 546 U.S. 1021 (2005) 
(description of robber by race alone without other factors 
suggestive of criminal activity insufficient for reasonable 
suspicion); Commonwealth v. Cheek, 413 Mass. 492, 496 (1992) 
(description of suspect as "black male with a black 3/4 length 
goose" coat insufficient for individualized suspicion, as it 
could have fit large number of men).  Therefore, the mere 
presence of a nondescript group of young black males standing 
near the scene of a reported shooting did not, standing alone, 
sufficiently narrow the range of possible suspects to include 
this group of individuals. 
 
We recognize that the value of a vague or general 
description in the reasonable suspicion analysis may be enhanced 
if other factors known to the police make it reasonable to 
surmise that the suspect was involved in the crime under 
12 
 
investigation.  Mercado, 422 Mass. at 371 (general description 
alone not sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion requisite 
to justify stop, but when combined with other factors "may allow 
the police to narrow the range of suspects to particular 
individuals").  In this case, however, the totality of facts 
known to the police at the time of the seizure lacked sufficient 
detail to add flesh to the bare-bones description provided by 
Santos.  Rather, the information then available to the police 
detracted from any value Santos's description may have had in 
identifying the group as suspects in the shooting.  More 
specifically, it does not appear that Santos ever identified the 
defendant and his companions as the same group she saw running 
into the courtyard.  Also, the defendant was wearing distinctive 
clothing, a fact not mentioned by Santos in her description of 
the fleeing group.  We note as well that the group did not 
engage in suspicious behavior or other conduct suggesting that 
only moments earlier, they had fired shots at Santos's vehicle.  
See Commonwealth v. Pagan, 63 Mass. App. Ct. 780, 782-783 (2005) 
("Strange, furtive, or suspicious behavior or movements can 
infuse otherwise innocent activity with an incriminating 
aspect").  Thus, Santos's very general description of the group 
seen running into the housing complex added nothing of value to 
the reasonable suspicion calculus. 
13 
 
 
b.  High crime area.  The judge found that the stop 
occurred in a "high crime" area and ruled that this fact 
contributed to the police officers' reasonable suspicion that 
the defendant's group had fired the shot at Santos's vehicle. 
 
Although the characterization of a particular neighborhood 
as a "high crime" area has been recognized as a factor in the 
reasonable suspicion analysis, Commonwealth v. Johnson, 454 
Mass. 159, 163 (2009), we have been clear that "[j]ust being in 
a high crime area is not enough to justify a stop."  
Commonwealth v. Grandison, 433 Mass. 135, 139 (2001).  Indeed, 
whenever this factor is considered in the reasonable suspicion 
analysis, we have urged a cautious approach because "many 
honest, law-abiding citizens live and work in high-crime areas.  
Those citizens are entitled to the protections of the Federal 
and State Constitutions, despite the character of the area."  
Commonwealth v. Gomes, 453 Mass. 506, 512 (2009), quoting 
Commonwealth v. Holley, 52 Mass. App. Ct. 659, 663 (2001).  The 
exercise of that caution necessarily means that we look beyond 
the term "high crime area" to determine whether the inferences 
fairly drawn from that characterization "demonstrat[e] the 
reasonableness of the intrusion."  Johnson, supra.  Here, this 
factor lacks relevance in the reasonable suspicion calculus, as 
there was no negative inference to be drawn from the location of 
the stop. 
14 
 
 
c.  The nature of the reported crime.  The motion judge 
considered the report of shots fired as an "imminent threat to 
public safety" and, on that basis, concluded that the police 
were permitted to stop the defendant even without direct 
information that he had committed the crime under investigation.  
The judge relied on Commonwealth v. Foster, 48 Mass. App. Ct. 
671, 674-675 (2000), where the Appeals Court held that a police 
officer may pat frisk an individual, even in the absence of 
reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, if the circumstances 
present an "imminent threat to public safety."  The judge also 
denied the defendant's motion for reconsideration based on our 
holding in Narcisse, 457 Mass. at 9, that "police officers may 
not escalate a consensual encounter into a protective frisk 
absent a reasonable suspicion that an individual has committed, 
is committing, or is about to commit a criminal offense and is 
armed and dangerous."  This was error. 
 
First, our holding in the Narcisse case casts doubt on the 
wisdom of the judge's steadfast reliance on the Foster case as 
support for his ruling that the actions of the police officers 
were constitutionally permissible because of the nature of the 
crime under investigation, a report of gunshots being fired at a 
motor vehicle.  The rationale underlying Foster, derived 
principally from Commonwealth v. Fraser, 410 Mass. 541 (1991), 
was undercut substantially in Narcisse, where the court 
15 
 
specifically "disavow[ed] any suggestion in Fraser that we were 
establishing a new or lesser standard in our stop and frisk 
jurisprudence."  Narcisse, 457 Mass. at 9.  The motion judge 
erred, therefore, in disregarding this limitation of Fraser, 
which in turn called into question the continued vitality of 
Foster. 
 
Second, although our cases have recognized that the 
"gravity of the crime and the present danger of the 
circumstances" may be considered in the reasonable suspicion 
calculus, we have not gone so far as to carve out a public 
safety exception based on this factor.  See e.g., Depina, 456 
Mass. at 247, and cases cited.  In Lopes, 455 Mass. at 158, 
where the police were investigating a homicide, the court 
considered the nature of the crime but still conducted a 
reasonable suspicion analysis.  There, the police stopped the 
defendant's vehicle despite minor discrepancies between that 
vehicle and the witness's description.  The defendant's vehicle 
was similar in color to the suspect vehicle and had tinted 
windows, but it had a Cape Verdean flag hanging from the rear 
view mirror instead of from the "back" of the vehicle as 
described by the witness.  Id.  Although the court did not base 
its determination that the stop was constitutional on the nature 
of the crime, it was relevant to the analysis.  The court 
assessed the constitutionality of the stop, framing the issue in 
16 
 
terms of reasonableness, and concluded that "[a]n objectively 
reasonable police officer [investigating a homicide] would not 
have allowed the van to pass simply because the Cape Verdean 
flag hung from the inside rear view mirror rather than the 
'back' of the van."  Id. at 158. 
 
Likewise, in Depina, 456 Mass. 246, the court considered 
whether a stop of the defendant in the immediate vicinity of and 
close in time to a recent shooting was justified by reasonable 
suspicion.  Although the nature of the crime was a factor in the 
reasonable suspicion calculus, the court considered the totality 
of the information known to the police, including the 
defendant's geographical and temporal proximity to the scene of 
the crime and his suspicious behavior in the wake of the 
shooting, in determining that the stop of the defendant was 
constitutionally justified.  Id. at 247.  Thus, the fact that 
the crime under investigation was a shooting, with implications 
for public safety, was relevant but not dispositive in 
determining the reasonableness of the stop. 
 
d.  Geographical and temporal proximity to the crime.  The 
seizure of a suspect in geographical and temporal proximity to 
the scene of the crime appropriately may be considered as a 
factor in the reasonable suspicion analysis.  Commonwealth v.  
McKoy, 83 Mass. App. Ct. 303, 313 (2013).  The judge found that 
the defendant and his companions were "literally around the 
17 
 
corner" from where Santos saw the group of black males run into 
the courtyard only minutes after the alleged shooting occurred.  
This geographical and temporal proximity was relevant to the 
reasonable suspicion calculus.  The inference from such 
proximity adds little value to that calculus here, however, 
where the police had no information connecting the defendant and 
his companions to the group Santos had seen running into the 
courtyard.  Santos was present on the scene and participated in 
the take-down of the distinctively dressed defendant, but she 
made no identification of the group, and the judge made no 
finding that she ever confirmed that the group approached by the 
police was the same group she had seen earlier. 
e.  The defendant's flight from the scene.  The motion 
judge concluded that the defendant's flight from the scene as 
the officers began pat frisking the other members of the group 
"creat[ed] more suspicion that he might be armed or involved in 
illicit activity."  We disagree. 
 
As noted, the seizure occurred when Officer Porter began to 
pursue the defendant to prevent his avoidance of the patfrisk 
that already had begun with the other members of the group, not 
later in the encounter when the police commanded the defendant 
to stop.  Therefore, the issue of flight as a factor in 
reasonable suspicion is focused on defendant's action in backing 
away to avoid a patfrisk to which he did not consent.  In the 
18 
 
absence of constitutional justification for a threshold inquiry, 
"our law guards a person's freedom to speak or not to speak to a 
police officer.  A person also may choose to walk away [or run 
away], avoiding altogether any contact with police."  Warren, 
475 Mass. at 538, quoting Barros, 435 Mass. at 178 (breaking eye 
contact and refusing to answer officer's initial questions did 
not provide reasonable suspicion for detention or seizure as 
"[i]t was the defendant's right to ignore the officer").  Having 
not consented to the patfrisk, the fact that the defendant 
backed away from the scene permits no inference of criminal 
activity. 
 
f.  Officer safety.  The judge ruled that the police were 
justified by concerns for their safety in seizing the defendant.  
The judge's findings, however, undermine that conclusion.  In 
assessing the credibility of Officer Munro's testimony, the 
judge found that she "had no information that [the defendant] 
had committed a crime at the time [the police initiated the 
chase] into the courtyard."  That finding eliminated the 
defendant as a suspect in the crime under investigation and, 
more generally, as a suspect in any other criminal activity.  
Because the crime under investigation involved the discharge of 
a firearm and none of the information available to the police 
supported a reasonable belief that the defendant had committed 
that crime or that he was armed, we are not persuaded that the 
19 
 
concern for officer safety supports the reasonable suspicion 
calculus. 
 
Conclusion.  The convictions are vacated and the matter is 
remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
So ordered.