Source: http://masscases.com/cases/app/57/57massappct562.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 18:18:51+00:00

Document:
Present: DOERFER, KASS, & MCHUGH, JJ.
Constitutional Law, Probable cause. Search and Seizure, Probable cause. Probable Cause.
INDICTMENTS found and returned in the Superior Court Department on February 13, 1996.
A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by John A. Tierney, J., and the cases were also heard by him.
David M. Skeels, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for the defendant.
Carolyn A. Burbine, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
$343 in cash; and a plastic bag with seventeen pieces of "a white hard substance." The defendant elected a trial without a jury and was convicted of unlawful distribution of a controlled substance (cocaine), unlawful possession of a controlled substance (cocaine) with intent to distribute, and of having previously been convicted of similar offenses. We affirm.
Facts. In summary, these are the facts the motion judge found. A State trooper, dressed in casual civilian clothes and working in an unmarked police vehicle, was "trolling" for drug dealers on a street in Brockton. A man hailed him and asked what he wanted. "A twenty," the trooper said, whereupon the man beckoned to follow him around the corner to a gray car parked on Appleton Street at its intersection with Wyman Street. It was 8:45 P.M. of a December night and, therefore, dark. By the headlights of his cruiser, the trooper saw two women in the front seat. He watched the man who -- on foot -- had led him there go to the driver and receive from her an object. That object, which turned out to be cocaine in rock form, was duly delivered by the man to the trooper who, in exchange, gave a marked $20 bill to the man. The man returned to the car and gave the $20 bill to the driver. Esterlina Fernandez, the defendant, was at all times seated in the passenger seat of the car from which the man brought the cocaine.
judge did not suggest he had found them on that basis. [Note 2] We, therefore, do not take into account in our consideration of the case the findings of the motion judge that we have identified as without support in the record.
Following the buy, the trooper made a radio call to a "take-down" team of Brockton police officers. They moved in on the gray car, arrested both women in it, and searched them incident to those arrests. Both the arrests and the searches were without warrants. The defendant had the marked $20 bill. She also had on her person the inculpatory items previously mentioned.
2. Discussion. The defendant urges that the evidence, before she was searched, stood for nothing more than her presence in the gray automobile when the drug deal occurred. In that case, the argument continues, the police lacked probable cause to arrest the defendant, and the search incident to her arrest was unlawful because of the illegality of the underlying arrest. See G. L. c. 276, § 1; Commonwealth v. Santiago, 410 Mass. 737 , 742-743 (1991). Compare Commonwealth v. Wedderburn, 36 Mass. App. Ct. 558 , 563-564 (1994).
two gasoline coupons (later determined to be counterfeit). Buttitta sat in the driver's seat and beside him in the passenger seat was Di Re. All three were taken into custody and to the police station; i.e., they were arrested, the informer presumably for show. At the station, Di Re was booked and underwent a thorough search. Between his shirt and his underwear, the authorities found one hundred gasoline ration coupons that, upon inspection, were also found to be counterfeit. Di Re was convicted of violating 50 U.S.C. App. § 673 (Supp. V 1946), the Second War Powers Act of 1942.
The Court held that on those facts it would not draw an inference of participation in the crime by Di Re, who, being present in the car, must have observed the unlawful transaction. United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. at 593-594. Her case exactly, the defendant argues. There are, however, differences. It was not apparent, the Court reasoned, that Di Re would have known the ration coupons were counterfeit. Id. at 393. The Court also emphasized that the informer's tip mentioned only Buttitta, id. at 592, and that, when the counterfeit coupons had been passed and the inspectors had arrived, "Reed, present as the informer, pointed out Buttitta, and Buttitta only, as a guilty party." Id. at 594. On the basis of everything the OPA inspector and the police detective knew when they arrested Di Re, he may have, indeed, just been along for the ride.
In Commonwealth v. Sampson, 20 Mass. App. Ct. at 971, an affidavit, in support of an application for a warrant to search the defendant Sampson, recited that Sampson was seated at a table in a drinking establishment. Another man at the same table was writing pool numbers on a pad of paper. When police entered the bar, the man with the writing pad tried to conceal it. Sampson made no furtive gesture or movement. We decided that those facts did not establish probable cause to search Sampson. See ibid. "A person's proximity, without more, to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not establish probable cause to search that person." Id. at 971, and cases there cited.
Considerably in the aftermath of Di Re, Justice Stevens, dissenting in Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 309 (1999), referred to a "settled distinction between drivers and passengers"
as to who may be searched. Yet the distinction is not that absolute. See the majority opinion in Wyoming v. Houghton, supra at 298, 301-303, concluding that a Wyoming highway patrol officer, who made a traffic stop and noticed a hypodermic syringe in the driver's shirt pocket, had probable cause to make inquiries of a passenger, inquiries that led to a search of the passenger's purse.
[Note 1] The defendant claims equivalent protection under art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.
[Note 2] For examples of what is ordinarily the subject of judicial notice, see Nantucket v. Beinecke, 379 Mass. 345 , 352 (1979) (judicial notice is not to be extended to personal observations of the judge); Liacos, Brodin & Avery, Massachusetts Evidence § 2.8 (7th ed. 1999).
[Note 3] The search here was directed, as required by G. L. c. 276, § 1, to seizing evidence of the crime for which the arrest had been made. Compare Commonwealth v. Blevines, 438 Mass. 604 , 609-610 (2003).

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