Source: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/425/425mass37.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 02:19:55+00:00

Document:
INDICTMENTS found and returned in the Superior Court Department on May 19, 1993.
A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Elizabeth B. Donovan, J., and the cases were tried before Thomas E. Connolly, J.
Elin H. Graydon, Assistant District Attorney (Cathleen E. Campbell & Brian T. O'Keefe, Assistant District Attorneys, with her) for the Commonwealth.
Emmanuel N. Papanickolas (James C. Spanos with him) for the defendant.
v. Callahan, 41 Mass. App. Ct. 420 (1996), which held that an anticipatory warrant could not support a search unless the triggering event appeared on the face of the warrant or the affidavit setting out the triggering event were attached to the warrant. Commonwealth v. Gauthier, 41 Mass. App. Ct. 765 (1996). We granted the Commonwealth's application for further appellate review. Although we disapprove of that doctrine and adhere to our decision in Commonwealth v. Soares, 384 Mass. 149 (1981), we conclude that the defendant's motion should have been allowed, because the triggering event set out in the affidavit had not occurred. [Note 1] Gauthier, supra at 773-774 (Greenberg, J., concurring).
miles away, following an attempted escape. A search behind the driver's seat discovered a bag containing marihuana. Janice was arrested, and the warrants were executed.
The motion judge found that there was probable cause to authorize the search of the defendant's residence pursuant to a warrant without specifying whether this depended on the occurrence of the triggering event. A concurring opinion of the Appeals Court concluded that there was no probable cause to search the residence in the absence of the triggering event. Gauthier, supra at 769-770 n.1 (Greenberg, J., concurring). We reach the same conclusion. Although the reliability of the informant as to the information which he had supplied was amply demonstrated, nothing that he had said sufficiently pointed to the defendant as Janice's supplier or to the defendant's residence as the place from which he supplied Janice. Neither the officer's previous search one decade before at that residence nor the single previous observation of an empty-handed Janice's entering and leaving it with a brown paper bag were sufficient to make up that deficiency. Of course that is why the officer had devised the scheme set out in the anticipatory warrant, and, had events unfolded as anticipated, there would have been ample basis for the search of Gauthier's residence. But they did not.
placing in the car was the contraband later discovered there. It is entirely possible that he had that particular bag of narcotics in the car all along. The triggering event language in warrants such as this one should be read sensibly and in context, and, when that is done, we must conclude that the triggering event failed to materialize here.
event appear on the warrant. We reaffirm our holding in Soares, and, to the extent that Callahan states a constitutional compulsion, we extend our holding in Soares to conclude that we discern no such compulsion under either the Federal or State Constitution.
case complied with these requirements, though it did not neither on its face nor by an attached affidavit - set out the triggering event on which it might be activated. But we do not believe that any such requirement can fairly be read into either of these two constitutional provisions. Nor do we believe that the lack of such a requirement sufficiently implicates the values and purposes of those provisions that we should extend them to include such a requirement. The warrant procedure does not contemplate that the person to whom the warrant is presented should be able to judge from that presentation at the time of execution its full legality and perhaps to decide on that basis whether or not to comply. Rather, it is intended to notify that person that the officers have been authorized to be in that particular place and to search for that particular thing. See, e.g., Matter of the Application of Lafayette Academy, Inc., 610 F.2d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 1979). Other questions of a warrant's validity are deferred to later proceedings: a motion to suppress or possibly an action for damages for a common law or constitutional tort. Most clearly, there is no constitutional requirement that the evidence supplying the constitutionally mandated probable cause appear with the warrant when it is served. A statement of the triggering event is not as clear a case as that, but it is close enough. In many cases - just as with cases where the affidavit setting out the probable cause may be challenged - the subject of the warrant will not be in any position to judge at the time of execution whether the triggering event had or had not occurred. (This may be such a case.) And so it is hard to see what purpose would be served in those cases by a general requirement that the triggering event be made known to the subject of the search at the time he is presented with the warrant authorizing it.
warrant is executed." The court applied this rule to uphold the search warrant even though the affidavit was neither incorporated into the warrant nor attached to it. Id. [Note 5] That is precisely what we conclude today in reaffirming Commonwealth v. Soares, 384 Mass. 149 (1981).
The judgments are reversed, and the verdicts are set aside. An order shall be entered allowing the defendant's motion to suppress.
[Note 1] The Appeals Court concluded that, without the evidence that should have been suppressed, there was insufficient evidence to go forward, Commonwealth v. Gauthier, 41 Mass. App. Ct. 765 , 767 (1996), and the Commonwealth does not quarrel with that conclusion. Accordingly, there is no occasion for us to deal with a number of other issues raised by the defendant on appeal. Because we conclude that the affidavit does not establish probable cause in the absence of the triggering event, we need not consider whether an anticipatory warrant may be executed in the absence of the triggering event if on its face no triggering event was necessary to establish probable cause.
[Note 2] The other two warrants related to Janice's business and residence and are not in issue.
[Note 3] General Laws c. 276, s. 2B, provides in part that "[t]he person issuing the warrant shall retain the affidavit and shall deliver it within three days after the issuance of the warrant to the court to which the warrant is returnable. Upon return of said warrant, the affidavit shall be attached to it and shall be filed therewith, and it shall not be a public document until the warrant is returned." Neither the Appeals Court nor the parties address this provision and its possible bearing on the contention that the affidavit should have been attached to the warrant when executed. Because the consideration of this question is not necessary to our decision, we also do not address it.
[Note 4] A second condition imposed by that Federal court, which is related to definiteness requires that, if the contraband is not on the premises to be searched at the time of the issuance of the warrant, it "must be on a sure and irreversible course to its destination, and a future search of the destintaion must be made expressly contingent upon the contraband's arrival there." United States v. Ricciardelli, 998 F.2d 8, 12 (1st Cir. 1993). This condition has no applicability in this case, and we intimate no view as to whether we would impose it in a case that presented that issue.
[Note 5] In reaching its conclusion, the court in United States v. Moetamedi, 46 F.3d 225, 229 (2d Cir. 1995), cited United States v. Tagbering, 985 F.2d 946, 950 (8th Cir. 1993) ("[E]ven if [the soliciting] affidavit was not incorporated into the warrant, it contained a representation to the issuing judge that the warrant would not be executed until the package was delivered and accepted. In such circumstances, we do not believe the Constitution requires that this limitation be written into the warrant itself"), a case which was cited by Ricciardelli, supra at 11, as well with apparent approval. This only heightens our doubts that the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit was focusing on the issue presented here at all.

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