Source: http://masscases.com/cases/app/3/3massappct123.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 16:24:37+00:00

Document:
Present: HALE, C.J., GRANT, & ARMSTRONG, JJ.
INDICTMENT found and returned in the Superior Court on July 7, 1972.
A pre-trial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Roy, J., and the case was tried before McLaughlin, C.J.
James Michael Merberg for the defendant.
James Peter Hayes, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
HALE, C. J. After a trial held under the provisions of G. L. c. 278, Sections 33A-33G, the defendant was convicted of possession of heroin with intent to sell and was sentenced to a term of from nine to ten years. The case is before us on three assignments of error. We affirm the conviction.
The defendant assigns as error the denial of his motion to suppress the heroin "taken from his person or from his immediate surroundings." We summarize the evidence given at the hearing on that motion which the judge adopted as his findings of fact.
seized the defendant and after a struggle subdued and arrested him.
The defendant argues that the heroin was seized in the course of an arrest made without probable cause on the basis of the tip of an informant of unknown reliability and cites Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 112-116 (1964). The telephone tips, having been received from an informant whose reliability had not been established, do not meet the Aguilar requirements. The defendant concedes that an arrest may be made on the basis of information which does not satisfy the Aguilar two-pronged test if such information is sufficiently corroborated by other sources. He asserts that the facts of the present case fail in that regard. We disagree. The tip was corroborated by the occurrence of the events predicted by the informant (Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 312-314 ; Commonwealth v. Duran, 363 Mass. 229 , 233 ; Commonwealth v. Anderson, 366 Mass. 394 , 400 ) and by the observations of Linsky which were reported to O'Malley and Simmons. Compare Commonwealth v. Chaisson, 358 Mass. 587 , 590 (1971); Commonwealth v. Kane, 362 Mass. 656 , 660-661 (1972). We are of the opinion that there was probable cause upon which the arrest could have been made.
Quite apart from that, the heroin was not seized incident to the defendant's arrest. It had been abandoned by the defendant as the police were making a reasonable and justified approach to him. Compare Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146-147 (1972). In this respect our decision in Commonwealth v. Battle, 1 Mass. App. Ct. 579 , 581-583 (1973), S. C. 365 Mass. 472 , 474-476 (1974), is controlling.
We need not consider the two remaining assignments of error as they do not meet the requirements of G. L. c. 278, Section 33D, in that they do not set forth specific grounds upon which the claims of error are based. See Commonwealth v. Fleurant, 2 Mass. App. Ct. 250 , 251, n. 1 (1974). In any event, they are so devoid of merit that no discussion of them would be warranted.
[Note 1] It appears that "triple white," used in this context, described a convertible automobile with a white top, white body, and white interior.
[Note 2] Upon later analysis the bag was found to contain four ounces of forty-seven percent pure heroin valued at $7,500.

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