Commonwealth v. Williams

241 N.E.3d 68

104 Mass.App.Ct. 498

COMMONWEALTH

v.Charles WILLIAMS.

No. 22-P-869

Appeals Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Argued December 5, 2023

Decided August 1, 2024

Homicide. Evidence, Firearm, Videotape. Firearms. Search and Seizure, Search incident to lawful arrest. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure, Equal protection of laws. Practice, Criminal, Motion to suppress, Jury and jurors, Challenge to jurors.

Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on November 8, 2017.

A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Christine M. Roach, J., and the cases were tried before Janet L. Sanders, J.

Richard P. Heartquist, North Andover, for the defendant.

Erin Knight, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: Green, C.J., Neyman, & Englander, JJ.

ENGLANDER, J.

₄₉₈The defendant appeals from his conviction by a ₄₉₉jury of murder in the second degree.¹ His principal argument is that a key piece of evidence -- a firearm used during the commission of the murder -- should have been suppressed pursuant to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. The police found the firearm in question on the day they arrested the defendant, over three months after the murder, in a backpack that the defendant had been carrying immediately before he was arrested. The defendant argues that because the backpack was not on his person at the time of his arrest, and was not seized or searched until after he had been handcuffed and removed from the scene, the seizure and search cannot be justified as a search incident to arrest, or on any other basis that would provide an exception to the warrant requirement. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that both the seizure and search of the backpack and the seizure of the firearm were lawful under Federal and Massachusetts law. We discern no merit in the other arguments that the defendant raises, and accordingly affirm the judgments.

Background. On the evening of July 15, 2017, Dennis Parham was shot and killed at the Lenox Housing Development in the city of Boston. The shooting was caught by surveillance cameras, and there was at least one eyewitness, who was looking out the window of a nearby home. Among other things, the surveillance video showed a shooter pulling a gun from his person, firing several shots, and returning it to his waistband. In what might be described as a stroke of luck for the investigation, the eyewitness performed independent research on the Internet and, several days after the shooting, identified the defendant to the Boston police as one of what he believed were two shooters whom he had seen on the night of the murder.

More than three months later, on November 5, 2017, Boston police officers went to arrest the defendant after he was located at a home (believed to belong to the defendant’s girlfriend) in the Brighton section of Boston. The police identified the defendant’s car in front of the residence and began surveillance. The police did not obtain any warrants in connection with the planned arrest. Sometime that morning, the police observed the defendant’s car start up, remotely, on the street, in front of the defendant’s girlfriend’s house. The car was legally parked. Shortly thereafter, ₅₀₀the defendant left the house and walked toward the car. He had a backpack on his person. The police allowed him to enter the car, at which point the defendant placed the backpack on the passenger seat. The police then approached the car from all directions. One officer approached the driver’s side, and asked the defendant to step out. Another, Officer Patrick Murphy, opened the passenger side door, reached in, and turned off the car engine. The defendant complied with the officers’ order (leaving the backpack in the car), and was taken to the rear of the car and handcuffed. Shortly thereafter the defendant was placed in a police transport and taken to the police station. Before leaving, the defendant asked the police to leave his car with his girlfriend, who was observing from an adjacent sidewalk.

Officer Murphy called his superior, Sergeant Detective Michael Devane, who was at the police station, to ask him what should be done with the defendant’s car. Devane said that he did not want the car impounded. The defendant had been driving a different car on the day of the murder in July, as seen on the surveillance videos. That car had been rented from Zipcar, Inc.; it was not the same car that the police encountered outside the defendant’s girlfriend’s home in November.

Murphy decided to give the car keys to the girlfriend. Before he did so, however, Murphy learned from another officer that the defendant had been wearing the backpack, now in the car, when the defendant had exited the girlfriend’s home. Murphy called Devane a second time, this time asking specifically about the backpack that the defendant had been wearing. Devane told Murphy to bring the backpack to the station. Before Murphy brought the backpack to the station, however, he opened the backpack and moved around some items inside. He observed the handle of a black handgun.²

After the handgun was brought to the station it was examined by police experts. Ballistics from the gun matched several .40 caliber casings recovered from the murder scene and one of the defendant’s fingerprints was found on the gun’s magazine.

The defendant filed a motion to suppress the gun, along with several other motions to suppress. The essence of the defendant’s argument was that the backpack could not be seized or searched without a warrant, and that the search could not be justified as a ₅₀₁search incident to arrest because the backpack was not seized or searched until after the defendant had been removed from the scene.

The judge held an evidentiary hearing, and denied the motion as to the backpack and firearm. The judge first concluded that the search of the backpack could not be justified as a search incident to arrest. The judge also concluded, however, that the seizure of the backpack was "reasonable," inasmuch as the backpack had been on the defendant’s person immediately prior to his arrest, and was then in the car that was going to be turned over to the girlfriend. And although the judge found that Murphy’s immediate search of the backpack was not justified, the judge nevertheless held that the gun should not be suppressed, because the lawfully seized backpack would inevitably have been inventoried once it was secured at the station.

The defendant was tried for murder over fourteen days in August and September of 2021. On September 16, 2021, the jury convicted the defendant of murder in the second degree and four additional charges relating to carrying a loaded firearm without a license. This appeal followed.

[1] Discussion. 1. The motion to suppress the gun. The principal issue before us is whether the firearm located in the backpack must be suppressed under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution or art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. The search of the backpack was conducted without a warrant, and accordingly, the search must be justified under an exception to the warrant requirement. See Commonwealth v. Ortiz, 487 Mass. 602, 606, 169 N.E.3d 172 (2021), quoting Commonwealth v. Arias, 481 Mass. 604, 610, 119 N.E.3d 257 (2019). Here the judge ruled - and the Commonwealth continues to press on appeal - that the firearm would have been "inevitably discovered" pursuant to a lawful inventory of the defendant’s "possessions," which the Commonwealth contends would have occurred when the backpack was brought to the police station. Alternatively, the Commonwealth argues that the search of the backpack was a lawful search incident to arrest, citing in particular Commonwealth v. Figueroa, 468 Mass. 204, 215-216, 9 N.E.3d 812 (2014).

[2] We begin our analysis with "the basic rule that ‘searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment - subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.’ " Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 338, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 ₅₀₂(2009), quoting Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). One of those well-delineated exceptions, however, is the doctrine of search incident to arrest. In Gant, the United States Supreme Court revisited the permissible scope of a search incident to arrest where, as here, the defendant was seized and arrested immediately after having been in an automobile. Gant, supra at 338-344, 129 S.Ct. 1710. The Supreme Court clarified that in such circumstances a search of the car (and items in the car) could be justified on either of two grounds: (1) as reasonably necessary for officer safety, the passenger compartment could be searched if the arrestee was "unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search," and (2) when it is "reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle" (citation omitted). Id. at 343, 129 S.Ct. 1710.

[3–9] In this case, the warrantless search of the backpack incident to the defendant’s arrest was lawful under the second of the above rationales - it was a lawful search for evidence relevant to the crime.³ Gant says that such a search is lawful if it was "reasonable to believe" that relevant evidence "might be found." Gant, 556 U.S. at 335, 129 S.Ct. 1710. This court has equated the "reasonable to believe" standard with "probable cause," and suggested that Gant’s second rationale is merely an application of the well-recognized automobile exception to the warrant requirement. See Commonwealth v. Starkweather, 79 Mass. App. Ct. 791, 796-797, 950 N.E.2d 461 (2011).⁴ Under the auto- mobile exception, where an investigator has probable cause to believe that evidence relevant to a crime is ₅₀...