Com. v. Eggleston

• Decision Date: 10 April 2009
• Docket Number: SJC-10233.
• Citation: 453 Mass. 554,903 N.E.2d 1087
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. William B. EGGLESTON.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

903 N.E.2d 1087

453 Mass. 554

COMMONWEALTH v. William B. EGGLESTON.

SJC-10233.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Berkshire.

Argued December 4, 2008.

Decided April 10, 2009.

Wendy H. Sibbison for the defendant.

Karen L. Carlo, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: MARSHALL, C.J., IRELAND, SPINA, COWIN, CORDY, & BOTSFORD, JJ.

COWIN, J.

"[W]hen an automobile is stopped in a public place with probable cause, no more exigent circumstances are required by art. 14 [of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights] beyond the inherent mobility of an automobile itself to justify a warrantless search of the vehicle." Commonwealth v. Motta, 424 Mass. 117, 124, 676 N.E.2d 795 (1997). In this case, we conclude that this principle applies even when the police had ample opportunity to obtain a search warrant, provided that there has been no unreasonable delay.

Facts and proceedings. The essential facts are not disputed. Members of the Berkshire County drug task force (task force) received information from a number of confidential informants that an individual named "Bill," whose physical description matched that of the defendant, was selling "crack" cocaine from the parking lot of a tire store in North Adams. Confidential informants, who had purchased drugs from "Bill," also reported that the individual regularly sold crack cocaine from a car wash across the street from the tire store and sometimes drove to other locations to meet customers.

Based on the informants' statements, in December of 2004, the task force undertook an investigation of the defendant, who worked at the tire store. The investigation established that the defendant routinely sold drugs from the tire store parking lot or the neighboring car wash before work, during his lunch hour, and at the end of the work day. Confidential informants told police that the defendant usually had crack cocaine when he was at work, either on his person, in his car, or both. Other informants¹ provided specific details concerning two vehicles that the defendant used to conduct drug transactions. They also described the location in which the defendant hid cocaine and money in one of the vehicles. One informant, who had once observed the defendant with 112 grams of individually packaged crack cocaine, had purchased cocaine from the defendant on numerous occasions for several months prior to the investigation. Two informants stated that the defendant supplied named drug dealers with crack cocaine. One of these individuals, Joseph Pini, was known to the police as a drug dealer.

On January 5, 2005, an informant told members of the task force that the defendant was scheduled to receive a large shipment of crack cocaine sometime between 1 and 2 P.M. on January 6, 2005. On the same day, the investigators received information from an inmate at the Berkshire County house of correction that on Friday, January 7, 2005, Pini intended to purchase a large quantity of crack cocaine from a dealer known as "Goodyear Bill," who sold crack cocaine during lunch breaks and after work at the tire store. The inmate again contacted investigators on the afternoon of January 7, 2005, and reported that Pini told him that he intended to make the purchase after 5 P.M., when the defendant left work.

At 4:15 P.M., police began surveillance of the tire store, intending to follow the defendant after he left work and to arrest both the defendant and Pini after they completed the transaction. However, State Police Sergeant David B. Foley, a supervisor on the task force, observed that, because of the time of day, traffic on the streets near the store was very heavy.² Foley became concerned that waiting to arrest the defendant and Pini, whom Foley described as a "nut," until after they completed the transaction would create a risk that Pini, and possibly the defendant, would attempt to flee, and could result in a dangerous high-speed chase of one or both vehicles. He decided to forgo observing Pini and instead waited to observe whether the defendant left the store at the predicted time. He instructed the officers present to prevent the defendant from leaving the parking lot; he also decided that it would be wiser to arrest the defendant after the defendant entered the vehicle, rather than risk a struggle in the open lot.

At approximately 4:20 P.M., the officers saw Pini drive past the tire store parking lot without stopping. A few minutes before 5 P.M., the defendant left the store, started his vehicle's engine, and then returned to the store. At 5 P.M., the defendant emerged from the store again. When he was seated in the driver's seat of his white sport utility vehicle, police officers knocked on the driver's side window and asked the defendant to turn off the engine. He refused to do so and attempted to put the vehicle in gear. After the police physically removed the defendant from the vehicle and took him into custody, they searched it. They found six plastic bags containing 379 grams of crack cocaine, two hydrocodone tablets, and over $2,000 in cash, including some counterfeit bills.

The defendant was indicted on charges of trafficking in cocaine drug violations within a park zone, possession of hydrocodone, and possession of counterfeit bills. He moved to suppress all of the evidence seized from his vehicle, as well as statements he made at the police station after his arrest, on the ground that the warrantless search of the vehicle failed to satisfy any exception to the warrant requirement. This motion was denied. Following a jury-waived trial in the Superior Court, the defendant was convicted of the drug charges; the charge relative to the counterfeit bills was placed on file. The defendant then appealed from the judgments of conviction on the ground that his motion to suppress should have been allowed. The Appeals Court affirmed the convictions, Commonwealth v. Eggleston, 71 Mass.App. Ct. 363, 366-367, 881 N.E.2d 1174 (2008), and we allowed the defendant's application for further review.

Discussion. We have said previously that a warrant is not required to search an automobile "when police have probable cause to believe that a motor vehicle on a public way contains contraband or evidence of a crime, and exigent circumstances make obtaining a warrant impracticable." Commonwealth v. Cast, 407 Mass. 891, 901, 556 N.E.2d 69 (1990). The United States Supreme Court later eliminated any requirement that exigent circumstances exist beyond the automobile's "ready mobility," and held that, "[i]f a car is readily mobile and probable cause exists to believe it contains contraband, the Fourth Amendment [to the United States Constitution] thus permits police to search the vehicle without more." See Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 940, 116 S.Ct. 2485, 135 L.Ed.2d 1031 (1996). The Court noted "that an individual has a lesser expectation of privacy in an automobile" because of its extensive regulation. Commonwealth v. Motta, 424 Mass. 117, 123, 676 N.E.2d 795 (1997), citing Pennsylvania v. Labron, supra. We subsequently concluded that "when an automobile is stopped in a public place with probable cause, no more exigent circumstances are required by art. 14 beyond the inherent mobility of an automobile itself to justify a warrantless search of the vehicle." Id. at 124, 676 N.E.2d 795. We adopted the mobility rule of the Supreme Court for substantially the reasons discussed by the Court, observing that while art. 14 at times provides more protection than the Fourth Amendment, we had followed the Supreme Court in the area of the automobile exception on other occasions, and no compelling reason had been advanced to cause art. 14 and the Fourth Amendment to diverge in this area. See id. at 123-124, 676 N.E.2d 795.

Here, we are asked to consider whether, despite the inherent mobility rule, art. 14 requires the police to obtain a warrant before searching a vehicle when they have probable cause early enough to do so. The defendant does not challenge the inherent mobility rule; he contends, however, that once the police had probable cause, they delayed execution of the search here in a deliberate attempt to make use of the automobile exception in order to thwart the requirement of obtaining a warrant. The defendant argues that, in these circumstances, where the police had obtained evidence that provided a "plain and ample" opportunity to seek a search warrant prior to a search, art. 14 required them to do so despite the automobile exception. The defendant contends that here the decision to delay obtaining a warrant in order to gather additional evidence against the buyer was impermissible.³

The defendant does not dispute the evidence of probable cause in this case. To the contrary, he contends that, based on the inmate's statement, there was probable cause to arrest the defendant on the afternoon of January 6, 2005, as well as throughout the day on January 7, 2005. It is for this reason that the defendant argues that the police had adequate time to obtain a search warrant before the stop on January 7, 2005, and were required to do so. The defendant claims that, as Foley testified, the police intended to arrest him on January 7, 2005, regardless of whether he entered his vehicle, and that the exigent circumstances purportedly justifying relaxation of the warrant requirement were created by the police decision to forgo the opportunity to obtain a search warrant for the vehicle earlier in the day.

As we have indicated, ordinarily additional exigent circumstances are not required when the search is of an automobile. We agree, however, that the automobile exception may not be employed to justify an unreasonable delay between the time when the police objectively have probable cause to search the car and the time when they do so. Commonwealth v. Motta, supra at 125, 676 N.E.2d 795. Once probable cause was established, the warrantless search of the defendant's vehicle in the public...