Com. v. Haefeli

Decision Date02 March 1972
Citation279 N.E.2d 915,361 Mass. 271
PartiesCOMMONWEALTH v. David A. HAEFELI.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Alexander Whiteside, II, Boston (Reuben Goodman, Boston, with him), for defendant.

Robert Snider, Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.

Before TAURO, C.J., and CUTTER, REARDON, QUIRICO and HENNESSEY, JJ.

QUIRICO, Justice.

The defendant was charged in each of seven indictments with a separate crime of receiving stolen property knowing it to have been stolen. One indictment involved blank checks, and the others involved various pieces of mail containing some blank checks, cancelled checks and other papers. The defendant was found guilty by a jury on all indictments after a single trial. The trial judge thereupon adjudged him 'a common receiver of stolen goods' and imposed upon him a consolidated sentence of a minimum of three years and a maximum of seven years at the Correctional Institution at Walpole. G.L. c. 266, § 62. The cases are before us on the defendant's amended bill of exceptions.

The only exception argued by the defendant is that taken to the denial of his pretrial motion to suppress certain evidence which the police had seized in part from an automobile and in part from his apartment. The defendant argues that after he had been arrested a police officer unlawfully searched without a warrant an automobile which he had driven before his arrest. He argues that the search of his apartment, although conducted pursuant to a warrant, was unlawful because of alleged deficiencies in the affidavit contained in the application for the warrant.

THE SEARCH OF THE AUTOMOBILE.

The defendant was arrested by Boston police officer Robert E. Hughes on January 12, 1970. There was evidence of the following events and occurrences leading up to and immediately following the arrest.

On November 24, 1969, the apartment of Miss Mona Lacy at 1152 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston had been broken into and ransacked. Articles stolen from the apartment included the following: a check cashing courtesy card issued to Miss Lacy by the Star Market Co., some checks with her name and address printed on them issued by the Barclay Bank and Trust Company of Boston, her driving license issued by the State of Delaware, and six or seven credit cards or identification cards issued to her in her name by a bank, a public library, stores, clubs and other organizations. This break and theft, and numerous thefts from the United States mail, were under investigation by Officer Hughes.

Officer Hughes was also investigating a series of offences involving the passing of worthless checks. A number of such checks were cashed by a girl using the name of Mona Lacy at a Star Market Co. store which had a system of photographing persons cashing checks there. Officer Hughes saw this same girl in about twenty different photographs, and he circulated the photographs, or reproductions of them, to certain business people in the general vicinity where the worthless checks had been cashed.

Officer Hughes knew the defendant from some prior experiences. He had information that the defendant was involved in the passing of worthless checks. He received information from many informants, including one or more of the victims of the worthless check passing, that the girl shown in the photographs mentioned above was accompanied by a male. The girl and the male were seen leaving various Star Market Co. stores, banks and other stores in Boston and vicinity. The informants gave Officer Hughes a description of the male which fitted the defendant's general description, including his haircut and mustache, which presented definitely identifiable features.

Officer Hughes had also received information about the registration number of an automobile in the course of his investigation of the check passing operations of the girl and male in question. He learned that this number had been issued to a man named Kaler, and that the automobile had not been reported stolen.

One of the places where Officer Hughes either left or showed a photograph of the girl who passed the worthless checks was a real estate office on Commonwealth Avenue, in Boston. On January 12, 1970, the person in charge of that office called Officer Hughes and told him that a girl resembling the one in the photograph had been in the office and intended to return. Officer Hughes went to the office and 'staked out' the area. About 5:45 P.M. he saw an automobile bearing the registration mentioned above park on Commonwealth Avenue about fifty feet from the office. The driver of the automobile was a male fitting the description previously given to Officer Hughes, and the officer recognized him as the defendant Haefeli. He also recognized a girl passenger in the automobile as the girl shown in the photographs mentioned above. Both occupants of the automobile went into the real estate office.

Officer Hughes followed the two persons into the office and questioned them. He asked the girl whether her name was Mona Lacy, which is the name she had used in passing worthless checks. She 'looked awfully startled' and answered that it was not. She was in fact Janice Kaler but the officer did not know that. He asked her what her name was and she gave a name other than Janice Kaler. She also said that the automobile in which they had arrived was hers. He then asked the defendant his name and he answered that it was 'David Becker.' At that time Officer Hughes placed both the girl and the defendant under arrest. He knew then that the defendant was in fact David Haefeli, but he did not know that the girl was Janice Kaler, the daughter of the person to whom the registration plates on the automobile had been issued, and that she had her father's permission to use the automobile.

A couple of minutes after making the arrests, Officer Hughes borrowed a flashlight, left the office and went to the automobile to try to find out who its true owner was. He shone his flashlight through the closed window of the automobile. On the front floor, on the passenger side of the automobile, he saw a manila envelope containing a quantity of bank checks, about one or two inches of which were exposed. He could not see anyone's name on the checks. He opened the door and took the checks out. The checks were for use on the Capital Bank & Trust Company in Boston, and had the name 'Joseph Shain' imprinted on them. They were the subject of indictment No. 48,369 on which the defendant was convicted.

After seizing the Shain checks, Officer Hughes pursued his search of the automobile in an effort to determine its true owner, and in so doing he looked in the glove compartment for the registration. There he found and seized an identification card issued to Mona Lacy by the Star Market Co. for the purpose of cashing checks at one of its stores.

THE VALIDITY OF THE AUTOMOBILE SEARCH.

We first consider the validity of the police search of the automobile and the resulting seizure of the blank checks belonging to Joseph Shain and the identification card belonging to Mona Lacy. Admittedly Officer Hughes had no search warrant to search the automobile, and the Commonwealth conceded in argument before this court that the search was not incident to the arrest of the defendant and Janice Kaler. Thus narrowed, our consideration must focus on whether there were exigent circumstances which permitted Officer Hughes to search the automobile without a warrant. Basically, the question reduces itself to whether his action constituted an 'unreasonable' search and seizure of the kind prohibited by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. United States v. Roberts, 434 F.2d 1016, 1017 (5th Cir.).

'(T)he reasonableness of a search is in the first instance a substantive determination to be made by the trial court from the facts and circumstances of the case and in the light of the 'fundamental criteria' laid down by the Fourth Amendment and in opinions of . . . (the United States Supreme) Court applying that Amendment. Findings of reasonableness, of course, are respected only insofar as consistent with federal constitutional guarantees.' Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 33, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 1630, 10 L.Ed.2d 726. We must therefore examine the Federal judicial precedents on this subject.

One of the earliest cases decided by the United States Supreme Court on the validity of a warrantless search of an automobile was Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543. There the court said, at 153, 45 S.Ct. at 285, that 'the guaranty of freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures by the Fourth Amendment has been construed, practically since the beginning of the Government, as recognizing a necessary difference between a search of a store, dwelling house, or other structure in respect of which a proper official warrant readily may be obtained and a search of a ship, motor boat, wagon, or automobile for contraband goods, where it is not practicable to secure a warrant because the vehicle can be quickly moved out of the locality or jurisdiction in which the warrant must be sought.' The court upheld the search after declaring, at 155--156, 45 S.Ct. at 286, that '(t)he measure of legality of such a seizure is, therefore, that the seizing officer shall have reasonable or probable cause for believing that the automobile which he stops and seizes has contraband liquor therein which is being illegally transported.' To emphasize that it was not basing its decision on the existence of probable cause to arrest the driver or occupants of the automobile, the court said, at 158--159, 45 S.Ct. at 287: 'The right to search and the validity of the seizure are not dependent on the right to arrest. They are dependent on the reasonable cause the seizing officer has for belief that the contents of the automobile offend against the law. . . . The character of the offense for which, after the...

To continue reading

Request your trial
47 cases
  • Com. v. Hall
    • United States
    • United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
    • February 10, 1975
    ...514 (E.D.Pa.1973) (estranged wife at home).16 Compare Commonwealth v. Haefeli, --- Mass. ---, --- (Mass.Adv.Sh. (1972) 423, 432), 279 N.E.2d 915 (1972), which allowed search of an automobile where the trial judge found that only one officer was on the scene who could not both return for a s......
  • Com. v. Pignone
    • United States
    • Appeals Court of Massachusetts
    • August 7, 1975
    ...the judgment of the police as to probable cause serve as a sufficient authorization for a search.' See also Commonwealth v. Haefeli, 361 Mass. 271, 275, 279 N.E.2d 915 (1972); Commonwealth v. Rand, --- Mass. ---, --- h, 296 N.E.2d 200 (1973); Commonwealth v. DuPont, --- Mass.App. ---, --- i......
  • Com. v. King
    • United States
    • United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
    • May 16, 1983
    ...L.Ed.2d 419 (1970); Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 155, 45 S.Ct. 280, 286, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925). See Commonwealth v. Haefeli, 361 Mass. 271, 277-278, 279 N.E.2d 915 (1972); Haefeli v. Chernoff, 526 F.2d 1314, 1316-1318 (1st Cir.1975). When the armed driver emerged from the vehicle a......
  • Com. v. Forde
    • United States
    • United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
    • May 22, 1975
    ...discovery did not constitute a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Commonwealth v. Haefeli, --- Mass. ---, --- l, 279 N.E.2d 915 (1972). Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 43, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 10 L.Ed.2d 726 (1963). The requirement of 'inadvertent' discovery imposed by Coolidge ......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT