Com. v. Ortiz

Decision Date12 February 1996
Citation661 N.E.2d 925,422 Mass. 64
PartiesCOMMONWEALTH v. Rene G. ORTIZ.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on July 21, 1994; Mary-Lou Rup, J.

Following allowance of the Commonwealth's application for an interlocutory appeal in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk by O'Connor, J., the case was reported by him to the Appeals Court. The Supreme Judicial Court on its own initiative transferred the case from the Appeals Court.

Judith Ellen Pietras, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Linda J. Thompson, Springfield, for the defendant.

Before LIACOS, C.J., and WILKINS, ABRAMS, LYNCH, O'CONNOR, GREANEY and FRIED, JJ.

WILKINS, Justice.

In Commonwealth v. Rosario, 422 Mass. 48, 661 N.E.2d 71 (1996), released today, we considered whether confessions should have been suppressed because the police detained the arrested defendant for questioning, rather than take him to court for arraignment. We prescribed a rule, in implementation of Mass.R.Crim.P. 7(a)(1), as amended, 397 Mass. 1226 (1986), that allows the admission of all statements made during police questioning for a six-hour period following a defendant's arrest, whether or not a court is in session, provided that the statements are otherwise admissible.

In this case, we also consider the propriety of a Superior Court order suppressing statements obtained in circumstances that a motion judge ruled violated Mass.R.Crim.P. 7(a)(1). There are, however, differences between the two cases. Here, because the defendant's statements were obtained within six hours of his arrest, they fall within the six-hour safe harbor adopted in the Rosario opinion. Moreover, the defendant was advised of his right to a prompt arraignment and, within six hours of his arrest, signed a document in which he purported to acknowledge and waive that right. On the other hand, unlike the motion judge in the Rosario case, the motion judge here chose not to decide whether the defendant's statements were voluntary and made with an understanding of his rights. Also, the questioning in this case, unlike the Rosario case, related to a crime for which a warrant for the defendant's arrest had issued from a District Court. The question thus arises whether the safe harbor rule of the Rosario case should also apply to an arrested but unarraigned defendant's statements which concern matters relevant to a crime for which a complaint is pending against the defendant.

The defendant has been indicted for murder in the first degree, armed assault with intent to murder, and assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon. He moved to suppress (a) statements that he made to Springfield police officers, (b) certain physical evidence thereafter seized as a result of a warrantless search, and (c) identifications of that evidence. The motion judge ruled that the intentional delay in arraigning the defendant was a violation of Mass.R.Crim.P. 7(a)(1) and required suppression of the defendant's statements. She concluded that seizure of the defendant's clothing, and witnesses's identifications of that clothing, were the fruits of the unlawful interrogation and had to be suppressed as well. She did not pass on other challenges to the admission of the defendant's statements.

The facts are not in dispute on the issue before us. On July 15, 1994, between 8 A.M. and 9 A.M., members of the Springfield police department detective bureau arrested the defendant. They had an arrest warrant for the defendant for murder and an arrest warrant for destruction of property in an unrelated incident. They took the defendant to the police station where they discovered that he did not speak English. They summoned a Spanish speaking officer who arrived at 10:05 A.M. Until the Spanish speaking officer arrived, the defendant was handcuffed to a chair in a room in the detective bureau, uninformed that he had been charged with murder. The Spanish-speaking officer, in the company of two officers who had arrested the defendant, translated Miranda rights into Spanish and advised the defendant of his right to use a telephone. The defendant signed forms acknowledging that he had been advised of his rights. The officer also interpreted a form advising the defendant of his right to a prompt arraignment. At 10:10 A.M. the defendant signed the arraignment warning form, purportedly waiving his right to prompt arraignment. The defendant was then informed that he was a suspect in a murder.

The defendant showed no reluctance to speak with the officers and denied his involvement in the murder. During the interview, which lasted between an hour and one hour and fifteen minutes, the defendant acknowledged that he had been wearing particular clothing at the Bay State Medical Center (at an apparently critical time) on July 10, 1994, and that that clothing was at his father's house. The defendant was booked and taken to the Springfield District Court where he was arraigned after 2 P.M.

The judge found that the police delayed the defendant's arraignment "for some five hours for the sole purpose of interrogating him about the shooting death." She ruled that the police violated Mass.R.Crim.P. 7(a)(1) and that suppression was required of any statement made during the period in which the police unreasonably delayed arraignment.

After questioning the defendant, the two Springfield detectives went to the home of the defendant's father. The father authorized a search of a room that his son had used and, aided by the same Spanish-speaking officer who had translated at the defendant's questioning, the father executed a search warrant waiver form. The judge found that the father voluntarily consented to the search. The officers seized various articles of the defendant's clothing, which two witnesses later said that they had seen in circumstances incriminating the defendant.

The judge found that the police were able to obtain the defendant's clothes only because of what they learned during their interrogation of the defendant. She ruled that the clothing and their subsequent identification should be suppressed as the fruits of the unlawful interrogation because the police did not prove that this evidence inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means.

A single justice of this court allowed the Commonwealth's application for leave to appeal the orders allowing the suppression of the defendant's statements to the police and of the evidence obtained as a result of those statements. The appeal was entered in the Appeals Court and we transferred it to this court on our own motion.

The defendant alleged various constitutional arguments in support of his motion to suppress his statements. The motion judge, however, relied on no constitutional principle in allowing the motion to suppress. 1

There is no doubt that the Springfield police officers knew that the defendant was entitled to be arraigned promptly. Before questioning him, they presented him with a document entitled "Arraignment Warning," which an officer interpreted in Spanish and the defendant signed. The document, the substance of which is set forth in the margin, 2 advised the defendant of his right to prompt arraignment before a judge if court was in session (or alternatively at the next session) and that, upon arraignment, he would have an attorney appointed and might be admitted to bail. The police, however, did not tell the defendant that court was then in session or that he could go to court at that time (or that he could go to court later if he changed his mind and court was in session). 3

The motion judge ruled that the effect of the police violation of rule 7(a)(1) was not diminished by any valid waiver that the defendant may have made of his rights. From the judge's supporting citation of Commonwealth v. Parham, 390 Mass. 833, 843, 460 N.E.2d 589 (1984), and Commonwealth v. Bradshaw, 385 Mass. 244, 258, 431 N.E.2d 880 (1982), we infer that she meant that a waiver of one right (e.g., Miranda rights) did not cure a violation of another right (e.g., prompt arraignment). Here, however, the arraignment waiver directly concerned the very right that the judge concluded had been violated, and the judge did not decide whether the arraignment waiver was voluntary and informed. As we stated in Commonwealth v. Rosario, supra at 56, 661 N.E.2d 71, an informed and voluntary waiver of prompt arraignment would excuse delay in arraigning an arrestee.

We need not send the case back for further findings concerning the arraignment waiver because we conclude that the police questioning within six hours of the defendant's arrest, and his prompt arraignment once the questioning ended, conform to the requirements that we have established today in Commonwealth v. Rosario, supra. Those requirements are appropriately applied in the circumstances of this case. Although the voluntariness of the defendant's waiver of his Miranda rights and the informed voluntariness of his statements are issues that remain undecided by the motion judge, the voluntariness of the arraignment waiver is no longer important. No arraignment waiver was needed.

There is no reason to distinguish between police questioning about a crime as to which charges are pending against an arrestee and questioning about a crime as to which no complaint has yet been issued. We are not aware of any jurisdiction that has made such a distinction. 4 In each situation, there...

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