Com. v. Rostad
Decision Date | 10 July 1991 |
Citation | 410 Mass. 618,574 N.E.2d 381 |
Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Thea K. ROSTAD. |
Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Nancy Gertner, Boston, for defendant.
Ariane D. Vuono, Asst. Dist. Atty., for Com.
Before LIACOS, C.J., and WILKINS, NOLAN, O'CONNOR and GREANEY, JJ.
The defendant is under indictment for several drug offenses. She moved to suppress drugs, taken from her handbag by a police officer at the Belchertown police station without a warrant, and drugs and drug-related equipment subsequently taken from her automobile by a State trooper pursuant to a search warrant. After an evidentiary hearing, a judge of the Superior Court denied the motion to suppress. A single justice of this court allowed the defendant's application for interlocutory appeal. We now reverse the order denying the defendant's motion.
The motion judge recited his findings and legal reasoning substantially as follows. On July 21, 1989, a Belchertown police officer was on cruiser duty when he observed an automobile operated by the defendant traveling at a speed of fifty-eight miles per hour in a forty mile per hour zone and crossing to the wrong side of a double solid line in the roadway. He pursued and stopped the vehicle, and asked the defendant for her license and registration. As a result of a check by police radio, the officer learned that the defendant's license had been suspended. He then placed her under arrest. He arranged for a tow truck to tow the automobile to a garage, and he drove the defendant, who carried a handbag with her, to the police station.
According to the judge's findings, the Belchertown police had a written policy for the transportation and custody of arrested persons which stated in relevant part that An officer unzipped and opened the defendant's handbag and inventoried its contents, which included bags and packets containing drugs. The officer reported the discovery to the State police and they obtained a warrant to search the defendant's automobile. In the automobile, they found drugs, documents, and a set of weights for a balance scale.
In Commonwealth v. Bishop, 402 Mass. 449, 523 N.E.2d 779 (1988), decided before the arrest and searches in this case, we affirmed the order of a Superior Court judge suppressing the contents of a zippered gym bag which had been located on the open bed of a truck that the police had impounded. We held that "art. 14 of the Declaration of Rights requires the exclusion of evidence seized during [an inventory] search not conducted pursuant to standard police procedures." Id. at 451, 523 N.E.2d 779, quoting Commonwealth v. Ford, 394 Mass. 421, 426, 476 N.E.2d 560 (1985). We also held that, because there was no standard State police policy specifically focused on "whether and under what circumstances closed containers should be opened and the contents inventoried," the gym bag contents were correctly Id. at 451-452, 476 N.E.2d 560. In addition, we announced that, after Bishop (Bishop was decided on June 6, 1988), inventory searches would not be considered valid except when conducted pursuant to standard police procedures that were written. Id. at 451, 476 N.E.2d 560.
The motion judge in the present case was well aware of our decision in Bishop and discussed it at some length. He concluded, however, that the "requirement of specificity" enunciated in Bishop with respect to written procedures applicable to a closed container on the bed of a truck was not intended by this court to apply to a wallet or handbag which are normally carried on the person and are primarily designed to hold valuables. The judge's reasoning, with much of which we agree, was as follows:
We agree with the judge's statement of the purposes of a custodial search and that such searches, as an exception to the ordinary constitutional requirements of probable cause and a warrant, must be carefully circumscribed by law with the result that they must follow standard police procedures. In addition, as we said in ...
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