Com. v. Straw, 94-P-318

• Decision Date: 07 September 1995
• Docket Number: No. 94-P-318,94-P-318
• Citation: 38 Mass.App.Ct. 738,652 N.E.2d 159
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Marlon A. STRAW.
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

Page 159

652 N.E.2d 159

38 Mass.App.Ct. 738

COMMONWEALTH v. Marlon A. STRAW.

No. 94-P-318.

Appeals Court of Massachusetts Suffolk.

Argued Jan. 23, 1995.

Decided July 14, 1995.

Further Appellate Review Granted Sept. 7, 1995.

Brownlow M. Speer, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for defendant.

Angela Park Read, Asst. Dist. Atty., for Com.

Before BROWN, PERRETTA and LAURENCE, JJ.

BROWN, Justice.

On the morning of December 6, 1988, Marlon A. Straw was tipped off that the Boston police were imminently arriving at his family's home in Dorchester with a warrant for his arrest. ¹ As the police entered the front door, Straw threw a briefcase out the window of his second-floor bedroom at the back of the house. It landed in the rear yard between the house and a wrought iron fence that separated the yard from the adjacent sidewalk.

The defenestration of the briefcase was observed by a Boston police officer prudently stationed at the rear of the house to intercept any attempted flight by Straw. After learning a few minutes later that Straw was in custody, the officer entered the rear yard, through a gate, to retrieve the briefcase. He noticed that the right side latch was unlocked, leaving that side of the briefcase slightly ajar. The officer pried open the right side of the case to look inside. He was able to see a plastic glassine bag containing a white, powdery substance that he believed (correctly, as it turned out) to be cocaine. ²

The discovery of the contents of the briefcase caused the police to arrest Straw anew, on a drug charge. Advised of his Miranda rights (see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 479, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1630-1631, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 [1966] ), Straw told the police that when they arrived at his house he became "nervous" and threw the briefcase out the back window. Straw was subsequently indicted for the offense of trafficking in over 200 grams of cocaine. Straw's motion to suppress the contents of the briefcase, as the fruits of an illegal search in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, ³ was denied. The judge held that the officers were entitled to seize and search the case as abandoned property, as to which Straw had relinquished any reasonable expectation of privacy by his act of throwing it out the window. The judge also found exigent circumstances justified the failure to obtain a warrant because of the risk that Straw's family might spirit away the incriminating briefcase during the time that would have elapsed while the police obtained a warrant. After a jury trial, Straw was convicted on the indictment and sentenced to at least fifteen years in prison.

Placing principal reliance on United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977), Straw maintains that the police officer performed an unconstitutional search ⁴ of the briefcase in the rear yard of his family's home and demands reversal of his trafficking conviction, which was almost entirely based upon the evidence of the contents of that case.

Seizure of the briefcase. The police were entitled, as Straw concedes (see note 4, supra) to seize the briefcase. They were lawfully on the premises pursuant to a valid arrest warrant and could legitimately stake out the rear of the house to prevent escape through the rear door. See United States v. Morehead, 959 F.2d 1489, 1496 (10th Cir.1992). The circumstances of a briefcase being ejected from the house just as the police closed in for an arrest were such as to give a reasonable, prudent person applying practical common sense probable cause to believe that contraband or evidence of a crime might be being disposed of. See Massachusetts v. Upton, 466 U.S. 727, 734, 104 S.Ct. 2085, 2088-89, 80 L.Ed.2d 721 (1984). We agree with the judge that the risk that members of Straw's family might make off with the potentially incriminating briefcase justified immediate police action to secure it. United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 701-702, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 2641-2642, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983).

Abandonment. A warrantless search or seizure of property that has been "abandoned" does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217, 241, 80 S.Ct. 683, 698, 4 L.Ed.2d 668 (1960). Police can treat property as abandoned for Fourth Amendment purposes when a defendant voluntarily relinquishes all control over it in such a way as to forgo any continued expectation of privacy in the item. See Commonwealth v. Battle, 365 Mass. 472, 475-476, 313 N.E.2d 554 (1974). The judge correctly concluded that Straw had "abandoned" the briefcase and thereby forfeited his Fourth Amendment rights therein.

The record reveals that the briefcase landed inside the fenced-in back yard of the single family home owned by Straw's family, where he was then staying. That area is part of the curtilage and in the usual case would be entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protection as the home itself. ⁵

Under the cases, abandonment occurs when property is discarded in a public place or other area open to public view and to which members of the public have access, or otherwise in an area where the discarder can have no reasonable expectation of privacy. ⁶ See Commonwealth v. Paszko, 391 Mass. 164, 184-186, 461 N.E.2d 222 (1984); Commonwealth v. Pina, 406 Mass. 540, 546, 549 N.E.2d 106 (1990); Commonwealth v. Lanigan, 12 Mass.App.Ct. 913, 423 N.E.2d 800 (1981); Commonwealth v. Small, 28 Mass.App.Ct. 533, 536-537, 552 N.E.2d 599 (1990); Commonwealth v. Nutile, 31 Mass.App.Ct. 614, 619, 582 N.E.2d 547 (1991). Compare United States v. Morgan, 936 F.2d 1561, 1570-1571 (10th Cir.1991) (bag abandoned when thrown by defendant to the side of a porch in the unfenced back yard of an acquaintance's house next to an open field and wooded area, so that any "ability to recover the [bag] depended entirely upon fate and the absence of inquisitive [and acquisitive] passers-by"); United States v. Lewis, 227 F.Supp. 433, 436 (S.D.N.Y.1964) (package abandoned when defendant threw it out of apartment window into common courtyard at rear of multi-unit apartment building).

An inference of an intent on Straw's part to abandon the briefcase properly could be drawn from his throwing it into the back yard of his family's home. ⁷ The judge implicitly found an abandonment, and this he could permissibly do, as there is no rule of law that makes abandonment within the curtilage an oxymoron.

In United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 9, 97 S.Ct. at 2482, the Court said: "Our fundamental inquiry in considering Fourth Amendment issues is whether or not a search or seizure is reasonable under all the circumstances." Here, an inference of an intent to abandon the briefcase is reasonably supported by the circumstances of this case. It is not reasonable that a person has an expectation of privacy in a briefcase he pitches out the window as the police came in the front door. The "expectation"--more a hope--is that the briefcase won't be noticed. It would be obvious to any officer that the briefcase contained contraband. Moreover, in the circumstances of the arrest (assault with intent to murder), the content of the briefcase might even be dangerous. The police are entitled to make an on-the-spot inspection to check and secure potentially dangerous contents (i.e., ammunition, acid, explosives, or other dangerous instrumentality).

Judgment affirmed.

LAURENCE, Justice, dissenting.

United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977), is not in my view as flexible or attenuated as it appears to the majority. Despite Straw's manifest guilt and exemplary police performance in every other respect, I conclude that the clear prohibition of that still-viable authority was violated by the warrantless search of Straw's briefcase. Under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution as applied in Chadwick, law enforcement officers may not, without a valid search warrant, examine the interior of an arrestee's closed container that is seized at the time and scene of his arrest but is not in his immediate possession, control, or reach, once they have reduced that container to their exclusive control. In the absence of circumstances constituting one of the limited exceptions to the warrant requirement--none of which obtains here--the additional intrusion by warrantless search is unreasonable. Such a search is invalid even though the police have probable cause to believe that the container holds incriminating evidence and could, in all probability, eventually obtain a warrant to search and examine those contents. Id. at 13, 15-16, 97 S.Ct. at 2484-2485, 2485-2486. The precedent of Chadwick controls this case and mandates reversal. Its proper application to this otherwise righteous prosecution underscores the fundamental principle that law enforcement officers should ever bear in mind: Always get a warrant unless it is clearly dangerous or impracticable to do so.

Seizure of the briefcase. The propriety of the police seizure of the briefcase, to forestall its appropriation by Straw's family, appears to have caused the judge to overlook a critical fact: the exigency of potential loss or destruction of the evidence ceased as soon as the police picked up the briefcase and thereafter effectively controlled it. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 15, 97 S.Ct. at 2485-86. ¹ Seizure is distinguishable from and does not legitimize the subsequent search. By placing personal effects inside a closed container, which he attempted to dispose of not on property accessible to the public but on protected premises within the enclosed curtilage of his family's house, Straw manifested an intention that its contents remain free of public examination. Id. at 11, 97 S.Ct. at 2483-2484. Straw's principal privacy interest in the briefcase was not in the exterior container itself (which was exposed to public view), but rather in its locked contents. A search of the interior of the briefcase represented a far greater...