Commonwealth v. Cordero, SJC-12210

• Citation: 477 Mass. 237,74 N.E.3d 1282
• Decision Date: 01 June 2017
• Docket Number: SJC-12210
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Gabriel CORDERO.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

477 Mass. 237

74 N.E.3d 1282

COMMONWEALTH

v.Gabriel CORDERO.

SJC-12210

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Berkshire..

Argued February 14, 2017.

Decided June 1, 2017.

Merritt Schnipper for the defendant.

Joseph G.A. Coliflores, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: Gants, C.J., Lenk, Hines, Gaziano, Lowy, & Budd, JJ.

GAZIANO, J.

We address in this case the authority of a police officer to prolong a routine traffic stop in order to investigate suspected, unrelated criminal activity. The defendant argues that State police troopers and local police officers unreasonably detained him beyond the time required to accomplish the purposes of a traffic stop, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, and thus that evidence seized from the trunk of his vehicle must be suppressed. The Commonwealth contends, in contrast, that an officer is not required to ignore incriminating facts that arise during the traffic stop, and that the facts gave rise to a reasonable suspicion to believe that the defendant was engaged in criminal activity. After a Superior Court judge denied the defendant's motion to suppress, a single justice of this court allowed the defendant's motion for interlocutory review by the Appeals Court, and we allowed the defendant's application for direct appellate review. We conclude that once a police officer has completed the investigation of a defendant's civil traffic violations, and the facts do not give rise to reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, the officer is required to permit the defendant to drive away. Therefore, we reverse the order denying the defendant's motion to suppress.¹

1. Facts . We present the facts as found by the motion judge, supplemented by uncontroverted testimony at the motion hearing. Commonwealth v. Isaiah I ., 448 Mass. 334, 337, 861 N.E.2d 404 (2007), S .C ., 450 Mass. 818, 882 N.E.2d 328 (2008). On the evening of February 19, 2015, at approximately 6:50 P.M. , as State police Trooper Noah Pack left the Massachusetts Turnpike in Lee, he observed a Toyota Camry being driven ahead of him with broken tail and brake lights. He also noticed that the vehicle's windows were illegally tinted. Pack did not immediately stop the vehicle. Rather, he followed it while driving along Route 20, through Lee and Lenox, for approximately five miles.

While he followed the vehicle, Pack used his onboard computer to determine that the vehicle was owned by and registered to the defendant. He also learned that the defendant's driver's license was current and valid and that the vehicle was properly registered, inspected, and insured. Further, he obtained a photograph and other biographical information of the defendant, and learned that there were no warrants for the defendant's arrest and that the defendant had no pending criminal charges. Pack also discovered that the defendant lived in Holyoke,² had been convicted of charges of firearms violations, drug offenses, and assault and battery on a police officer, and had been incarcerated for the drug-related convictions.

Pack stopped the vehicle, approached the driver's side, and asked the defendant to roll down the window. The trooper observed that the driver appeared to be the person in the Registry of Motor Vehicles photograph and that another man was seated in the passenger seat. Pack asked the defendant for his driver's license and registration.

While the defendant looked for these items, the trooper noticed that he seemed to be "extremely nervous," not making eye contact, stuttering when he answered questions, and offering information unrelated to the stop.³ Pack asked the defendant "what brought him out this way" and "where he was coming from." The defendant answered that he was headed to a chain restaurant "up the road." Pack did not believe this statement because, while he had been following the defendant, they had driven past one such restaurant in Lee, and because the defendant had not specified the location of the restaurant where he was headed. When asked where he was coming from, the defendant said that he had been at his cousin's house "just behind him." Given that Pack had been following the defendant for more than five miles, he also doubted this explanation.

The defendant produced his driver's license but could not locate the vehicle's registration. The trooper asked the passenger for identification, and returned to his cruiser to run a records check on that information. Once inside the cruiser, Pack "called for assistance" and waited in his cruiser until a second trooper arrived "a few minutes later."

After the arrival of a second trooper, Pack returned to the defendant's vehicle "to test the window tint and have a brief conversation with [the defendant]." Proffering some paperwork, the defendant said that the brake light was out because he recently had been in an accident; he asked to get out of his vehicle to look at the tail light. The two went to the rear of the vehicle, where Pack pointed out the damaged lights and tested the vehicle's window tint.

Pack then told the defendant that he was "confused by [the defendant's] travel for the day" and questioned the defendant, who continued to show signs of nervousness, about his travels. In response, the defendant said that he was going to see a friend, but did not provide the friend's name. Pack told the defendant that he suspected the defendant of drug activity and asked for permission to search the vehicle. The defendant said that he did not have any drugs in the vehicle and that "it ain't got to be like that." Pack interpreted this remark as a refusal of consent. He left the defendant standing with the second trooper at the rear of the vehicle and went to question the passenger. When the passenger also showed signs of nervousness and gave a different account of where the two had been that the trooper did not believe, he called over the police radio for a canine to be brought to the location to conduct a drug sniff.

Pack testified that, while they were waiting, the defendant asked the second trooper whether he could sit in the police cruiser to get out of the cold. Pack testified that the second trooper told the defendant that he could do so, but first would be required to submit to a patfrisk and then be handcuffed; the second trooper said that the defendant consented. A frisk of the defendant revealed $1,900 in cash in one of his pockets. After he had been handcuffed and placed in the back of the cruiser, the defendant told the second trooper that there was some marijuana in the glove box. Pack asked for permission to retrieve the marijuana from the vehicle, and did so after the defendant agreed.⁴

Eventually, a Pittsfield police officer arrived on the scene. The officer asked the defendant if he would consent to a search of the trunk. The defendant responded only that he wanted to go home to his children. The officer asked a second time for the defendant's consent to search, and the defendant responded that all he had in his trunk was a plastic bag of clothes. When, for a third time, the officer asked for consent to search the vehicle, according to the officer, the defendant "gave consent for it."

After a search of the vehicle's trunk revealed roughly 2,000 bags of what the officers believed to be heroin, the defendant was placed under arrest. The entire duration of the roadside stop was between forty and forty-five minutes.

The defendant was charged with trafficking in heroin, G. L. c. 94C, § 32E (c ) ; distribution of a class A substance as a subsequent offender, G. L. c. 94C, § 32E (b ) ; motor vehicle lights violations, G. L. c. 90, § 7 ; and nontransparent window obstruction, G. L. c. 90, § 9D. The defendant was arraigned and filed a motion to suppress evidence seized from him during the traffic stop. A Superior Court judge denied the defendant's motion to suppress evidence seized from his vehicle during the traffic stop.

2. Discussion . a. Standard of review . "In reviewing a ruling on a motion to suppress evidence, we accept the judge's subsidiary findings of fact absent clear error and leave to the judge the responsibility of determining the weight and credibility to be given ... testimony presented at the motion hearing.... We review independently the application of constitutional principles to the facts found" (quotations and citations omitted). Commonwealth v. Amado , 474 Mass. 147, 151, 48 N.E.3d 414 (2016). See Commonwealth v. Cassino , 474 Mass. 85, 88, 48 N.E.3d 27 (2016) ("We make an independent determination of the correctness of the judge's application of constitutional principles" [quotations and citation omitted] ).

b. Permissible bounds of a routine traffic stop . A routine traffic stop may not last longer than "reasonably necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop" (citation omitted). Amado , 474 Mass. at 151, 48 N.E.3d 414. "It is well settled that a police inquiry in a routine traffic stop must end [when the purpose of the stop is accomplished] unless the police have grounds for inferring that ‘either the operator or his passengers were involved in the commission of a crime ... or engaged in other suspicious conduct’ " (citation omitted).

Commonwealth v. Torres , 424 Mass. 153, 158, 674 N.E.2d 638 (1997). See Commonwealth v. Gonsalves , 429 Mass. 658, 663, 711 N.E.2d 108 (1999) ("Citizens do not expect that police officers handling a routine traffic violation will engage ... in stalling tactics, obfuscation, strained conversation, or unjustified exit orders, to prolong the seizure in the hope that, sooner or later, the stop might yield up some evidence of an arrestable crime").

In Rodriguez v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, 135 S.Ct. 1609, 1614, 191 L.Ed.2d 492 (2015), the United States Supreme Court held that "the tolerable duration of police inquiries in the traffic-stop context is determined by the seizure's ‘mission’ to address the traffic violation...