Commonwealth v. Meneus, SJC–12105

• Decision Date: 11 January 2017
• Docket Number: SJC–12105
• Citation: 476 Mass. 231,66 N.E.3d 1019
• Parties: Commonwealth v. McGregory Meneus.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

476 Mass. 231

66 N.E.3d 1019

Commonwealth

v.McGregory Meneus.

SJC–12105

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex..

Argued September 8, 2016

Decided January 11, 2017

David Gerson for the defendant.

Randall F. Maas , Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

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

HINES, J.

After a jury-waived trial in the Cambridge District Court, the defendant was convicted of various firearms charges. The firearm was discovered after the defendant and a group of young black males were stopped by Cambridge police officers to investigate a report of shots fired at a vehicle. The defendant filed a motion to suppress the firearm, claiming that the police lacked reasonable suspicion for the stop. The motion judge denied the motion, as well as a motion for reconsideration thereof filed in light of our decisions in Commonwealth v. Martin, 457 Mass. 14, 927 N.E.2d 432 (2010), and Commonwealth v. Narcisse, 457 Mass. 1, 927 N.E.2d 439 (2010).¹ The defendant appealed from his convictions and the Appeals Court affirmed in an unpublished memorandum and order issued pursuant to its rule 1:28. We allowed the defendant's application for further appellate review. We conclude that the police lacked reasonable suspicion for the stop and that the denial of the motion to suppress was error. Therefore, we vacate the conviction and remand for a new trial.

Background. We summarize the facts as found by the motion judge, supplemented by uncontroverted evidence drawn from the record of the suppression hearing and evidence that was implicitly credited by the judge.² Commonwealth v. Melo, 472 Mass. 278, 286, 34 N.E.3d 289 (2015).

In the late evening hours of April 29, 2006, Debra Santos reported to police that a gunshot struck her vehicle as she was driving on Windsor Street in Cambridge. At approximately 10:50 P.M. , Cambridge police officers Janie Munro and David Porter met Santos at the intersection of Windsor and Washington Streets, near the location where the shots allegedly were fired. Santos told the police that she heard a loud noise that she believed was a gunshot and that immediately thereafter she saw a group of young black males run into the courtyard of the Washington Elms housing complex. She did not indicate to the police that this group was involved in the shooting at her vehicle, and she provided no additional descriptive information about the individuals she had seen running into the courtyard.

While speaking to Santos, Officer Munro observed a group of young black males who were standing on a sidewalk near the Washington Street entrance to the housing complex. The group was "[l]iterally right around the corner" from where Santos had stopped after hearing what she believed to be gunshots. Officer Munro's attention was drawn to the group by one of the males who "st [u]ck his head outside [of the courtyard] and st[u]ck his head back inside." The officers drove their cruiser to where the group was standing and approached the group on foot. The defendant, one of five or six young black males in the group, was wearing a black bomber jacket with a visibly distinctive orange lining. The officers asked if anyone had information about gunshots being fired in the area. They denied any knowledge of a shooting.

After questioning the group, the officers requested permission to pat frisk them for "officer safety." At the time of this request, the police officers had had no prior interaction with any of the young men in the group and no information that anyone previously had been involved in criminal activity. The judge made no finding that the defendant or anyone else in the group engaged in suspicious or potentially threatening conduct toward the police at any time during the encounter. Up until the request to pat frisk the group, the tone had been conversational. But thereafter, the young men expressed their displeasure with the stop and with being asked to submit to a patfrisk. Some of them submitted to the officers' request but they were "unhappy" about it. The judge made no finding that the defendant consented to the patfrisk.

The defendant became argumentative when the police began pat frisking some members of the group, and he attempted to terminate the encounter by walking away. As the defendant "started moving backwards" away from the group, one of the officers started pursuing him. The defendant turned and began running away from the area. The officers yelled, "Cambridge police, stop," and pursued the defendant into the housing complex. The defendant ignored the order to stop and continued running. During the chase, the defendant passed Santos, who grabbed his clothing, slowing his flight from the area. After a brief chase, the police eventually caught up to the defendant on Windsor Street where he was "assisted to the ground" by Officer Porter. As the defendant was being brought to his feet, the officers discovered a firearm that had been underneath his body. Although Santos remained on the scene while the police investigated the group, the police did not ask if she could identify anyone as being in the group of young men she observed running into the courtyard after hearing the gunshots.

The judge explicitly credited Officer Munro's testimony that, at the time the police initiated the pursuit of the defendant into the courtyard, she had "no information" that the defendant was a suspect in the shots fired call or any other crime. Consistent with this finding, Officer Porter acknowledged that, at the time of the request to pat frisk the group, he had no information implicating the defendant or any of the other young black males in criminal activity. Officer Porter agreed that at the time of the pursuit, the defendant was not a suspect in a crime and that he was merely "a person in question."

Discussion. 1. 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." Commonwealth v. Wilson, 441 Mass. 390, 393, 805 N.E.2d 968 (2004). However, "[w]e review independently the application of constitutional principles to the facts found." Id. The Commonwealth bears the burden of demonstrating that the actions of the police officers were within constitutional limits.

Commonwealth v. DePeiza, 449 Mass. 367, 369, 868 N.E.2d 90 (2007).

The analysis of the constitutional propriety of the police officers' conduct focuses on two questions: (1) whether and when the defendant was seized in a constitutional sense; and (2) whether the facts known to the police at the time of the seizure establish reasonable suspicion that the defendant had committed, was committing, or was about to commit a crime. Commonwealth v. Depina, 456 Mass. 238, 241–242, 922 N.E.2d 778 (2010). The defendant argues that the police effected a seizure of his person when they manifested their intent to pat frisk the group and, at that moment, the police lacked reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. The Commonwealth counters that the seizure occurred when the police commanded the defendant to stop and, at that point, the information known to the police justified their inquiry.

2. The seizure. A person is seized under art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights "only if, in view of all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave." Commonwealth v. Barros, 435 Mass. 171, 173–174, 755 N.E.2d 740, (2001), quoting United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980). The judge's ruling on the motion to suppress did not specifically identify the moment at which the defendant was seized. We are persuaded, however, that a seizure for constitutional purposes occurred when one of the police officers advanced toward the defendant as he turned to leave the area in an apparent attempt to avoid an imminent patfrisk.

As the judge found, the young men in the group initially were cooperative with the police in responding to the inquiry about the alleged shooting. Their willingness to cooperate changed, however, when the police requested permission to pat frisk the group "for officer safety." Some members of the group eventually acquiesced to the patfrisk request, albeit reluctantly. The defendant, however, remained defiant and "argumentative" during the encounter, never manifesting any intent to submit to the patfrisk. Observing that the police were intent on pat frisking the group, the defendant attempted to leave the scene. The police officer's response, pursuing the defendant as he backed away, communicated unequivocally that refusing to submit to the "request" was not an option. That act added a "compulsory dimension" to the encounter, transforming it from consensual to obligatory. See Barros, 435 Mass. at 174, 755 N.E.2d 740. Thus, where the police officer's conduct impeded the defendant's freedom of movement, he was seized for constitutional purposes, as "a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave" at that point in the encounter. Id. at 175–176, 755 N.E.2d 740.

3. Reasonable suspicion. Once a seizure has occurred, the issue for the court is "whether the stop was based on an officer's reasonable suspicion that the person was committing, had committed, or was about to commit a crime." Commonwealth v. Martin, 467 Mass. 291, 303, 4 N.E.3d 1236 (2014). "That suspicion must be grounded in ‘specific, articulable facts and reasonable inferences [drawn] therefrom’ rather than on a ‘hunch.’ " DePeiza, 449 Mass. at 371, 868 N.E.2d 90, quoting Commonwealth v. Scott, 440 Mass. 642, 646, 801 N.E.2d 233 (2004). Reasonable suspicion is measured by an objective standard, Commonwealth v. Mercado, 422 Mass. 367, 369, 663 N.E.2d 243 (1996) and the totality of the facts on which the...