Commonwealth v. Soriano-Lara

• Decision Date: 07 May 2021
• Docket Number: No. 19-P-1311,19-P-1311
• Citation: 168 N.E.3d 1130,99 Mass.App.Ct. 525
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. Johan SORIANO-LARA.
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

99 Mass.App.Ct. 525

168 N.E.3d 1130

COMMONWEALTH

v.Johan SORIANO-LARA.

No. 19-P-1311

Appeals Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Argued March 4, 2021.

Decided May 7, 2021.

Robert L. Sheketoff, Boston, for the defendant.

Ian MacLean, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Present: Milkey, Kinder, & Sacks, JJ.

SACKS, J.

The defendant appeals from a Superior Court judge's order denying a motion to suppress all evidence obtained during a traffic stop of the vehicle the defendant was driving. The defendant argues, among other things, that the stop was unreasonably prolonged, so that any evidence obtained after the stop should have ended must be suppressed as the fruit of a poisonous tree. We agree and therefore reverse.

Background. We summarize the judge's pertinent findings of fact, supplementing with additional facts from testimony that the judge explicitly or implicitly credited. See 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).

Trooper James Farrell has served as a State trooper for approximately twenty-five years and has extensive, particularized training in narcotics enforcement, including training on identifying hidden compartments in motor vehicles. He has made more than 250 arrests for drug-related offenses, including approximately thirty arrests that involved identifying hidden compartments during a motor vehicle stop.

At approximately 2:55 P.M. on September 13, 2016, Farrell was on uniformed patrol on Route 1A in Lynn.¹ As he approached a left-turn-only lane, Farrell noticed that a vehicle traveling in front of him, a Volvo XC-90 with Massachusetts license plates, moved from a travel lane into the left-turn-only lane without first signaling. After both vehicles turned left onto a side street, Farrell pulled the Volvo over.

Farrell approached the Volvo and observed two occupants in the front seats. Farrell asked the driver, later identified as the defendant, for his license and registration. The defendant provided a Rhode Island driver's license. The passenger stated that her mother owned the vehicle and that she (the passenger) regularly drove it. The vehicle's registration indicated that it was registered to a third party in Foxborough.

The Rhode Island license that the defendant handed to Farrell was for a Carlos Pina-Garay and listed a residential address in Cranston, Rhode Island. However, when Farrell asked the defendant where he lived, he replied, "Providence." Farrell observed that both the defendant and the passenger appeared to be very nervous; they were breathing heavily and their carotid arteries were visibly pulsing in their necks.

Farrell returned to his cruiser and determined that the proffered license was valid and active, that the registration was active, and that the Volvo had not been reported stolen. However, based on his observations, Farrell decided to call for backup. In addition to the apparent discrepancy in the residence information provided by the defendant,² Farrell had observed that when the defendant opened his wallet to retrieve his license, the wallet contained "religious icons, small pictures of saints." Moreover, there was a set of rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirror. Farrell testified that, based on his training and experience, "religious icons and good luck symbols, in and of themselves may not mean anything, but combined with all other indicators could be a[n] indicator of criminal activity."³

Farrell then returned to the Volvo⁴ and asked the defendant where he was coming from. The defendant replied that he was coming from an auto repair shop where a friend had just repaired his brakes. In response to further questioning by Farrell, the defendant could not provide the name of the shop, its location, or his friend's name. Believing the defendant to be lying, Farrell then inspected the Volvo's wheel lug nuts and rims and observed that they were covered in dust, which was inconsistent with recent brake work. Thereafter, Farrell again asked the defendant where he lived, to which the defendant replied, "Cranston." Farrell pointed out that the defendant had initially said he lived in Providence. The defendant replied that Providence and Cranston were the same place.

At that time, Farrell observed significant wear on the center console panel near the temperature controls. He further observed that a carpeted panel around the center console area had been pulled out of place. On a previous occasion, Farrell had located a hidden compartment containing drugs in that exact location in a Volvo XC-90.

Farrell observed that the defendant was becoming agitated. By this time, a backup trooper had arrived, and Farrell asked the defendant to step out of the Volvo. The defendant complied, and Farrell moved him to behind the Volvo, where the defendant began yelling out in Spanish to the passenger. Farrell asked the defendant if he could identify any streets around his proffered license address in Cranston, but the defendant was unable to do so.⁵ Farrell asked his age and the defendant said he was thirty-four, whereas the proffered license indicated that the holder was thirty-two. The defendant was also asked his social security number and did not answer. At that point, Farrell placed the defendant in the rear of his cruiser and then asked the passenger to step out of the Volvo, which she did.

Farrell then returned to the Volvo's center console, pulled on the out-of-place carpeted piece, and uncovered a hidden compartment containing a metal box. Farrell opened the box and found a bundle of currency and a substance later identified as cocaine. Farrell arrested both the defendant and the passenger.

After the motion judge denied the defendant's motion to suppress, the defendant entered a conditional guilty plea to an indictment for cocaine trafficking; an indictment for money laundering was dismissed at the Commonwealth's request. See Mass. R. Crim. P. 12 (b) (6), as appearing in 482 Mass. 1499 (2019). The defendant appealed.

Discussion. We accept the judge's subsidiary findings unless clearly erroneous, see Commonwealth v. White, 374 Mass. 132, 137, 371 N.E.2d 777 (1977), aff'd by an equally divided Court, 439 U.S. 280, 99 S.Ct. 712, 58 L.Ed.2d 519 (1978), and we make an "independent determination on the correctness of the judge's application of constitutional principles to the facts as found" (quotation and citation omitted), Commonwealth v. Haas, 373 Mass. 545, 550, 369 N.E.2d 692 (1977), S.C., 398 Mass. 806, 501 N.E.2d 1154 (1986).

We will assume without deciding that the traffic stop was valid at its inception⁶ and proceed directly to the question whether the stop was unreasonably prolonged. "[T]he tolerable duration of police inquiries in the traffic-stop context is determined by the seizure's ‘mission’ to address the traffic violation that warranted the stop." Commonwealth v. Cordero, 477 Mass. 237, 241, 74 N.E.3d 1282 (2017), quoting Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 354, 135 S.Ct. 1609, 191 L.Ed.2d 492 (2015). "Police authority to seize an individual ends ‘when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are -- or reasonably should have been -- completed’ " (emphasis added). Cordero, supra, at 242, 74 N.E.3d 1282, quoting Rodriguez, supra. The Supreme Judicial Court recently summarized the principles governing this issue as follows:

"A valid investigatory stop cannot last longer than reasonably necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop. The scope of a stop may only extend beyond its initial purpose if the officer is confronted with facts giving rise to a reasonable suspicion that further criminal conduct is afoot. Where an officer conducts an uneventful threshold inquiry giving rise to no further suspicion of criminal activity, he may not prolong the detention or expand the inquiry" (quotations and citations omitted).

Commonwealth v. Tavares, 482 Mass. 694, 703, 126 N.E.3d 981 (2019).

Here, based on Farrell's initial conversation with the Volvo's occupants, he knew that there was an apparent discrepancy between the defendant's claimed residence in Providence and the proffered license's listing of a Cranston address, calling into some question the defendant's true identity.⁷ The judge reasoned that this information, "[c]oupled with the fact that the vehicle's registration was not in either of the defendants’ names and their nervous demeanors and physical manifestations, [gave Farrell] reasonable suspicion that [the defendant] was lying about his identity." Thus, the judge reasoned, "Farrell was justified in briefly further detaining [the defendant and the passenger] and expanding the scope of his investigation to confirm the identity of the driver."⁸

Farrell was of course justified in returning to his cruiser to try to verify the information he had received. Upon doing so, Farrell learned that the license was valid, the registration was valid, and the Volvo had not been reported stolen.⁹ Farrell then approached the Volvo for a second time.

We agree that Farrell still had reason to question the defendant further in order to ascertain his identity and address so that Farrell could issue him a citation for the traffic violation. The problem is that Farrell did not do so. Instead, he proceeded to question the defendant about where the defendant was coming from. Upon hearing the defendant's reply -- that he was coming from a repair shop where a friend had performed brake work on the Volvo -- Farrell continued to question the defendant about the name of the shop, the address of the shop, and the name of the friend who had performed the work. Further, believing that the defendant's inability to answer these questions meant he was lying, Farrell proceeded to inspect the Volvo's four wheels, to see if their rims or lug nuts showed any signs of recent work. Finding no such signs, Farrell resumed the questioning. Only at this point did Farrell turn back to questions that touched on the defendant's identity by asking,...