Opinion
10-P-1958
05-07-2012
COMMONWEALTH v. JUSTIN DEPROSPO.
NOTICE: Decisions issued by the Appeals Court pursuant to its rule 1:28 are primarily addressed to the parties and, therefore, may not fully address the facts of the case or the panel's decisional rationale. Moreover, rule 1:28 decisions are not circulated to the entire court and, therefore, represent only the views of the panel that decided the case. A summary decision pursuant to rule 1:28, issued after February 25, 2008, may be cited for its persuasive value but, because of the limitations noted above, not as binding precedent.
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 1:28
The defendant was convicted of several drug-related offenses based on evidence procured from his hotel room. He appeals the denial of his motion to suppress. We affirm.
1. Background. We present the facts as found by the motion judge. The police arrived at the hotel in response to a call for medical assistance for a Mr. Mann. The hotel manager pointed out the defendant, who was standing in the lobby, and the manager indicated that the defendant had arrived at the hotel with Mr. Mann. After the officers attended to him, they sought out the defendant at his hotel room.
An officer asked the defendant whether he knew if Mr. Mann had any medical conditions or was on a certain medication so that they could try to help him. The defendant replied, '[I]f he's on anything it's in his backpack,' and pointed to a backpack on one of the tables. Officer Hart then unzipped the front pocket of the backpack and observed two clear baggies containing cocaine and marijuana. As the officer peered inside the backpack, the defendant volunteered that Mr. Mann may have ingested cocaine and marijuana earlier that morning.
Officer Hart then returned to the eighth floor stairwell. However, paramedics had already taken Mr. Mann to the hospital. At that point, hotel management asked Officer Hart to accompany them to the defendant's room. The manager requested that the officer stand outside of the room while the defendant was asked to leave the hotel. The defendant agreed to pack up and leave.
Once finished documenting the scene on the eighth floor, the three officers returned to the defendant's room to update the defendant about his friend's condition. When the officers arrived, they knocked on the door and, when the defendant opened it, asked if they could enter and speak about his friend. The defendant agreed and invited them into the room. The door shut behind the officers as they entered the room and stood by the bed.
Officer Collins then asked the defendant if any of Mr. Mann's belongings were still in the room. The defendant responded that there were not, and that all the remaining items were his own. The defendant told the police that he had some hypodermic syringes that he used to take steroids. Officer Collins asked where the needles were and the defendant responded that they were in his duffel bag, pointing to a black duffel bag on the floor containing several needles.
Officer Collins then asked whether there were any steroids in the room. The defendant answered that he had steroids in his backpack in the closet. Officer Collins asked if he could check the backpack, to which the defendant replied that he could, pointing to the closet. Officer Collins then retrieved the backpack from the closet, unzipped the top pocket and saw several glass vials and syringes containing a brown liquid that he recognized from his training as steroids.
The defendant was placed under arrest. He requested that the officers bring his belongings with them to the police station. Detective MacEwen and Officer Collins carried the defendant's belongings -- the backpack retrieved from the closet, the duffle bag from the floor of the room, as well as a laptop computer, a ledger and a wallet -- out of the room and to the station. After booking, the defendant was given his Miranda warnings. At the police station, officers inventoried his belongings pursuant to written departmental policy. Inside the bags, officers recovered cocaine, methylenedioxy methamphetamine ('ecstacy'), morphine, marijuana, amphetamines, Oxycontin, Trazadone, and $1,115 in cash.
2. Discussion. Defendant contends that the evidence taken from his hotel room is inadmissible because it resulted from a custodial interrogation in which he was not read his Miranda rights. Custodial interrogation is 'questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in a significant way.' Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966). 'In assessing whether a defendant was in 'custody' for purposes of the Miranda requirements, '[t]he crucial question is whether, considering all the circumstances, a reasonable person in the defendant's position would have believed that he was in custody . . . . Thus, if the defendant reasonably believed that he was not free to leave, the interrogation occurred while the defendant was in custody, and Miranda warnings were required." Commonwealth v. Hilton, 443 Mass. 597, 609 (2005), quoting from Commonwealth v. Damiano, 422 Mass. 10, 13 (1996).
We review under the familiar standard. See Commonwealth v. Lahey, 80 Mass. App. Ct. 606, 609 (2011).
Factors relevant to this inquiry include: '(1) the place of the interrogation; (2) whether the officers have conveyed to the person being questioned any belief or opinion that the person is a suspect; (3) the nature of the interrogation, including whether the interview was aggressive or, instead, informal . . .; and (4) whether, at the time the incriminating statement was made, the suspect was free to end the interview by leaving the locus of the interrogation or by asking the interrogator to leave, as evidenced by whether the interview ended with [the defendant's] arrest.' Ibid., citing Commonwealth v. Groome, 435 Mass. 201, 211-212 (2001).
At no point did the officers state or imply that the defendant was the subject of a criminal investigation. The motion judge found, based on the officers' testimony, that the defendant invited the officers into his room on his own volition, and could have asked them to leave at any time. The motion judge was well within her discretion to conclude that the police entered the room on amicable terms and that Deprospo voluntarily revealed that he used steroids and had both steroids and syringes with him in the room. Once Deprospo admitted to having steroids and allowed Officer Collins to retrieve them from his bags, the police had probable cause to arrest. The motion judge's critical findings are supported. The motion to suppress was properly denied.
The issue of whether the police were entitled to inventory the contents of the defendant's bag was not raised on appeal.
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Judgments affirmed.
By the Court (Mills, Meade & Rubin, JJ.),