Opinion
No. 15–P–1650.
11-07-2016
COMMONWEALTH v. Dave DOLAN (and 104 companion cases).
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER PURSUANT TO RULE 1:28
Just before midnight on May 26, 2014, a Charlton police officer stopped a vehicle based on a “be on the lookout” broadcast he had received related to an armed home invasion in the adjacent town of Southbridge. The defendants were the four occupants of the car. Additional officers from Charlton, Southbridge, and the State police arrived at the scene of the stop, and one of the victims of the home invasion was brought for a showup identification. After the victim identified two of the defendants, all four were arrested and pat frisked. The pat-frisks did not turn up any weapons. Before the defendants were taken to the police station, the police “conducted a brief search of the passenger area of the vehicle [and] also searched the trunk.” Through this initial search, they found a folding knife, a bulletproof vest, an expandable baton, and pepper spray. Directly after the car was towed to the Southbridge police station, the police conducted a more thorough search of it, during which they found two firearms lodged under the hood of the car. A Superior Court judge allowed the defendants' motions to suppress the guns on the ground that even though the police had probable cause to search the car for weapons, they had no valid justification for not obtaining a search warrant once the car had been brought back to the station. Although the judge acknowledged that “[t]he delay may very well have been justified for safety and convenience reasons,” she concluded that “once the Southbridge Police had custody and control of the [car], the mobility of the vehicle that justifies a warrantless search was gone .” Before us now is the Commonwealth's interlocutory appeal of the allowance of the motion to suppress. We reverse.
Initially, the police sought to characterize the search as an inventory search. The Commonwealth has since abandoned that line of argument. The police conceded at the motion to suppress hearing that the search was for evidence, not to inventory the contents of the vehicle and that searching under the hood of the car in any event went beyond the scope of searches allowed by the town's inventory search policy.
The underlying facts, as found by the judge, are not in dispute. Nor do the defendants challenge the judge's subsidiary ruling that the police had probable cause to search the vehicle after the defendants had been arrested. The sole question presented is whether the search was conducted pursuant to a recognized exception to the requirement of a search warrant. Our “duty is to make an independent determination of the correctness of the judge's application of constitutional principles to the facts as found.” Commonwealth v. Lawson, 79 Mass.App.Ct. 322, 323 (2011) (quotation omitted).
One defendant argues that while there was probable cause to conduct the initial search at the site of the stop, after that search revealed no firearms, there was no probable cause to conduct the fuller search back at the police station (especially with regard to the area under the hood of the car, where one would not expect to find guns hidden). The upshot of this argument is that the police could not have obtained a valid search warrant for the station search even had they sought one. We are unpersuaded. See Commonwealth v. Gouse, 461 Mass. 787, 792–794 (2012).
Case law interpreting both Federal and State constitutional provisions has long recognized an “automobile exception” to the search warrant rule. Commonwealth v. Motta, 424 Mass. 117, 122–125 (1997), and cases cited. Thus, where police have made a lawful stop of a vehicle on a public way, they may conduct a search of that vehicle without a warrant so long as there is, as there was here, probable cause. Moreover, such a “warrantless search continues to be permissible if the police, in the interest of their safety, wait to search a vehicle until after it has been seized and secured and removed to the safe environs of the police station.” Commonwealth v. Agosto, 428 Mass. 31, 34 (1998), citing Commonwealth v. Markou, 391 Mass. 27, 29–30 (1984). The cases recognize “the practical good sense of treating a prompt police station search as an extension of the street search which was or could have been made.” Commonwealth v. Lara, 39 Mass.App.Ct. 546, 548 (1995).
Although such cases were based initially on the “inherent mobility” of automobiles, they have incorporated other justifications as well, such as the reduced expectation of privacy in cars. Commonwealth v. Motta, 424 Mass. 117, 122–123 (1997).
As this quote recognizes, the propriety of a warrantless search at the station house does not depend on whether there was a preliminary search at the location of the stop.
The automobile exception is not without limit, and the cases recognize that a warrantless search of an automobile taken back to the station may be invalid if the police unreasonably delay the search. See Commonwealth v. Motta, supra at 125 (“unreasonable delay at the police station will render invalid an otherwise valid search”). In the case before us, the judge found that the station house search was conducted at the time the car was brought to the station, and that it occurred “within approximately an hour following the initial stop” (notwithstanding all that occurred between the initial stop and the transport of the car to the station). As a matter of law, there was no unreasonable delay here. Contrast Commonwealth v. Agosto, supra at 35 (delay of twenty-one days held unreasonable). In sum, there was no constitutional infirmity in the warrantless search, and the judge therefore erred in allowing the motions to suppress.
Notably, the judge herself did not find that the police unreasonably delayed their search. Instead, pointing to language in Commonwealth v. Eggleston, 453 Mass. 554, 560 (2009), the judge appears to have reasoned that the delay must not only have been reasonable in length, but additionally had to be “motivated by ‘reasonable investigative considerations.’ “ In other words, according to the judge, delays caused by considerations of safety and convenience would not be enough, even if they were short in duration. She focused on the absence of any evidence that the delay “would produce any additional [investigative] benefit.” We do not view Eggleston as supporting the judge's reasoning, at least in the context of this case. In Eggleston, the delay at issue occurred prior to the police's having seized the car, and the issue was whether the police delayed seeking a search warrant in order to take advantage of the automobile exception. No such considerations apply here.