Commonwealth v. Fredericq
Commonwealth v. Fredericq
Opinion of the Court
**71After the defendant was indicted by a grand jury for trafficking cocaine in violation of G. L. c. 94C, § 32E (b ), he moved to suppress the cocaine and cash seized during a warrantless search of his residence on the third floor of a multiunit house, commencing the nearly decade-long procedural journey that brought this case to our doorstep. The Superior Court judge who last ruled on this motion held that the cocaine and cash must be suppressed, concluding that they were the fruits of the unlawful police tracking of a cellular telephone through which the police obtained cell site location information (CLSI) without a search warrant based on probable cause.
*171We conclude that the defendant has standing to challenge the Commonwealth's warrantless CSLI search because, by monitoring the telephone's CSLI, the police effectively monitored the movement of a vehicle in which he was a passenger. We further conclude that, under the circumstances here, the seizure of the cocaine and cash was the direct result of information obtained from the illegal CSLI search; that, under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine of the exclusionary rule, it is irrelevant whether the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the crawl space where the cocaine was found; and that the Commonwealth has failed to meet its burden of proving that the seizure was sufficiently attenuated from the illegal search such that it should not be deemed a forbidden fruit of the poisonous tree. Specifically, we conclude that the defendant's consent to a search of his residence did not purge the seizure from the taint of the illegal CSLI search, where the consent was obtained through the use of information obtained from that search. For these reasons and as discussed more fully infra, we affirm the order granting the defendant's **72motion to suppress.
Background. The complex procedural history of this case is ably described in the Appeals Court opinion. Commonwealth v. Fredericq,
We summarize the facts as found by the third motion judge, who relied on the facts found by the first two motion judges at the prior evidentiary hearings. We accept the judges' subsidiary findings of fact, which we do not find to be clearly erroneous. See Commonwealth v. Scott,
On June 26, 2008, a grand jury indicted Josener Dorisca for the murder of Bensney Toussaint, and a warrant issued for Dorisca's arrest. In attempting to locate Dorisca, Detective Kenneth Williams of the Brockton police department spoke with Dorisca's best friend, Cassio Vertil.
Williams recognized Cassio from a videotape recorded months before the homicide that showed Cassio and another person discussing the movement of drugs *172from Florida to Massachusetts. Williams testified that "the tape clearly displays [Cassio] ... engaged in what seems to be very lucrative drug dealings ... And bragging and boasting of going to Florida to obtain more drugs. And they're flashing tens of thousands of dollars on this tape."
On July 2, 2008, Williams spoke with Cassio's brother, Kennel, **73who said that Cassio was now using a different cellular telephone and provided Williams with the new telephone number. Kennel also stated that Cassio was traveling to New York in a brown Toyota RAV-4 motor vehicle with individuals nicknamed "Paco" and "Paquito." Williams knew that Paco was the defendant in this case and that Paquito was Stephen Allonce. State troopers also learned from a confidential informant that Cassio was traveling to Florida in the brown Toyota to purchase narcotics. There was little information offered at the hearings regarding the reliability or veracity of this confidential informant. State police Trooper Eric Telford testified that he had not used this informant in the past, but Williams characterized the informant as "reliable," without explaining the basis of this characterization.
That same day, July 2, the Commonwealth sought and obtained a court order, pursuant to
On July 2, the cellular service provider furnished Williams with records showing that the defendant was the subscriber for this cellular telephone, and that the defendant resided in an apartment in Brockton (residence). The cellular service provider used "ping" technology to send radio signals to the cellular phone and record the approximate location of the cell sites or cell towers with which the telephone communicated, and sent the resulting CSLI records by e-mail to Williams. Those records indicated that the telephone had traveled south from Randolph and eventually had come to a stop in Sunrise, Florida.
Williams then requested the assistance of the local police in Florida, who used the CSLI data to track down the brown Toyota vehicle and observed Cassio, the defendant, and Allonce staying together at a motel. The local police did not identify any of the men as Dorisca.
**74On July 7, 2008, the CSLI records indicated that the cellular telephone was traveling north toward Massachusetts. In response, the police began surveillance at the defendant's residence and also at Cassio's home in Randolph. At approximately 2:15 P.M. on July 8, the police observed the brown Toyota vehicle parked at the defendant's residence and saw Cassio standing outside with another person who appeared to match the description of Dorisca. Cassio then drove away in the vehicle with Allonce as a passenger. Two State police troopers followed them and stopped the vehicle after it had traveled a few blocks; they observed that the vehicle contained clothing, luggage, and a cooler. Cassio told the troopers that he had just left Paco's house and was heading to the police station *173in Brockton to meet with Williams regarding the homicide. Cassio and Allonce then drove to the Brockton police station; the last report of the cellular service provider regarding the cellular telephone's location at approximately 3:47 P.M. that day indicated that the telephone was located inside the vehicle at the Brockton police station.
The State police troopers returned to the residence to look for Dorisca and speak to the defendant. After approaching the building, they encountered two residents of the first-floor apartment. The troopers stated that they were looking for a homicide suspect, and the residents consented to a search of their unit. After the troopers looked through the unit, they left through a back door into a rear entry area and walked up the stairs to the second floor. The resident of that unit also consented to a search of her unit. The troopers then continued up the rear stairway to the third floor, which led to an open landing area with several doors that led to two bedrooms, a storage area, and a crawl space. All but one of the doors were open.
The troopers knocked on the closed door and the defendant answered, identifying himself as "Paco." He stated that he resided in one of the third-floor bedrooms and paid $ 400 per month in rent to use that space. Trooper Francis Walls informed the defendant that police were investigating a homicide and that the murder suspect might be in the building. He also said that the investigation involved illegal narcotics.
Telford advised the defendant of his Miranda rights and explained that they were looking for a homicide suspect, and had information that the defendant "had just gone down to Florida and purchased a large amount of narcotics and ... [was] possibly storing it there." The defendant said that he had just driven back **75from Florida with some friends, denied possessing drugs, and signed a form giving his consent for a search. During that search, the police found $ 2,200 in cash in the defendant's bedroom and, after the arrival of a narcotics-trained dog, a pillowcase in the attic crawl space across from the defendant's bedroom containing two "bricks" of cocaine. After the defendant was indicted, he moved to suppress the fruits of the search.
The third motion judge determined that the defendant had standing to challenge the CSLI tracking of the cellular telephone because, although the telephone was used by Cassio, the police knew that the defendant was traveling with Cassio, and "[t]hey intended to track the movements of all three occupants of the vehicle because they had information that the purpose of the trip was to obtain cocaine for distribution in Massachusetts." The judge also concluded that the cocaine seized during the search of the defendant's residence "was found as a result of the unlawful electronic tracking," and "[t]he search and seizure was not attenuated from the unlawful tracking by lapse of time, intervening circumstances or by another legitimate police purpose in conducting the search." The judge therefore ruled that the evidence obtained during the search must be suppressed as "fruit of the poisonous tree."
A single justice of this court granted the Commonwealth's motion for an interlocutory appeal and reported the appeal to the Appeals Court pursuant to Mass. R. Crim. P. 15 (a) (2), as appearing in
Discussion. In reviewing a judge's decision on a motion to suppress, we "make an independent determination of the correctness of the judge's application of constitutional principles to the facts as found." Scott,
The police may obtain subscriber information and toll records pursuant to a court order issued under
1. Standing. A defendant has standing to challenge a search and seizure under art. 14 if he or she "has a possessory interest in the place searched or in the property seized or if [he or she] was present when the search occurred." Commonwealth v. Williams,
In Commonwealth v. Rousseau,
With respect to the defendant's reasonable expectation of privacy, the CSLI tracking of the cellular telephone in this case implicates the same constitutional concerns as the GPS surveillance of the vehicle in Rousseau. See Augustine,
2. The search of the crawl space as fruit of the poisonous tree. Under what has become known as the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine, the exclusionary rule bars the use of evidence derived from an unconstitutional search or seizure. See Wong Sun v. United States,
The Commonwealth contends, and the Appeals Court concluded, see Fredericq,
Other courts interpreting the Fourth Amendment have arrived at the same conclusion. See United States v. Olivares-Rangel,
Nor is the exclusionary rule under art. 14 limited in scope to contraband or evidence seized in a place where the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy; art. 14's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures forbids the introduction of all evidence "sufficiently intimate" with those unlawful acts. See Damiano,
We conclude, therefore, that to spare the cocaine from suppression, the Commonwealth bears the burden of proving attenuation even if the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the crawl space of his residence where the cocaine was found.
3. Attenuation. The Commonwealth contends that it has met its burden to establish sufficient attenuation because the causal chain between the illegal CSLI search -- the "poisonous tree" -- and the subsequent discovery of the cocaine -- the "fruits" -- was broken by the defendant's consent to the search of his residence. We agree that, under certain circumstances, a defendant's voluntary consent to a search of his residence may be an intervening event that constitutes adequate attenuation, thus allowing the evidence found during the search to be admitted in evidence. For instance, in Damiano,
But a defendant's consent to search, like a defendant's consent to waive his or her right to silence after being given Miranda warnings, does not automatically attenuate the taint of an illegality. See Brown v. Illinois,
In determining whether the Commonwealth has met its burden of proving that the defendant's consent was not tainted by evidence obtained from the illegal CSLI search, we consider three factors: (1) the amount of time that elapsed between the defendant being confronted with the illegally obtained CSLI evidence and his grant of consent; (2) the presence of any intervening circumstances during that time period;
As to the first and second factors, the defendant's consent was obtained immediately after Telford informed him that the police knew he "had just gone down to Florida and purchased a large amount of narcotics and ... [was] possibly storing it there" (emphasis added), information that was intimately intertwined with the information gleaned from the unlawful CSLI tracking. The temporal proximity between the trooper confronting the defendant with information obtained through the illegal CSLI tracking and the defendant's grant of consent to search, and the absence of *179intervening events between that confrontation and his consent, weigh heavily in favor of the motion judge's conclusion that the Commonwealth has failed to meet its burden of proving that it did not exploit the illegally obtained information in obtaining the consent to search. See Estabrook,
The Commonwealth argues that the defendant's consent was not influenced by the fruits of the illegal CSLI search because the police had independently learned -- apart from the CSLI tracking -- that the defendant lived at the residence and that he had just returned from a drug deal in Florida. It contends that the police knew from Kennel that the defendant was going to New York in the brown Toyota vehicle with Cassio, knew from a confidential informant that Cassio was traveling to Florida to purchase drugs, knew from stopping the vehicle after the defendant had just been dropped off at his residence that they had just returned from an extended trip, and knew from the defendant that he had been in Florida.
But nothing about Kennel's statement to the police suggested that the defendant was going beyond New York. And the confidential informant's tip did not mention the defendant and gave the police no information about when Cassio would return. The police began to monitor the defendant's residence only when they learned from the CSLI that the vehicle in which he was riding was about to enter Massachusetts. They stopped the vehicle only because the physical surveillance -- triggered by what the police learned from the CSLI -- spotted Cassio and a person they thought might be Dorisca leaving the residence. And the police entered the multiunit house and sought the defendant's consent to search his residence only because they knew from the CSLI that Cassio and the defendant had just returned from Florida and that the defendant might be in possession of the drugs that he and Cassio were believed to have purchased. See United States v. Finucan,
*180As to the third factor -- "the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct" -- we recognize that the illegal police misconduct here was neither purposeful nor flagrant. The police obtained judicial approval for the CSLI search pursuant to **84
Although this factor favors the Commonwealth, it is not dispositive. See Tuschall,
**85for purposes of art. 14 ..."); Commonwealth v. Upton,
In sum, we agree with the motion judge that the Commonwealth has failed to meet its burden of proving that it did not exploit the illegally obtained CSLI in obtaining the defendant's consent to search, where that consent was intimately intertwined -- both temporally and causally -- with the information gleaned from the unlawful CSLI tracking and was obtained immediately after Telford confronted the defendant with that information.
Conclusion. The order of the Superior Court judge granting the defendant's motion to suppress is affirmed.
So ordered.
The term "CSLI" refers to "a cellular telephone service record or records that contain information identifying the base station towers and sectors that receive transmissions from a [cellular] telephone" (quotations and citation omitted). Commonwealth v. Augustine,
We acknowledge the amicus brief submitted by the Committee for Public Counsel Services.
We refer to Cassio and Kennel Vertil by their first names because they share a surname.
Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights states in relevant part: "Every subject has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches, and seizures, of his person, his houses, his papers, and all his possessions."
Historical CSLI refers to information that has already been generated when the data are requested. Augustine,
Because we conclude infra that the Commonwealth has not met its burden of proving attenuation, we need not decide whether the defendant in fact had a reasonable expectation of privacy in that crawl space. Accordingly, we do not consider whether the Appeals Court's legal analysis was consistent with our opinion in Commonwealth v. Leslie,
The attenuation analysis regarding whether a defendant's consent is tainted by an illegal search must differ somewhat from the analysis regarding whether a defendant's postarrest statements are tainted by an illegal arrest. See United States v. Crawford,
Justice Cypher, in concurring in part and dissenting in part, contends that we should abandon our long-standing precedent and adopt the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. We will not here address the merits of that argument because the Commonwealth did not argue it below or on appeal and it is therefore waived. See Commonwealth v. Alexis,
Justice Cypher errs where she states that the issue of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule "was adequately raised by the Commonwealth when it discussed attenuation." Post at note 5. The good faith exception to the exclusionary rule is substantively different from the consideration of police misconduct in determining attenuation. Under a good faith exception, evidence is admissible even if it is unconstitutionally obtained, so long as the police acted in good faith. See United States v. Leon,
Concurring in Part
The Commonwealth concedes that the cell site location information (CSLI) tracking of Cassio Vertil's (Cassio's) cellular telephone (cell phone) was unlawful because it was not authorized by a search warrant. It argues, however, that the defendant did not have standing to challenge the unlawful tracking. I agree with the court that under *182Commonwealth v. Rousseau,
I dissent because I think that it is time that we adopt a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule in circumstances, such as here, where at the time the police sought judicial permission to track the cell phone, they were properly complying with the law, namely, the Stored Communications Act,
1. Reasonable expectation of privacy in the crawl space. I start by briefly highlighting that we have never articulated that any fruit, even those fruits in areas where the defendant does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, must be suppressed if its discovery flows from an illegal search. The court concludes that the tracking of Cassio's CSLI was illegal, the defendant's consent to search his apartment did not remove the taint of the initial illegality, and therefore all evidence against the defendant must be suppressed. The court determines that we need not address whether the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the crawl space where the cocaine was found because "we have repeatedly held that persons subjected to an illegal seizure were entitled to suppress the fruits of that seizure even where the evidence was discovered in places where it is indisputable that the person in question did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy." See ante at ----, 121 N.E.3d 166 at 177. To support this proposition, the court cites three cases. See Commonwealth v. Warren,
**89Commonwealth v. O'Laughlin,
*184The court does point to Federal law, however, in support of its position. See United States v. Olivares-Rangel,
2. The exclusionary rule. The Commonwealth obtained CSLI from Cassio's cell phone in 2008 pursuant to an SCA order that the Commonwealth properly sought and obtained. Under the SCA, a court may order a telephone company to produce records, including CSLI records, "if the governmental entity offers specific **90and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the ... records or other information sought ... are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."
In any consideration of police conduct, we must be cognizant that "[r]easonableness [is] the 'touchstone' " of art. 14 and the Fourth Amendment. Commonwealth v. Roland R.,
The Supreme Court recognizes a "good faith" exception to the exclusionary rule where the government "act[s] with an objectively reasonable good-faith belief that their conduct is lawful" (quotation and citation omitted). Davis v. United States,
With the touchstone of art. 14 in mind, I think that it is time we adopt the good *186faith exception to the exclusionary rule in circumstances, such as here, where the police had an objectively **92reasonable good faith belief that their conduct was lawful at the time they applied for the SCA order. See Illinois v. Krull,
Here, police fully complied with the terms of § 2703(d), which authorized the release of CSLI. Police acted in good faith in seeking the SCA order and in relying on what they (and the judge issuing the order) reasonably understood was the existing law at the time. In 2008, no precedent -- whether Federal or in the Commonwealth -- indicated that the use of § 2703(d) to obtain CSLI was unconstitutional. There was nothing to suggest to the government that it reasonably could not rely on the statutory scheme set forth in § 2703(d). Therefore, I would hold that the fact that Augustine subsequently invalidated any means of obtaining CSLI without probable cause and a warrant does not require suppression of CSLI obtained six years earlier in 2008. See Brown,
Because the SCA order was sought and issued on an informed understanding of State constitutional principles in place in 2008 **93and because there is no suggestion of misconduct by any agent of the Commonwealth, the suppression of the evidence obtained pursuant to the order would disserve the enduring deterrent rationale of the exclusionary rule. See Hernandez,
In Commonwealth v. Rousseau,
Here, the defendant was targeted for substantially less time -- six days -- than the defendant in Rousseau. The court does not recognize any distinction between the two time frames. I too think it is difficult to do so without creating an arbitrary time frame. The length of time must be considered on a case-by-case basis.
I also think it is important to emphasize that while the passenger here and in Rousseau were both "targets" of the tracking, we have not yet adopted "target" standing in Massachusetts. See Commonwealth v. Santiago,
The court does not reach the issue of whether the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the crawl space where the cocaine was discovered. See ante at note 7. The court states, "[W]e do not consider whether the Appeals Court's legal analysis was consistent with our opinion in Commonwealth v. Leslie,
If I were not constrained to conclude that the cocaine must be suppressed as fruit of the illegal search of the cell phone, and if I were to decide the crawl space issue, I would conclude that the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the crawl space. Applying the four-factor test introduced in United States v. Dunn,
I do not read the Leslie decision as granting multiunit apartment buildings the same broad protection as a single-family home. Although the court in Leslie expanded the protection that may be given curtilage in such circumstances, the facts must still be analyzed. Otherwise, an overly broad interpretation may lead to results that are inconsistent with the over-all framework of our search and seizure jurisprudence. For example, the broadest reading of Leslie would require us to conclude that a tenant on the first-floor apartment has the same constitutional protections in his own apartment as he does in a separate apartment on the second floor. Although the crawl space is enclosed within the four walls of the apartment building, it does not necessarily warrant the same protections as the areas enclosed inside the four walls of a single-family home. The Dunn factors were applied in Leslie. I would apply them here.
In Commonwealth v. Rodriguez,
In Commonwealth v. Augustine,
The court does not reach the issue of the good faith exception on the ground that the issue was not raised. I think the issue was adequately raised by the Commonwealth when it discussed attenuation. The court notes that "the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule is substantively different from the consideration of police misconduct in determining attenuation." See ante at note 9. I disagree. While police misconduct is but one factor in our attenuation analysis, that factor is sufficiently intertwined, in this case, with the question whether the police acted in good faith that I do not see a meaningful distinction. See Davis v. United States,
Concurring Opinion
While the court's outcome is legally correct under present law, I appreciate the call, in Justice Cypher's opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, for Massachusetts to recognize a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. As Justice Cypher's opinion emphasizes, "The primary purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter future police misconduct by barring, in a current prosecution, the admission of evidence that the police have obtained in violation of rights protected by the Federal and State Constitutions." Commonwealth v. Santiago,
**86United States v. Leon,
However, since Massachusetts has never recognized the "good faith" exception, Commonwealth v. Valerio,
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