Complaint received and sworn to in the
Brockton Division of the District Court Department on November 20, 2017.
A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was
heard by Daniel E. Dilorati, J.
An application for leave to prosecute an
interlocutory appeal was allowed by Barbara A. Lenk, J., in the Supreme
Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk, and the appeal was reported by her to
the Appeals Court.
Joshua Grammel, Committee for Public
Counsel Services, for the defendant.
Audrey Anderson, Assistant District
Attorney, for the Commonwealth.
HAND, J.
The defendant is charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the
influence of intoxicating liquor (OUI), G. L. c. 90, § 24. In this interlocutory appeal,[1] he
challenges the denial of his motion to suppress evidence of his intoxication
obtained after State police troopers stopped the car that he was driving based
on the absence of an inspection sticker.
The question here is whether the troopers had reasonable suspicion to
justify stopping the defendant for committing a civil motor vehicle infraction
based on their good faith, but incorrect, belief that the car could not be
operated lawfully without an inspection sticker. We conclude that the stop was unlawful
because information that would have corrected the troopers' mistake was
available to them in their cruiser before they initiated the stop. Accordingly, we reverse the order denying the
defendant's motion to suppress.
Background. Massachusetts law requires motor vehicles to
undergo annual safety inspections according to rules and regulations
established by the Registrar of Motor Vehicles; the results of the mandatory
inspection are displayed on a certificate, commonly referred to as an
"inspection sticker," affixed to the vehicle's windshield.[2] See G. L. c. 90, § 7A; 540
Code Mass. Regs. § 4.03(1) (2008).
The regulations require an initial inspection after a vehicle is
registered, and mandate subsequent annual inspections on or before the
expiration of the vehicle's existing certificate. See 540 Code Mass. Regs. § 4.03(1)(a)
& (b).
As to the initial inspection, the
regulations require "[e]very owner or person in control of a motor vehicle
which is newly acquired in the Commonwealth [to] submit such motor vehicle for
a required inspection within seven days of the date on which the motor vehicle
is registered to said owner in the Commonwealth." 540 Code Mass. Regs. § 4.03(1)(a). The regulations thus establish a seven-day
grace period for inspecting newly purchased, newly registered vehicles, see
id.; it follows that such vehicles may be operated without an inspection
certificate within that seven-day window.
Facts.
"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
. . . [to] testimony presented at the motion
hearing. . . . We review
independently the application of constitutional principles to the facts
found." Commonwealth v. Cordero,
477 Mass. 237, 241 (2017), quoting Commonwealth v. Amado, 474 Mass. 147, 151
(2016). "We summarize the facts as
found by the motion judge," Commonwealth v. Evelyn, 485 Mass. 691, 693
(2020), "supplemented by evidence in the record that is uncontroverted and
that was implicitly credited by the judge." Commonwealth v. Warren, 475 Mass. 530, 531
(2016).
On the evening of November 18, 2017,
Trooper Andrew DaSilva and Trooper Jason Trout were in Brockton in a marked
police cruiser when they saw the defendant driving a vehicle that did not have
an inspection sticker on its windshield.
Trooper DaSilva, who was driving, activated the cruiser's blue lights to
signal the driver to stop.
In the meantime, Trooper Trout, in the
passenger's seat of the cruiser, queried the car's license plate number on the
cruiser's mobile data terminal (MDT).
The judge found that in conducting this search, Trooper Trout accessed
information through the MDT about "the car's registration, insurance
status, [and] whether the car was stolen or had attached plates."
The troopers stopped the defendant's car
based on Trooper Trout's belief that the defendant was operating illegally
because the car did not have an inspection sticker in the window.[3] See Commonwealth v. Privette, 100 Mass. App.
Ct. 222, 227-228 (2021) (knowledge of one officer involved in responding to
crime imputed to different officer cooperating in same response); Commonwealth
v. Shane S., 92 Mass. App. Ct. 314, 322 n.11 (2017) ("Our courts have
routinely imputed a police officer's knowledge of certain facts to other
officers engaged in a joint enterprise when determining questions of reasonable
suspicion or probable cause").
Trooper Trout approached the vehicle and spoke to the defendant. The trooper smelled the odor of an alcoholic
beverage on the defendant's breath and noticed a partially full container of
beer in the car. After investigating
further, the troopers arrested the defendant for OUI. The judge found that "later, presumably
after the stop," Trooper Trout used the MDT to obtain additional
information about the defendant's vehicle, including the fact that "the
defendant's car had been properly registered" no more than seven days
earlier.[4], [5]
Discussion. It is well settled that "[w]here the
police have observed a traffic violation, they are warranted in stopping a
vehicle." Commonwealth v. Rivas, 77
Mass. App. Ct. 210, 217 (2010), quoting Commonwealth v. Bacon, 381 Mass. 642,
644 (1980). It is also true, however,
that "[a] police stop of a moving automobile constitutes a seizure, and
therefore, any such stop, whatever its purpose, must comply with the Fourth
Amendment to the United States Constitution and with art. 14 of the Massachusetts
Declaration of Rights."
Commonwealth v. Rodriguez, 472 Mass. 767, 773 (2015). "In order for a police investigatory
stop to be justified under art. 14, the police must have 'reasonable suspicion'
to conduct the stop." Rivas, supra,
quoting Commonwealth v. Scott, 440 Mass. 642, 646 (2004). See Commonwealth v. Buckley, 478 Mass. 861,
865 (2018) ("[a] police stop of a moving automobile . . . must
be reasonable in order to be valid under the Fourth Amendment and art. 14"
[quotation and citation omitted]).
Our assessment of the reasonableness of
the troopers' suspicion in this case is guided by our decision in Rivas. Like this case, Rivas involved a motor
vehicle stop based on police concerns about a vehicle's compliance with the
rules and regulations concerning motor vehicle safety inspections. See Rivas, 77 Mass. App. Ct. at 214. In that case, the police saw the defendant
driving a car with a red rejection sticker.
See id. Under the regulations
governing vehicle inspections, a red rejection sticker signified an inspection
failure based on a safety defect. See
id. at 215 & n.5. The regulations
provided the vehicle owner with "a period of [sixty] calendar days after
[the failed] inspection" to remedy the defect and have the vehicle reinspected. Id. at 215, quoting 540 Code Mass. Regs.
§ 4.07(3)(b) (1999).[6] A vehicle
with a red rejection sticker could be driven during the sixty calendar days
only if "all safety related equipment defect(s) [had] been corrected prior
to continued operation." Id.,
quoting 540 Code Mass. Regs. § 4.07(3)(b).
Thus, under the regulations, "a certificate of rejection does not
automatically prohibit a car from being driven; a certificate of rejection does
indicate that the car may have failed a safety test and has not passed another
since the failed test." Id., citing
540 Code Mass. Regs. § 4.07(3)(b).
In Rivas, we concluded that on those
facts, where the police could not have known whether the safety defects
precipitating the vehicle's rejection had been remedied, the police had
reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant's vehicle. Rivas, 77 Mass. App. Ct. at 218. We reasoned that "[w]hile it is possible
that the driver of a car with a red rejection sticker has corrected the
underlying safety issues and has merely neglected to get the car reinspected,
the police officer was not required to 'exclude all possible innocent
explanations of the facts and circumstances.'" Id., quoting Commonwealth v. Deramo, 436
Mass. 40, 44 (2002). We analogized the
facts of the case to those in Commonwealth v. Baez, 47 Mass. App. Ct. 115
(1999). There, a trooper familiar with
the law concerning tinted windows, and who had with him a tool that
"measure[d] levels of transparency," stopped a vehicle based on his
assessment, from his observation with the naked eye, that its window tint was
unlawful. See id. at 118. We held that although the trooper did not
know conclusively whether the tint was proper until he measured it, his
observation provided reasonable suspicion to stop the car to allow himself an
opportunity to determine whether the car was being operated legally. See Rivas, supra at 218 n.10, citing Baez,
supra.
Critical to our conclusion that the
traffic stops in both Rivas and Baez were justified, however, was the fact that
the police not only did not know whether the defendant was operating lawfully
or unlawfully, but that they could not have known that information without
stopping the car. See Rivas, 77 Mass.
App. Ct. at 218 n.10, citing Baez, 47 Mass. App. Ct. at 118. As we said in Rivas, "[U]nless the
information is available by computer in the police car, the officer cannot know
if the sixty-day grace period has expired.
Therefore, there are reasonable grounds to allow the stop in both [Rivas
and Baez]." (Emphasis added.) Rivas, supra.
The facts of the case before us now
present precisely the situation we identified in that caveat in Rivas -- the
troopers did have "available by computer in the police car" the
information about the defendant's automobile registration that would have shown
that the car was still within the grace period for inspection under the
regulations.[7] See 540 Code Mass. Regs.
§ 4.07(1)(a) (2008). Contrast
Rivas, 77 Mass. App. Ct. at 218 n.10.
Accordingly, we conclude that whether the troopers' suspicion was
reasonable in this case depended on all of the information reasonably available
to them through the MDT in the cruiser before the stop, including information
about the vehicle's registration and inspection status. To the extent that the troopers overlooked
information that was reasonably available to them and which would have
dispelled their initial suspicion that the car was being operated unlawfully,
they acted unreasonably.
We also consider the reasoning in
Commonwealth v. Maingrette, 86 Mass. App. Ct. 691 (2014). In that case, the Commonwealth appealed the
allowance of the defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained after the
police stopped and arrested him on a default warrant. See id. at 691-692. After the arrest, the police found a warrant
recall document in the defendant's possession.
See id. at 693. In allowing the
motion, the judge found that although the police could have used the warrant management
system (WMS) information available to them in their cruisers before the arrest
to determine that the warrant had been recalled, they had not done so, instead
relying on the warrant information obtained several hours earlier.[8] See id. at 694. In reviewing the judge's decision, we relied
on a number of cases, including Commonwealth v. Hecox, 35 Mass. App. Ct. 277,
284 (1993) ("[T]he police may not rely upon . . . incomplete
information when they are at fault in . . . not informing
themselves" [quotation and citation omitted]). Maingrette, supra at 695. We concluded that the police had the time and
opportunity to check the WMS to confirm that the arrest warrant was still
active, and affirmed the suppression order.
Id. at 700.
The same reasoning applies here. The judge's finding that the troopers were
acting mistakenly, but in good faith, when they stopped the car does not remedy
the constitutional defects in the stop.
"Stops premised on a mistake of law, even a reasonable, good-faith
mistake, are generally held to be unconstitutional." Commonwealth v. Bernard, 84 Mass. App. Ct.
771, 773 n.2 (2014), quoting Rivas, 77 Mass. App. Ct. at 216 n.6.[9] We discern no reason to depart from that rule
here. See Commonwealth v. Porter P., 456
Mass. 254, 267–269 (2010) (search invalid where officer misunderstood law and
incorrectly determined that homeless shelter director could consent to search
of juvenile's room); Commonwealth v. Miller, 78 Mass. App. Ct. 860, 866 (2011)
(requiring suppression of evidence obtained as result of stop based on mistake
of law); Commonwealth v. Censullo, 40 Mass. App. Ct. 65, 65–66, 69–70 (1996)
(evidence suppressed where stop of defendant was based on officer's own
mistaken belief that street was one-way and that defendant was traveling wrong
way on it, but street was legally two-way street).
Order denying
motion to suppress reversed.
footnotes
[1] A single justice of the Supreme
Judicial Court granted the defendant leave to pursue this appeal.
[2] The regulations provide for several
categories of certificates, depending upon whether a given vehicle has passed
or failed inspection, or had the inspection waived. 540 Code Mass. Regs. § 4.02 (2008).
[3] We understand the judge to have found
that the trooper made the mistake in good faith.
[4] According to an MDT record introduced
at the hearing, the "effective date" of the vehicle's registration
was November 16, 2017, two days before the stop. The judge did not make a more explicit
finding about the timing of Trooper Trout's return to the information on the
MDT. Where the judge found that the
trooper used the terminal in the cruiser to obtain this information, we
understand that he did so before the defendant was transported from the
location of the stop.
[5] The defendant claims error in certain
of the judge's more detailed findings about how the information was presented
through the MDT and what steps Trooper Trout was obligated to follow to access
the information. As nothing in our
analysis turns on the disputed facts, we need not resolve the issue. Likewise, although there was evidence that
Trooper Trout first accessed the MDT to query the defendant's license plates at
7:42 P.M. and that State police records documented the time of the stop as 8:01
P.M., the precision of those times is not significant to our decision. The Commonwealth does not argue that the
troopers' ability to access any of the information ultimately available through
the MDT was limited by the speed at which the events here unfolded.
[6] The quoted text of the regulation was
the same in 1999 and 2008.
[7] The Commonwealth's suggestion that the
troopers did not have access to the date of the defendant's registration -- an
argument based on Trooper Trout's testimony to the effect that there were sometimes
delays in the MDT computer system -- is speculative. Nothing in the record indicates that the
information about the defendant's registration was delayed in this situation,
or that the information at issue was not available to the troopers before the
stop.
[8] In Maingrette, a department policy was
admitted in evidence; it called for a check of WMS "[i]mmediately prior to
arresting a person for an outstanding warrant." Maingrette, 86 Mass. App. Ct. at 694.
[9] The Commonwealth does not argue that
the principle stated in Bernard and Rivas needs to be revisited in light of
Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54, 60-61 (2014) (noting Fourth Amendment
does not invalidate reasonable suspicion based on "reasonable"
mistakes of law or fact on part of police).
Cf. Commonwealth v. Dyette, 87 Mass. App. Ct. 548, 556 n.11 (2015)
(treating as open question whether "mistake of law vitiates reasonable
suspicion under Massachusetts law").