Commonwealth v. Dolby

738 N.E.2d 1147, 50 Mass. App. Ct. 545, 2000 Mass. App. LEXIS 998
CourtMassachusetts Appeals Court
DecidedDecember 1, 2000
DocketNo. 99-P-489
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 738 N.E.2d 1147 (Commonwealth v. Dolby) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts Appeals Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth v. Dolby, 738 N.E.2d 1147, 50 Mass. App. Ct. 545, 2000 Mass. App. LEXIS 998 (Mass. Ct. App. 2000).

Opinion

Gillerman, J.

On October 29, 1998, the defendant was arraigned in the Southern Berkshire District Court and charged with speeding, in violation of G. L. c. 90, § 17 (a civil infraction), and possession of a class D controlled substance (marijuana), in violation of G. L. c. 94C, § 34. On December 16, 1998, the defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence, claiming that “the evidence seized, to wit: marijuana, as a result of the unlawful search and seizure was obtained in violation of her [Federal and State constitutional] rights . . . .” After a hearing on her motion on January 7, 1999, the court allowed the motion and filed written findings. The Commonwealth filed a notice of appeal. On February 16, 1999, the Supreme Judicial Court granted the Commonwealth’s application for [546]*546interlocutory appeal and transferred the case to the Appeals Court.

We take the facts from the judge’s findings, which are sparse, and from testimony of the police officer, to “fill out the narrative.” Commonwealth v. Butler, 423 Mass. 517, 526 n.10 (1996). On September 24, 1998, Mark Rogers, a Massachusetts State Trooper, was patrolling north on Route 7 in Stockbridge at approximately 12:00 noon. As he approached the intersection of Ice Glen Road and Route 7, Rogers noticed a minivan in the southbound lane about to make a left turn onto Ice Glen Road. Rogers, about to drive past the minivan, saw a red Toyota “pass the minivan on the right hand side in the breakdown lane.” The Toyota was traveling at approximately fifty miles per hour in a thirty-five mile per hour zone. Believing this speed to be unreasonable, Rogers made a U-tum and followed the Toyota until it stopped just before the Great Barrington-Stockbridge line on Route 7.

The driver, the defendant, was the sole occupant of the vehicle. The driver handed her license and registration to Rogers as he approached her window. Rogers looked through the window of the car and saw what he knew to be a “bong,”1 on the right rear passenger floor.2 He observed that the bong (the chamber of which was made of clear plastic) had been used: there was extensive residue in the chamber. Rogers believed, the judge found, “that the residue had to be marijuana because bongs are used primarily for smoking marijuana.” The judge characterized this belief as “merely a hunch.”

The judge made no findings as to the subsequent events, but they appear to be undisputed, there being no challenge to Rogers’s credibility. Having seen the bong with residue in the chamber, and believing the residue to be derived from marijuana, Rogers asked the defendant to get out of her vehicle, and he conducted a frisk of her outer clothing to search for [547]*547weapons.3 Finding no weapons, Rogers asked the defendant whether she owned the bong, and she replied that it did belong to her. The trooper then told the defendant to sit on the guardrail, a short distance from the front of her car.

The trooper seized the bong from inside the defendant’s vehicle, smelled the interior of the bong, and determined that the smell was “consistent with what I recognize as burnt marijuana.” Rogers then searched the entire vehicle for contraband. He recovered a silver box containing approximately twenty-five to thirty seeds, which he recognized to be marijuana plant seeds.

The judge allowed the motion to suppress. He reasoned that Rogers’s training and experience may have influenced his hunch, but that that did “not take the place of ‘articulable facts’ which could have reasonably led Trooper Rogers to conclude that the residue was marijuana.”4 The judge concluded that “[bjongs are bought, sold and possessed legally every day throughout the Commonwealth; and the mere possession of a bong does not rise to probable cause that any particular possessor of a bong is also in possession of marijuana.” The judge entered an order suppressing the bong and the silver-colored metal box containing marijuana seeds.

Discussion. The defendant argues in her brief that the seizure of the bong and the ensuing search of her vehicle were illegal because of the absence of probable cause.

It was the Commonwealth’s burden to show that the trooper, in seizing the bong and the marijuana seeds, acted on probable cause. Sullivan v. District Court of Hampshire, 384 Mass. 736, 743-744 (1981). “In dealing with probable cause, ... as the very name implies, we deal with probabilities. These are not technical; they are the factual and practical considerations of everyday fife on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act.’ ” Commonwealth v. Cast, 407 Mass. 891, 895 (1990), quoting from Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, [548]*548313 (1959). See also Commonwealth v. Skea, 18 Mass. App. Ct. 685, 689 (1984) (“Probable cause ‘is a flexible, common-sense standard, [which] merely requires that the facts available to the officer would “warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief” that certain items may be contraband . . . ; it does not demand any showing that such a belief be correct or more likely true than false’ ” [citations omitted]).

The defendant, now accepting the relevance of that portion of G. L. c. 94C, § 1, which defines “drug paraphernalia,”5 argues that a bong is not illegal to possess “absent some indication that it has been or is intended to be used to ingest . . . drugs into the human body.” She argues that there were no such indications when the trooper seized the defendant’s bong. We do not agree.

General Laws c. 94C, § 1, defines the terms used in c. 94C, including the phrase “drug paraphernalia.” “Drug paraphernalia” is defined (as appearing in St. 1998, c. 50) as including “all equipment, products, devices and materials of any kind which are primarily intended or designed for use in . . . inhaling . . . a controlled substance . ... It includes, but is not limited to: . . . (12) objects used, primarily intended for use or designed for use in ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing [a controlled substance] into the human body, such as . . . (1) bongs . . . .” (Emphases supplied.)

With the enactment of St. 1998, c. 50, approved March 12, 1998, rewriting the definition of “drug paraphernalia” in G. L. c. 94C, § 1, and effective three months prior to the events in this case,6 bongs, for the first time, were included among the [549]*549items identified as objects used or designed for use in inhaling a controlled substance.7

After the reference to “bongs” and other identified items, § 1 continues: “In determining whether an object is drug paraphernalia, a court or other authority should consider, in addition to all other logically relevant factors, the following: . . . .” Then follows a fist of eleven factors to be considered “[i]n determining whether an object is drug paraphernalia”; included in the list as a factor is “(c) the existence of any residue of controlled substances on the object.”

The definition of “drug paraphernalia” in c. 94C, § 1, is not without its interpretive difficulties. It is not entirely clear, for example, whether the inclusion of “bongs” within the list of “objects used, primarily intended for use or designed for use in . . .

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
738 N.E.2d 1147, 50 Mass. App. Ct. 545, 2000 Mass. App. LEXIS 998, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-v-dolby-massappct-2000.