Pedestrian search upheld despite discriminatory policing claim

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A stop and frisk of a pedestrian following a shooting did not violate his right to equal protection despite his claim of selective enforcement based on alleged discriminatory policing practices, the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled.

The defendant’s motion to suppress was denied by Superior Court Judge Peter B. Krupp. In addressing the defendant’s equal protection challenge, the judge presumed that the SJC’s revised standard for establishing an equal protection claim under the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, which was adopted in the context of a traffic stop in Commonwealth v. Long, 485 Mass. 711, 724-725 (2020), applied as well to a challenge of a pedestrian stop asserted to be racially motivated.

Notwithstanding the statistical evidence presented by the defendant, Krupp determined that the commonwealth had satisfied its burden of establishing that the officers had a race-neutral reason for conducting a threshold inquiry and also for pat frisking the defendant for a weapon.

“We emphasize that the equal protection clause provides an independent basis upon which a defendant may rely in pursuing claims of intentional discriminatory application of the law, separate and distinct from the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures,” Justice Frank M. Gaziano wrote for the SJC.

“We agree with the judge that the new standard we adopted in Long, 485 Mass. at 724-725, to provide a defendant a more accessible path to pursuing an equal protection claim in the context of a motor vehicle stop, is applicable not only to traffic stops, but also to other police investigations such as pedestrian stops. We also agree with the judge that, in this case, at the hearing on the defendant’s motion to suppress, the Commonwealth demonstrated an adequate, race-neutral reason for the stop, sufficient to rebut the defendant’s statistical evidence of discriminatory policing,” Gaziano stated.

The SJC concluded that the evidence supported the judge’s determination that police stopped the defendant to investigate his involvement in a recent shooting, not because of his race.

The 41-page decision is Commonwealth v. Robinson-Van Rader, Lawyers Weekly No. 10-049-23.