SJC: motel room search was illegal

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The Supreme Judicial Court has ruled in a 5-2 opinion that the search of a motel room was illegal because a police officer had no objectively reasonable belief that the woman who let him in without a warrant was authorized to do so.

The officer had gone to a Revere motel, which had a reputation for drug dealing, to check the guest log to see if anyone staying there was wanted by the police.

He went to what he believed to be the manager’s room to collect a discarded hypodermic needle the manager had asked him to pick up. When he knocked, a woman opened the door who he said appeared to be on drugs. When asked where the manager was, she said she did not know.

When the officer showed her a needle disposal canister and asked if he could enter, she answered, “Yeah, sure.”

The officer found three men in the room sitting on a bed with a pile of what looked like marijuana, and another man in a corner. He said he heard a loud noise in a trashcan near that man and discovered a gun inside.

The man who dropped the gun was charged with carrying a firearm without a license and marijuana possession.

At trial, the judge threw out the firearm and marijuana evidence, a ruling reversed by the Appeals Court.

The SJC ultimately reinstated the trial court’s evidence exclusion order.

Writing for the court, Justice Roderick L. Ireland said “it was not objectively reasonable for [police officer Mark] Desimone to have thought that the woman who came to the door had the authority to permit him to enter. Consequently, there was no valid consent to justify the warrantless entry into the defendant’s home, and the entry violated [Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights].”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Judith A. Cowin, joined by Justice Francis X. Spina, said that the police officer “had no reason to doubt the woman’s authority to admit him” and that the officer’s actions had been reasonable.

The full text of the 34-page ruling in Commonwealth v. Lopez, Lawyers Weekly No. 10-202-10.