MA: Violation of a state regulation leading to identifying def juvenile doesn’t warrant suppression

Alleged violation of a state regulation that led to defendant juvenile’s identity didn’t warrant suppression. Suppression would require the statute align with a constitutional requirement. Moreover, there was no police misconduct; indeed, the police did good work here in locating him as a suspect. Commonwealth v. Demetrius D., 2018 Mass. App. LEXIS 121 (Sep. 14, 2018):

We suppress evidence resulting from the government’s violation of a statute only where the statute is both “closely associated with constitutional rights, rights grounded in fundamental fairness,” Commonwealth v. LeBlanc, 407 Mass. 70, 75, 551 N.E.2d 906 (1990), quoting Commonwealth v. Lyons, 397 Mass. 644, 647, 492 N.E.2d 1142 (1986), and where “an exclusionary rule [is] inherent in the purpose of [the] statute.” Commonwealth v. LeBlanc, supra. See generally Commonwealth v. Upton, 394 Mass. 363, 367 n.4, 476 N.E.2d 548 (1985), and cases collected therein. We do not see the statutory scheme at issue here to be of this sort. To begin with, we note that the juvenile has not identified, nor do we know of, any constitutionally based interest in keeping his address confidential. Thus, whatever confidentiality the statute may provide to children within the department’s purview, that protection cannot be said to be “closely associated” with a constitutional right. The juvenile has not cited, nor have we found, any authority for the proposition that either the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution or arts. 12 and 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights restrict police authority to locate a criminal suspect by asking knowledgeable people for his address or whereabouts.
Nor are we persuaded that an exclusionary rule is inherent in the purpose of the statute. To the contrary, the statute provides its own remedy, see G. L. c. 119, § 51F, and therefore there is no need to graft an exclusionary rule to it “to make the statute an effective piece of legislation.” Commonwealth v. Jones, 362 Mass. 497, 502, 287 N.E.2d 599 (1972). Compare id. at 503 (suppressing evidence of identification made at police station after defendant was intentionally denied his statutory right to use telephone); Commonwealth v. Alicea, 428 Mass. 711, 716, 705 N.E.2d 233 (1999) (“To make the statute an effective piece of legislation in the absence of [a prescribed penalty for a violation], we have grafted an exclusionary rule to it” [quotation omitted]).

We note further that our view of the statute is consistent with the purpose of the exclusionary rule, which is “to deter police misconduct and preserve judicial integrity by dissociating courts from unlawful conduct.” Commonwealth v. Nelson, 460 Mass. 564, 571, 953 N.E.2d 164 (2011). There was no police misconduct here. Instead, good police work and investigation led the police to the juvenile, confirmed many details of the attack and his role as its perpetrator, established his possession of the identifying costume, and led them to the town to which he had moved and taken that important evidence. In these circumstances, the police cannot be said to have done anything wrong when they contacted the department to learn the address of the juvenile’s new foster home — information that, as we noted above, does not enjoy constitutional protection.