MA: Because possession of MJ is a civil infraction, the smell of burnt MJ in a car isn’t probable cause to search the car where there was no showing of need to protect highway safety

“A District Court judge erred in denying the criminal defendant’s pretrial motion to suppress evidence of controlled substances that a police officer discovered after having stopped the defendant’s motor vehicle following the detection of an odor of burnt marijuana coming from it while it was moving, where the stop was unreasonable under art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, in that a stop under such circumstances gave rise to reasonable suspicion, but not probable cause to believe, that the defendant was committing the civil offense of possessing a small quantity of marijuana; and in that such a stop based on reasonable suspicion of a possible civil marijuana infraction did not promote highway safety and ran contrary to the purposes of the statute decriminalizing the possession of one ounce or less of marijuana.” Commonwealth v. Rodriguez, 2015 Mass. LEXIS 727 (September 22, 2015).