{"id":24147,"date":"2016-10-23T12:47:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-23T17:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=24147"},"modified":"2016-10-23T12:50:39","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T17:50:39","slug":"ma-pc-showing-was-close-but-essentially-ties-go-in-support-of-the-warrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=24147","title":{"rendered":"MA: PC showing was close, but, essentially, ties go in support of the warrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

The trial court held that the affidavit for the search warrant did not show probable cause under Aguilar-Spinelli (still followed in Massachusetts), but the court of appeals disagrees and reverses. There were direct police observations that corroborated the informant\u2019s story. It was a close case, but, on probable cause supporting a warrant, ties go to the police. Commonwealth v. Perez<\/a>, 2016 Mass. App. LEXIS 154 (Oct. 21, 2016) (the baseball metaphor is mine, and used in the Treatise \u00a7 40.05 n.7<\/a>):
\n<\/p>\n

The informant’s reliability having been established, we may use the informant’s assertion that the defendant \u201cwas selling heroin out \u2026 of\u201d the Hathaway Street apartment to substantiate the required nexus between the apartment and articles of the drug trade. While the case is a close one, we conclude that the affidavit’s description of the defendant’s activities observed by police officers, coupled with the information provided by a credible informant, was sufficient to establish probable cause for a warrant to search the apartment for drugs. \u201c[T]he resolution of doubtful or marginal cases in this area should be largely determined by the preference to be accorded to warrants.\u201d Commonwealth v. Germain, 396 Mass. 413, 418, 486 N.E.2d 693 (1985), quoting from United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 108-109, 85 S. Ct. 741, 13 L. Ed. 2d 684 (1965).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The trial court held that the affidavit for the search warrant did not show probable cause under Aguilar-Spinelli (still followed in Massachusetts), but the court of appeals disagrees and reverses. There were direct police observations that corroborated the informant\u2019s story. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-probable-cause","category-standards-of-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24147"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24152,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24147\/revisions\/24152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}