Commonwealth v. Fredericq

The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the superior court's order granting Defendant's motion to dismiss the cocaine and cash seized during a warrantless search of his residence, holding that Defendant's consent to a search of his residence did not purge the seizure from the taint of an illegal cell site location information (CSLI) search, where the consent was obtained through the use of information obtained from that search.The superior court ruled that the cash and cocaine must be suppressed because they were the fruits of unlawful police tracking of a cellular telephone through which the police obtained CLSI without a search warrant based on probable cause. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding (1) by monitoring the cell phone's CSLI, the police effectively monitored the movement of a vehicle in which Defendant was a passenger, thus giving Defendant standing to challenge the Commonwealth's warrantless CSLI search; (2) the seizure of the cocaine and cash was the direct result of information obtained from the illegal CSLI search; and (3) the Commonwealth failed to meet its burden of proving that the seizure was sufficiently attenuated from the illegal search such that it should not be deemed a forbidden fruit of the poisonous tree. View "Commonwealth v. Fredericq" on Justia Law