On August 12, 2021, around 6:15 a.m., a “confidential informant” called an FBI agent and reported that a black male was showing a gun to people in a parking lot.
The FBI agent relayed the information to the Boston police.
Officers went to the area and found a black man matching the description they received from the informant.
Police seized the man and conducted a pat frisk.
During the frisk, police allegedly discovered a firearm in the man’s pocket.
The man did not have a license to carry the weapon and, consequently, he was charged with possessing a firearm without a license.
His lawyer filed a motion to suppress the firearm, claiming that police lacked the “reasonable suspicion” needed to stop and search the defendant.
A superior court denied the motion and the lawyer appealed.
Today the Appeals Court published a slip opinion reversing the judge’s decision.
According to the Appeals Court,
The informant’s report of a person holding a firearm in public, standing alone, was insufficient grounds for a reasonable articulable suspicion of illegality…[I]n Massachusetts, public exhibition of a firearm does not transform gun possession into illegal conduct justifying seizure.
Moreover,
Neither holding a gun in the air, nor show[ing] it to others around him, constitutes a threat which per se justifies an investigatory stop. Thus, without any preseizure observations by the police tending to suggest illegality, a report of a man showing a gun to other people, outside, in a bank parking lot just before 6:30 in the morning likewise cannot justify an investigatory stop. (Citations and quotations omitted.)
The full text of the slip opinion is attached below.