The Massachusetts Appeals Court today allowed Suffolk prosecutors the opportunity to use as evidence a handgun recovered after a tipster said it was going to be used in a crime, reversing a district court judge’s decision and reaffirming that police can search for and seize a firearm without a warrant under certain circumstances, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced.

“The Appeals Court made clear once again that police may execute warrantless searches under exigent circumstances,” Conley said, hailing the unanimous decision. “Clearly, those circumstances existed here: A loaded gun was known to be in a certain place and believed to be intended for use in a violent crime. The person who called in this tip did exactly what we ask of the public every day. That specific information very likely stopped a shooting – or much worse.”

The decision paves the way for further prosecution of VLADIMIR SAMUEL (D.O.B. 8/2/89), charged in Chelsea District Court with unlawful possession of a firearm, carrying a firearm without a license, and carrying a loaded firearm without a license.

“We expect to bring this case back into court at the earliest opportunity,” Conley said.
On Aug. 2, 2007, the Chelsea Police Department received a phone call from a man who stated that he was in a Maple Street apartment with several others. One of the men had displayed a handgun, showed that it was loaded, and told the caller and others in the room that he had been hired to kill someone. That man – later identified as Samuel – then allegedly stashed the firearm under a pillow on the couch where he was sitting. The caller told the officer that he was afraid for his safety.

Chelsea Police officers were dispatched to the apartment to conduct a well-being check. Upon being given permission to enter, officers went to a back room and found several men sitting in there. Samuel matched the description provided by the caller and was seated on a couch with a pillow next to him. An officer ordered him to stand up and move to one side away from the pillow. When the officer then lifted the pillow, he found a loaded handgun underneath. The handgun was seized, and Samuel was arrested.

Samuel later moved to suppress the firearm on the grounds that the police did not have a warrant and because the search exceeded the scope of the consent justifying the officers’ initial entry into the premises. Suffolk prosecutors argued that the seizure was proper because the situation clearly constituted exigent circumstances.

Chelsea District Court Judge Jonathan Brant found that although the entry of the police was proper because the resident had consented to their entry, their subsequent seizure of the firearm was improper. Prosecutors unsuccessfully asked Brant to reconsider his decision, then appealed the case to the higher court, which in turn reversed Brant’s suppression of the firearm.

“The police had reasonable grounds to believe that an emergency existed and that lives were in danger,” Justice Kent B. Smith wrote in the three-page decision. “Once inside the apartment, the emergency did not abate because it was necessary to remove the firearm in order to protect life and to prevent injury to others … Officers had a reasonable suspicion, if not probably cause, to believe that a loaded firearm was under the pillow, a firearm that was to be used to kill someone.”

The Appeals Court also quoted existing case law, writing that “‘[r]easonableness must be ‘evaluated in relation to the scene as it could appear to the officers at the time, not as it may seem to a scholar after the event with the benefit of leisured retrospective analysis.’”

Assistant District Attorney Kathleen Celio of Conley’s Appeals Division argued against the suppression. Samuel was represented by attorney David Segadelli.