Illegal Searches and Seizures in Massachusetts: Motions to Suppress

Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protect people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. When the police obtain evidence in violation of those protections, the defense may move before trial to suppress it, and a judge who allows the motion orders that the Commonwealth may not use the evidence at trial.

That ruling can decide a case. Where the prosecution depends on the drugs found in the car, the firearm found in the apartment, or the data extracted from the phone, an order excluding that evidence may leave the Commonwealth unable to prove the charge. It does not follow that suppression ends a case automatically, and the difference between suppression and dismissal is explained below.

This page sets out what the two constitutional provisions require, how the analysis differs at each stage of a police encounter, and how a motion to suppress is litigated. Detailed treatments of traffic stops, phones and computers, and the admission of digital evidence appear on their own pages and are linked where each subject arises.

Article 14 and the Fourth Amendment

Article 14 guarantees that every subject has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches and seizures of his person, houses, papers, and possessions. It was adopted in 1780, seven years before the Fourth Amendment, and it came out of the colonial objection to the writs of assistance that James Otis argued against in Boston in 1761.

The Supreme Judicial Court is not required to read Article 14 in step with the United States Supreme Court’s reading of the Fourth Amendment. Article 14 provides at least as much protection, and in several recurring situations more. Commonwealth v. Delgado-Rivera, 487 Mass. 551 (2021). A Massachusetts motion to suppress is therefore built on the state ground, raised expressly, and not on federal law alone. The recurring differences are collected near the end of this page.

Encounters, Stops, Searches, and Seizures

The analysis begins with what the police did, because different conduct requires different justification.

• A consensual encounter. An officer may approach a person and ask questions. If a reasonable person would feel free to leave, no constitutional justification is required and the person is free to decline to answer.
• A stop. When the police pursue or detain a person, that is a seizure requiring reasonable suspicion. Under Article 14, a pursuit undertaken in order to make a forcible stop is itself a seizure that must be justified from the moment it begins. Commonwealth v. Stoute, 422 Mass. 782 (1996). Federal law fixes the moment later, when the person is physically restrained or submits. California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621 (1991). The practical difference is that evidence a person discards while being chased may be suppressed in Massachusetts if the pursuit lacked reasonable suspicion when it started.
• An arrest. An arrest requires probable cause.
• A search. A search intrudes on a reasonable expectation of privacy and ordinarily requires a warrant.
• A seizure of property. Taking property is a separate act with its own justification, which is why the length of time the police hold a seized item before applying for a warrant can be litigated on its own.

Reasonable Suspicion and Probable Cause

Reasonable suspicion requires specific and articulable facts, together with rational inferences from them, that the person is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a crime. It is more than a hunch. Probable cause is the higher standard and requires facts sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution in believing that an offense has been committed and, for a search, that evidence of it will be found in the place to be searched.

A stop founded on a hunch, on an uncorroborated anonymous tip, or on a traffic law the officer misread is unlawful, and the evidence that follows from it is subject to suppression. Commonwealth v. Silva, 366 Mass. 402 (1974).

Search Warrants and the Supporting Affidavit

A valid search warrant is issued by a neutral magistrate on a sworn affidavit establishing probable cause, and it must describe with particularity the place to be searched and the items to be seized.

A Massachusetts warrant is judged on the affidavit alone. The inquiry into the sufficiency of a warrant application “always begins and ends with the four corners of the affidavit.” Commonwealth v. O’Day, 440 Mass. 296, 297 (2003), quoting Commonwealth v. Villella, 39 Mass. App. Ct. 426, 428 (1995). What the officer knew but left out does not count, and what the officer told the magistrate orally but did not write down does not count. The affidavit is read in an ordinary, commonsense way rather than parsed hypertechnically. Commonwealth v. Perez-Baez, 410 Mass. 43, 46 (1991).

Particularity, Nexus, Staleness, and Overbreadth

Four requirements do most of the work when a warrant is challenged.

Particularity. The warrant must identify the place and the items with enough precision that the executing officer is not left to decide what to search and take.

Nexus. The affidavit must connect the alleged criminal activity to the specific place to be searched. Showing that a person is selling drugs is not enough. The affidavit must give the magistrate reason to believe that evidence of that selling will be found in the particular home or unit named.

Staleness. Facts that established probable cause months ago may no longer show that evidence is presently in the place to be searched.

Overbreadth. A warrant that authorizes a search wider than the probable cause supports is invalid as to the excess, a problem that arises most often with digital devices, where a warrant for evidence of one offense can become an unlimited review of a person’s entire digital life.

Informants and the Two-Part Massachusetts Test

A large share of home and drug warrants rest on a tip from a confidential informant, and this is where Article 14 protects Massachusetts residents considerably more than federal law does.

When the United States Supreme Court decided Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983), it abandoned the structured informant test of Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (1964), and Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410 (1969), in favor of a totality of the circumstances standard. Massachusetts declined to follow. Finding that approach “unacceptably shapeless and permissive,” the Supreme Judicial Court held that Article 14 retains the two-pronged test. Commonwealth v. Upton, 394 Mass. 363, 373 to 376 (1985).

Where an affidavit relies on an unnamed informant, the magistrate must be told both the underlying circumstances from which the informant concluded that the contraband was where the informant said it was, which is the basis of knowledge, and the underlying circumstances from which the affiant concluded that the informant was credible or the information reliable, which is veracity. Commonwealth v. Upton, 394 Mass. at 374 to 375; Commonwealth v. Byfield, 413 Mass. 426, 429 (1992). The prongs are independent, and a strong showing on one does not excuse a failure on the other. Commonwealth v. Robinson, 403 Mass. 163, 164 to 165 (1988).

Basis of knowledge is satisfied most cleanly by the informant’s firsthand observation, with specific detail about what was seen and where. Commonwealth v. Parapar, 404 Mass. 319, 322 (1989).

Veracity is where affidavits most often fail. A recital that the informant “has provided reliable information in the past” is not enough, and an assertion that a prior tip led to an arrest, without more, does not establish veracity, because an arrest is not a conviction. Commonwealth v. Rojas, 403 Mass. 483, 486 (1988). Veracity is properly shown where a prior tip led to the seizure of contraband, or to arrests and convictions, with some supporting detail. Commonwealth v. Perez-Baez, 410 Mass. 43, 46 (1991); Commonwealth v. Mejia, 411 Mass. 108, 111 (1991).

Corroboration can supplement a deficient prong, and independent police confirmation of detailed, non-obvious information can establish the veracity of a first-time informant with no history at all. Commonwealth v. Carrasco, 405 Mass. 316, 321 to 322 (1989). Corroboration of innocent and easily predicted detail is weak.

Testing the Truth of the Affidavit

The four corners rule assumes the affidavit is truthful. Two procedures exist for the case where it is not.

Under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 155 to 156 (1978), a defendant who makes a substantial preliminary showing that the affiant included a false statement knowingly and intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth, and that the false statement was necessary to the finding of probable cause, is entitled to an evidentiary hearing. If the falsity is proved, the false material is struck and the affidavit is tested again without it.

Massachusetts adds a procedure aimed at affidavits resting on confidential informants, because a defendant may be unable to meet the Franks standard precisely because the informant is anonymous. In Commonwealth v. Amral, 407 Mass. 511, 520 to 522 (1990), the Supreme Judicial Court held that a judge should conduct a preliminary in camera hearing where the defendant submits an affidavit casting reasonable doubt on the truth of material representations about a confidential informant. The judge may question the affiant and, if necessary, the informant, in order to decide whether the defendant has made the showing Franks requires.

Execution of a Warrant

Even with a valid warrant, the police must ordinarily knock, announce their identity and purpose, and give the occupants a reasonable opportunity to respond before forcing entry, unless a specific justification supports an unannounced entry, such as a genuine risk to safety or of the destruction of evidence. How a warrant was executed is a separate ground of challenge from whether it should have issued.

Massachusetts does not follow the federal rule that a knock and announce violation can never support exclusion. Under Massachusetts common law and Article 14, suppression may be required where the violation materially undermines the protections the rule exists to provide and where exclusion will deter unlawful entries. Commonwealth v. Gomes, 408 Mass. 43 (1990). An officer executing a warrant that authorized an unannounced entry must also reassess at the threshold whether the facts still justify one. Commonwealth v. Jimenez, 438 Mass. 213 (2002). Suppression does not follow from every technical violation, because the seriousness of the violation and the good faith of the officers remain part of the analysis.

The Exceptions to the Warrant Requirement

A warrantless search is presumptively unreasonable, and the Commonwealth must prove that it fits a recognized exception. Massachusetts recognizes a limited set: voluntary consent, a search incident to a lawful arrest, the automobile exception, plain view, exigent circumstances, and an inventory conducted under a standard written policy. Most warrantless-search litigation is a dispute about whether the facts genuinely fit one of them.

Exigency, the exception asserted most often, generally turns on a real risk that a suspect will flee or that evidence will be destroyed, or a genuine danger to a person, together with a showing that there was no time to obtain a warrant. An emergency the officers created themselves, or one that left time to seek a warrant, does not justify the search.

Consent and Its Scope

Consent must be voluntary, and the Commonwealth bears the burden of proving that it was. Submission to a claim of authority is not consent. A person who consents may limit the search, may withdraw consent, and may decline altogether.

Scope matters as much as validity. Consent to look in a bag is not consent to search a car, and consent to search a phone for one category of message is not consent to review the entire device. Where a third party gives consent, the question is whether that person had common authority over the area searched, meaning mutual use together with joint access or control. Ownership of the property, or a general right to enter it, is not enough. Commonwealth v. Porter P., 456 Mass. 254 (2010). Consent may also rest on apparent authority, where the facts known to the officers made a belief in that authority reasonable. Commonwealth v. Santos, 465 Mass. 689 (2013). A cohabitant may consent to shared space and to an unsecured container within it, and a parent with unrestricted access may consent to an adult child’s bedroom, but a landlord, a hotel manager, and a shelter director are not cohabitants. These motions are decided on the record of residence, access practices, locks, rent or ownership, whether a container was secured, and any restriction the defendant imposed.

Searches Incident to Arrest

A lawful arrest permits a search of the person and the area within that person’s immediate control, for the safety of the officers and to prevent the destruction of evidence. In the vehicle context the authority is narrower than it once was. Police may search the passenger compartment incident to an arrest only where it is reasonable to believe that the arrestee could access the vehicle at the time of the search, or that the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 (2009).

The rule does not extend to the digital contents of a phone found on an arrestee. Those generally require a warrant. Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014).

Motor Vehicle Searches

Stopping a car does not permit searching it. A warrantless search of a vehicle requires probable cause to believe it contains evidence of a crime or contraband.

Massachusetts adds a protection that matters in many drug and firearms stops. After the decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana, the odor of burnt marijuana alone no longer supplies probable cause to search a vehicle, although it may contribute to reasonable suspicion. Commonwealth v. Cruz, 459 Mass. 459 (2011); Commonwealth v. Overmyer, 469 Mass. 16 (2014).

The quantities behind those marijuana holdings changed on April 19, 2026. Chapter 65 of the Acts of 2026 raised the lawful adult amount to two ounces outside the home and made simple possession through three ounces a civil offense. An odor or a visible amount is therefore weighed against the current numbers, not the one-ounce line the earlier decisions discuss.

An inventory search following a lawful impoundment is valid only where it is conducted according to a standard written police policy and not as a means of looking for evidence.

The authority to stop a vehicle for a civil motor vehicle infraction also expires after an unreasonable delay. The Commonwealth bears the burden of justifying the delay on the totality of the circumstances, including its length, the reason for it, and the nature of the violation. No fixed time limit controls, but a delay of twenty four hours was held unreasonable under Article 14. Commonwealth v. Arias, SJC-13816 (Mass. Apr. 15, 2026).

The stop that precedes the search has its own rules, including how long it may last, when an exit order is permitted, when a patfrisk is authorized, and what rights a passenger has. Those are set out at Massachusetts traffic stops, exit orders, and pretext searches, and the questions drivers ask most often are answered in the traffic stop questions and answers.

Inventory Searches

Police conduct inventories in two settings: when a vehicle is lawfully impounded, and when an arrested person is booked and their belongings are taken for safekeeping. An inventory is a caretaking procedure rather than an investigative one, and its justification does not rest on probable cause. Under both the Fourth Amendment and Article 14, a court reviewing a vehicle inventory answers two distinct questions: whether the impoundment met constitutional requirements, and whether the conduct and scope of the search met them as well. Commonwealth v. Ellerbe, 430 Mass. 769 (2000).

Impoundment is the threshold issue. Impounding a vehicle for noninvestigatory reasons is generally justified by public safety concerns or by the danger of theft or vandalism to a vehicle left unattended, and the touchstone is reasonableness on the particular facts. Commonwealth v. Eddington, 459 Mass. 102 (2011). Where the owner is present and proposes turning the car over to a licensed companion who is able to drive it, that alternative belongs in the analysis, and where no practical alternative to towing exists, removal from a public way and the inventory that follows are constitutional. See Ellerbe. A defense challenge begins with the question why the car could not have been locked and left where it was, or released to someone at the scene.

Officers do not have to wait for the storage lot to make the inventory. In Commonwealth v. Torres, 85 Mass. App. Ct. 51 (2014), the officer inventoried the car at the roadside, in accordance with the town’s written policy, while the defendant was still at the scene awaiting the tow, and the Appeals Court upheld the search. An inventory concerns what will remain in the vehicle when it is towed, so property removed from the car and given to a responsible person at the scene does not have to be inventoried at all, and where a practical and available alternative for the property exists and the defendant expressly or impliedly approves it, the police must choose it. Commonwealth v. Nicoleau, 90 Mass. App. Ct. 518 (2016).

The search itself is valid only when officers follow standard police procedures, and under Article 14 those procedures must be in writing. The Supreme Judicial Court announced the exclusion rule for storage searches in Commonwealth v. Ford, 394 Mass. 421 (1985), held in Commonwealth v. Bishop, 402 Mass. 449 (1988), that the procedures must from that point forward be in writing, and confirmed in Commonwealth v. Garcia, 409 Mass. 675 (1991), that procedures are considered standard only if they are set forth in writing. A written policy exists to remove discretion. Officers making an inventory are expected to proceed mechanically, according to a set routine, and a departure from the routine supports an argument that the search was investigative rather than administrative.

Closed containers are treated separately. A written policy directing an inventory of a vehicle’s contents authorizes entry into both the passenger compartment and the trunk, but it does not authorize opening a closed container found inside. If police open a closed container during an inventory search without a specific written procedure requiring them to do so, whatever they discover in the container must be suppressed. Garcia, 409 Mass. at 684 to 685. In Bishop, the written policy was silent about closed containers, so the search of a gym bag found in the car was unlawful, and the defendant’s statement about the bag was suppressed as the fruit of the unlawful search.

Booking is the second setting. At the station, officers may remove and list the property carried by a person who will be held, and the United States Supreme Court has held that they may open any container or article in the person’s possession as part of that routine, in accordance with established inventory procedures. Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640 (1983). The listed purposes are administrative: an itemized inventory deters false claims of loss, protects property against theft or careless handling, and identifies items that could cause injury in a cell. In Massachusetts, officers conducting a booking inventory are held to the same requirements as officers inventorying a car: written procedures, mechanical execution, and no investigation. Commonwealth v. Mauricio, 477 Mass. 588 (2017).

An inventory produces records, and the records matter. The written policy ordinarily requires an itemized inventory report, and at booking the person receives a receipt for the property taken. Those documents establish what the police took, its condition, and the date it entered custody. Where property is seized under a search warrant rather than held for safekeeping, M.G.L. c. 276, § 3 requires the officer to keep it safely under the direction of the court for as long as it is needed as evidence, and M.G.L. c. 276, § 3A requires the officer to return the warrant to the issuing court within seven days with a return of the officer’s doings. Defense counsel obtains the inventory report, the tow slip, the booking property sheet, the receipt, and the written policy itself, and compares what the policy requires with what the officers did. A difference between the two supports suppression. One qualification: the Appeals Court has held that an after-the-fact failure to complete the required inventory form does not by itself invalidate an otherwise valid inventory search. See Torres.

Safekeeping confers no authority to investigate. In the course of an inventory that follows the policy, officers may seize an item that is incriminating on its face, with no closer examination needed. A closer examination for investigative ends requires a warrant. In Commonwealth v. White, 469 Mass. 96 (2014), an officer used the number imprinted on inventoried pills to identify them on a website, and the Supreme Judicial Court held that the investigative use converted a lawful inventory seizure into an unlawful investigatory search, and that a warrant was required. In Commonwealth v. Mauricio, an officer activated a digital camera found in an arrestee’s backpack and viewed the stored images on the suspicion that the camera was stolen, and the Court suppressed the images because the viewing was an investigatory search outside the inventory exception. Officers may record what is obvious from an item’s exterior. They may not sift and read materials taken from an arrestee in order to hunt for information. White, 469 Mass. 96, quoting Commonwealth v. Sullo, 26 Mass. App. Ct. 766, 770 (1989). The same limit covers digital contents: data on a phone, camera, or computer that is lawfully held in an inventory may not be examined without a warrant.

The remedy is exclusion. Article 14 requires suppression of evidence seized during an inventory search that was not conducted according to standard written procedures, and statements that are the fruit of an unlawful inventory search are suppressed with it. An inventory undertaken in order to search for evidence is outside the exception.

Home Searches

The home receives the greatest protection the law provides. Absent voluntary consent or genuine exigent circumstances, the police need a warrant to enter and search a residence, and the protection extends to the curtilage, the area immediately surrounding the home and associated with it. A warrantless entry is presumptively unreasonable and the Commonwealth carries a heavy burden to justify one.

Where the police have probable cause but need time to obtain a warrant, the proper course is to secure the premises while the application is prepared, rather than to enter first and apply afterward.

A dormitory room is a residence for these purposes, and a student has a reasonable expectation of privacy in it, so a police search generally requires a warrant or a recognized exception. The analysis changes when the searcher is a school official rather than a police officer, and a private university is not a state actor, although evidence its staff find can still reach the police. The decisive questions are whether the person who searched was acting as an agent of the police and whether valid consent was given. Because the exposure runs in two directions at once, a dorm search is analyzed with the criminal case and the university proceeding in view. See college and university student criminal defense.

Phones, Computers, and Cloud Accounts

The police generally may not search the digital contents of a phone seized during an arrest without a warrant. Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014). Historical cell site location information that maps a person’s movements is likewise protected and generally requires a warrant. Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018). Article 14 requires a warrant on probable cause for that information independently of federal law, and Massachusetts does not apply the third party doctrine mechanically to revealing location data. Commonwealth v. Augustine, 467 Mass. 230 (2014).

The acquisition of Google Location History data is a search under the Fourth Amendment. Chatrie v. United States, 146 S. Ct. 2193 (2026). That decision does not itself settle whether a particular multistep geofence warrant satisfies the probable cause and particularity requirements, and no Massachusetts appellate decision has yet addressed geofence warrants. Augustine is the closest Massachusetts authority on location privacy, and it is analogous rather than controlling on geofencing.

A warrant for a device is not a license to review everything on it. The particularity and nexus requirements apply with force here, because a phone holds more private material than a house.

A seizure that was lawful when it began can become unreasonable if the police do not diligently pursue the warrant. After a warrantless seizure of a device, the police must make the warrant application a priority within a relatively short period, and a general investigative workload does not by itself establish diligence as to the device they are holding. Commonwealth v. White, 475 Mass. 583 (2016). Whether a particular delay was reasonable is decided by weighing the owner’s possessory interest, the degree of the intrusion and the length of the delay, and the Commonwealth’s justification, rather than against a fixed clock, and the evidentiary value of the device does not by itself excuse the delay. Commonwealth v. Solis and Commonwealth v. Diaz, SJC-13823 and SJC-13835 (Mass. Aug. 12, 2026).

Compelling a person to unlock an encrypted device raises the privilege against self-incrimination rather than the search and seizure provisions, and Massachusetts requires more than federal law does: the Commonwealth must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person knows the passcode before a court may compel its entry. Commonwealth v. Jones, 481 Mass. 540 (2019). That subject is treated at your right to remain silent in Massachusetts, and the complete device framework is at phone and computer searches in Massachusetts.

Whether a search was lawful is a different question from whether the resulting messages, screenshots, or extraction reports may be shown to a jury. The Commonwealth must separately satisfy the rules on authentication, authorship, hearsay, and completeness, which are addressed at digital evidence in Massachusetts criminal cases.

Standing to Challenge the Search

Federal law requires a person charged with a possessory offense to assert a personal privacy interest in the place searched in order to challenge the search, which can force a defendant to make an incriminating admission simply to be heard.

Massachusetts retains automatic standing, so a defendant charged with a crime of possession may contest the search without first conceding a possessory connection to the item seized. Commonwealth v. Amendola, 406 Mass. 592 (1990). This keeps challenges available that federal law would foreclose.

Racially Motivated Stops

Under federal law an officer’s actual motive for a stop does not matter so long as there was an objective basis for it, which permits a minor traffic violation to be used as a reason to investigate something else. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996).

Massachusetts has moved away from that position where race is involved. In Commonwealth v. Long, 485 Mass. 711 (2020), the Supreme Judicial Court revised the framework for challenging a stop as racially motivated, making relief more available where the totality of the circumstances supports a reasonable inference that the stop was based on race.

What a Suppression Order Excludes

The remedy for an unconstitutional search is exclusion. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). Article 14 independently requires the suppression of illegally seized evidence.

The rule covers not only the item seized but the further evidence the illegality led the police to. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963); Commonwealth v. Fredericq, 482 Mass. 70 (2019). Where an unlawful stop leads to an unlawful search that leads to a statement, a single defect at the beginning can require the suppression of everything that followed. Identifying that first defect and tracing the chain from it is the substance of a suppression motion.

Suppression Is Not Dismissal

A suppression order excludes evidence. It does not dismiss the charge.

The case remains on the docket and proceeds on whatever admissible evidence is left. Where the suppressed evidence was the case, the Commonwealth may be unable to go forward, and a nolle prosequi or a dismissal may follow, but that is a second step and it does not happen by operation of the suppression order. Where the suppression is partial, the case continues on a changed record. How a Massachusetts case is brought to an end is a separate subject, addressed at can a Massachusetts judge dismiss my case, and the stages of a case are set out at Massachusetts criminal process.

Where Article 14 Requires More Than Federal Law

The recurring differences are worth stating together, because a motion built only on federal grounds leaves the strongest arguments unmade.

• A pursuit becomes a seizure earlier. Stoute.
• An informant tip is measured prong by prong. Upton.
• An in camera hearing is available to test an affidavit resting on a confidential informant. Amral.
• The physical evidence derived from an unwarned statement is excluded. Martin.
• Marijuana odor alone no longer establishes probable cause to search a vehicle. Cruz; Overmyer.
• A knock and announce violation may support suppression, where federal law generally does not. Gomes; Jimenez.
• Historical cell site location information requires a warrant on probable cause. Augustine.
• A device seized without a warrant must be the subject of a diligent warrant application. White.
• Authority to stop a vehicle for a civil infraction expires after an unreasonable delay. Arias.
• A compelled passcode requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the person knows it. Jones.
• Automatic standing preserves the defendant’s ability to bring the motion. Amendola.
• A racially motivated stop may be challenged under a framework more favorable than the federal rule. Long.

How the Motion Is Investigated and Litigated

A motion to suppress is filed before trial and heard at an evidentiary hearing where officers testify and are cross-examined. The defense identifies the constitutional defect, whether in the pursuit, the stop, the exit order, the frisk, the search, the warrant affidavit, or the informant showing. For a warrantless search the burden is generally on the Commonwealth to justify what the officers did.

The work that makes the motion possible happens before the hearing: obtaining the reports, the dispatch and radio records, any recording from a cruiser or a body-worn camera, the booking video, the warrant and its affidavit, and the return, and then reconstructing the sequence minute by minute. Small facts decide these motions, including when the cruiser lights came on, how long the stop had been running when the exit order was given, and what the affidavit said as against what the officer knew.

Attorney Joe Serpa has practiced Massachusetts criminal defense since 1995 and has litigated motions to suppress in operating under the influence, drug, firearms, and computer crime cases, in the District Court, the Boston Municipal Court, and the Superior Court.

Suppression Motions Across the Massachusetts Courts

These motions are heard in the court where the case is pending. Serpa Law Office files and argues them throughout Greater Boston, including the Quincy, Dedham, Cambridge, Somerville, and Woburn District Courts, the Boston Municipal Court, and the Superior Courts of the surrounding counties. Highway interdiction stops on I-93, Route 128, I-95, I-90, and Route 3 are prosecuted in the District Courts along those corridors, where the legality of the stop and any exit order is frequently the whole case.

If your case began with a stop, a search, a warrant, or the seizure of a phone, the legality of that police conduct may decide the outcome. Call Serpa Law Office at 617.936.0201 for a free and confidential consultation. Boston office: 20 Park Plaza #400A. Braintree Office: 25 Braintree Hill Office Park Suite 200A.