Massachusetts Appeals Court· 12/8/2009

Commonwealth v. DePina

Citations

75 Mass. App. Ct. 842
917 N.E.2d 781
2009 Mass. App. LEXIS 1586

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

finding nonharmless error where alleged amount of drugs exceeded statutory threshold of 14 grams by 0.24 grams and was contained in 8 separate bags
finding “considerable circumstantial evidence indicat[ing] that the rocks were cocaine” including “their proximity to distribution paraphernalia” such as “cut sandwich bags, baking soda, and razor blades”
officer’s conversation with person calling defendant’s telephone looking to buy drugs admissible as evidence that telephone was instrumentality of drug distribution
officer lawfully answered cellular telephone seized pursuant to search warrant as “search ... for evidence of the crime for which [the defendant] was arrested”
strong evidence of constructive possession where defendant possessed keys to the building's main door, the apartment's front door, and the door to the bedroom where the drugs were found
police arrest the defendant outside a dwelling; his keys to the apartment and bedroom containing cocaine connect him to the contraband and permit a finding of constructive possession and trafficking

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Sikora

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Cited by

13 cases in this archive cite this case.

Cites

28 cases in this archive are cited by this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

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