Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court· 8/27/2003

Commonwealth v. Pagan

Citations

440 Mass. 62
793 N.E.2d 1236
2003 Mass. LEXIS 624

How courts have described this case

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

noting that where “the container that could have contained a weapon also contained the identification that the police were asking the defendant to produce,” police could confirm that no weapons were concealed inside before allowing the defendant to have access to it
upholding officer’s decision to open and inspect a backpack that was made of a “pliable material” but filled with hard, heavy objects during a threshold inquiry without first pat frisking the pack’s exterior
search of backpack for weapons permissible in investigative stop where officer reasonably fears that suspect may be armed
police could frisk the bag for weapons rather than set it aside because the suspect claimed his identification, which they requested, was inside
police officers permitted to search “container that they reasonably fear may contain a weapon” before returning it to defendant to locate his identification documentation
threat was not neutralized where additional officers had only been on scene for three minutes prior to search of bag and scene was in process of being secured

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Sosman

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Cited by

21 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

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

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