Commonwealth v. Wilson, C., Aplt.

Summary

The Court held that the Drug Overdose Response Immunity Act does not protect Wilson from prosecution for drug paraphernalia discovered during a lawful inventory search conducted after he had been placed in an ambulance and the medical emergency response had ended. It interpreted information obtained "independent of" emergency assistance to require a causal inquiry and concluded that the mandatory towing-related inventory search was an independent source of the evidence. The Court therefore affirmed the Superior Court's order. Justice Donohue, dissenting, would have applied the statute's plain meaning to find the evidence dependent on the overdose call, while Justice Wecht, concurring, would have affirmed primarily because the Act did not apply to the emergency responder who made the report.