Commonwealth v. Palmer

Summary

The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the denial of Byron Palmer's motion to suppress money and drugs he discarded while fleeing officers who had approached him in a Jamaica Plain parking lot to question him about an armed robbery and shooting. The court held that Palmer was seized when two groups of officers — plainclothes detectives with badges displayed and uniformed officers — converged in pursuit after he ran, which occurred before he discarded the drugs, because such pursuit was a show of authority a reasonable person would consider coercive. The court then held that, at that moment, Detective Eng had reasonable suspicion to believe Palmer had committed the robbery, based on her detailed, self-developed description of the suspect from repeated review of surveillance footage, corroborating unmasked footage from the following day, and her contemporaneous recognition of Palmer's distinctive hat, hairstyle, complexion, and size, with flight and the high-crime location accorded only minimal weight. Because the seizure was supported by reasonable suspicion, the discarded drugs were not the fruit of an unlawful seizure and the drug conviction stands.