Court to police: Beware of strange women in seedy motels

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today prosecutors could not use a gun found in a Revere motel room against the man charged with its possession because the woman who let cops in wasn't renting the room.

At issue was a gun seized from what was normally the manager's quarters at the now closed Ocean Lodge motel on Revere Beach Boulevard, which was the kind of place where police routinely met with the manager to check the night's guest list for wanted criminals.

On one such visit in 2005, according to the ruling, the manager told an officer he'd found a needle and asked him to pick it for disposal - a service offered by Revere Police. When the officer went to what he thought was the manager's room later that night, his knock was answered by a woman he'd never seen before who agreed to let him in.

He immediately saw what appeared to be several men with marijuana, but he told them to be cool, he wasn't there to arrest them - he knew a much larger drug sting was going down later that night and didn't want to jeopardize that - and that he just wanted to pick up the needle. Then he heard a "thump," one thing led to another and soon he and his partner were placing Jose Lopez under arrest for illegal possession of the gun they said he tried hiding in a trash barrel in an adjoining room.

But the state's highest court said today that, without a warrant or emergency situation, the officer could not seize the gun. Although officers can enter domiciles without a warrant with the permission of the homeowner - or in this case, the room renter - the court said the woman who answered the door did not have the authority to let them in:

Before knocking, Desimone [the officer] believed that Victor [the manager] lived in room 138 (and had no information that Victor lived with anyone or was involved with a woman). When the woman, who was not known to Desimone, opened the door, as opposed to Victor, a reasonable officer initially should have, at best, doubted the woman's authority to consent to his entry of what he believed to be Victor's residence. The circumstances created a "duty to explore, rather than ignore" ... the woman's relationship to the premises to establish whether she possessed common authority, or even actual authority, over the premises. Instead, Desimone inquired of the woman whether Victor was present, to which he was given a "funny ... type of look," and the ambiguous response, "I don't know." In these circumstances, before and at the time of Desimone's entry, whether the woman had any kind of authority to consent to Desimone's entry was at best questionable, thereby prompting further exploration concerning her relationship to the premises. ...

Because Desimone ignored facts calling into question the information he held (that Victor lived in room 138) and because Desimone did not conduct a diligent inquiry concerning the woman's relationship to the premises (and thus, authority to give consent), we conclude that his warrantless entry into the defendant's home was without valid consent, as it was not predicated on actual or apparent authority, and therefore violated art. 14.

Complete ruling.