# Commonwealth v. Straw

> Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · May 24, 1996 · 422 Mass. 756

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6450934

## Case

- **Full name:** Commonwealth v. Marlon A. Straw
- **Court:** Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
- **Decided:** May 24, 1996
- **Citations:** 422 Mass. 756; 665 N.E.2d 80; 1996 Mass. LEXIS 130
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Lynch
- **Judges:** Greaney, Lynch
- **Cited by:** 33 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6450934

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that the defendant did not abandon a briefcase he tossed from the window of his house into his fenced backyard as police approached his home because, by “throwing [the briefcase] into the fenced-in curtilage of his family’s home, an area enjoying full Fourth Amendment …
- holding that warrant was required where police opened locked briefcase which defendant had thrown from second story window of his home at time of arrest
- noting the “high degree of protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment to the curtilage of one’s own home”

## Opinion text

Lynch, J.
(dissenting). I agree with the reasoning of the Appeals Court. “Here, an inference of an intent to abandon the briefcase is reasonably supported by the circumstances of this case. It is not reasonable that a person has an expectation of privacy in a briefcase he pitches out the window as the police came in the front door.” Commonwealth v. Straw, 38 Mass. App. Ct. 738, 742 (1995).
I respectfully dissent.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6450934. Public record. Not legal advice.