# Commonwealth v. Cruz

> Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · August 9, 2004 · 442 Mass. 299

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6453005

## Case

- **Full name:** Commonwealth v. Peter Cruz
- **Court:** Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
- **Decided:** August 9, 2004
- **Citations:** 442 Mass. 299; 812 N.E.2d 1178; 2004 Mass. LEXIS 492
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Cowin
- **Judges:** Cowin, Greaney
- **Cited by:** 10 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/6453005

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- rejecting defendant's argument that witnesses testifying pursuant to promises of consideration by Commonwealth should have been excluded on ground that testimony was "irretrievably unreliable"

## Opinion text

Cowin, J.
(concurring, with whom Marshall, C.J., joins). Recognizing that Commonwealth v. Marquez, 434 Mass. 370, 377 (2001), is the law, I continue to disagree with the holding in that case. Id. at 379 (Cowin, J., dissenting). I concur in the result reached by the court because the motion to suppress was rightly denied on another ground. The evidence was not obtained by “exploitation of [the primary] illegality [but] instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.” Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 488 (1963), quoting Maguire, Evidence of Guilt 221 (1959). The motion judge correctly concluded that the confession was the product of the defendant’s free will based on a consideration of the relevant factors set forth in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 602-604 (1975), and Commonwealth v. Bradshaw, 385 Mass. 244, 258 (1982), including (1) the giving of Miranda warnings, (2) the temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession, (3) the presence of intervening circumstances, and (4) the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct. The statement was thus sufficiently attenuated from the illegal act to be “purged of the primary taint,” see, e.g., Commonwealth v. Fredette, 396 Mass. 455, 459 (1985), and was therefore independently admissible.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6453005. Public record. Not legal advice.