# Commonwealth v. Bartlett

> Massachusetts Appeals Court · October 9, 1996 · 41 Mass. App. Ct. 468

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6459757

## Case

- **Full name:** Commonwealth v. William Bartlett
- **Court:** Massachusetts Appeals Court
- **Decided:** October 9, 1996
- **Citations:** 41 Mass. App. Ct. 468; 671 N.E.2d 515; 1996 Mass. App. LEXIS 826
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Brown
- **Judges:** Brown, Kass
- **Cited by:** 27 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/6459757

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- concluding extension of search not justified by trooper’s “eight innocuous observations[,]” including such facts as name on rental agreement was not driver’s and no tools in car despite driver’s being carpenter

## Opinion text

Brown, J.
(concurring). This record speaks, very loudly that this driver was interrogated on suspicion of being Hispanic. Only the driver’s ethnicity and possession of a beeper were apparent at the time of the stop. Previously, this court has stated that ethnicity plus velocity does not equal probable cause. See Commonwealth v. Bodden, 11 Mass. App. Ct. 964 (1981). It is now clear that we need to insert another equation of inequality into our jurisprudence: ethnicity plus a beeper does not equal probable cause.
Before it is said that another criminal has evaded punishment on a technicality, let me say that judges do not view compliance with the Constitution as a mere mundane inconvenience. Cf. Brown v. Board of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954); Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962); Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). In further response to those who say judges allow too many guilty persons to go free, I pose this question: how many Hispanic persons have been stopped and their person or vehicles searched without probable cause and with no contraband discovered? It is the constitutional protections and guarantees extended to those persons that courts are zealously trying to protect.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/6459757. Public record. Not legal advice.