nexus requirement in Massachusetts

2013Although the nexus requirement is an outgrowth of the special constitutional protection afforded to a person’s home, see Commonwealth v. Escalera, supra at 643 , and cases cited, it does not follow that the affidavit must establish a suspect’s legal relationship to the premises.

2012We recently elaborated on this nexus requirement in Commonwealth v. Escalera, 462 Mass. 636, 643 (2012), in which we concluded that “[observations by police of a suspect on multiple occasions leaving his residence and proceeding directly to a prearranged location to sell drugs can support a reasonable inference that the suspect is a drug dealer who stores drugs or packages drugs for resale in his residence.” The affidavit in this case informed the magistrate that the police separately observed each defendant leaving the shared residence and traveling directly to a prearranged location to sell

2025In Shapiro v. Worcester, 464 Mass. 261, 272-273 (2013), however, we concluded that a city's decision more than a decade earlier to permit the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) to discharge effluent into the city's sewer system in exchange for MDC's agreement to make certain improvements to the city's sewer system satisfied the nexus requirement.

2019See, e.g., Carpenter , 138 S. Ct. at 2221 ; Estabrook , 472 Mass. at 870 , 38 N.E.3d 231 ; Augustine II , 472 Mass. at 453, 35 N.E.3d 688 .

2019See generally Alexis , 481 Mass. at 102 , 112 N.E.3d 796 ("There must be probable cause to conclude not only that an individual committed a crime, but also that there is a nexus between the crime and the items sought, and the location to be searched").

2019See generally Alexis , 481 Mass. at 102 , 112 N.E.3d 796 ("There must be probable cause to conclude not only that an individual committed a crime, but also that there is a nexus between the crime and the items sought, and the location to be searched").

2014The Appeals Court similarly employed this analysis to uphold a restitution order in Commonwealth v. Palmer P., 61 Mass. App. Ct. 230, 232 (2004).

2014His argument also ignores the nexus requirement adopted by the case law. “[T]he Legislature’s obvious intention [is] to ‘punish the underlying felonies more seriously when a firearm is involved.’ ” Commonwealth v. Hines, supra at 189 , quoting from Commonwealth v. Hawkins, 21 Mass. App. Ct. 766, 769 (1986) (emphasis supplied).

2012These observations, when considered along with CSA’s detailed description of the drug distribution enterprise operating from the defendants’ residence and CSB’s corroborating information regarding defendants’ modus operandi of delivering the drugs to prearranged locations near bat residence, readily establish that this is not a case where be magistrate’s probable cause determination was simply inferred from “be fact that the defendant lives there.” Contrast Commonwealth v. Pina, 453 Mass. 438, 441 (2009).