Commonwealth v. Garcia

The defendant was convicted of five counts 1 of various drug-related offenses after a jury-waived trial in a District Court, at which the Commonwealth relied upon evidence garnered as a result of two discrete warrant-less searches: the first involved Hector Rodriguez, to whom the defendant allegedly sold cocaine; the second, of the defendant himself, led to his arrest. At the trial, the Commonwealth offered evidence in some respects different from what had been presented to the same judge at the hearing on the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained in the search of his person.

Our…