Commonwealth v. Va Meng Joe

Va Meng Joe was convicted of trafficking in heroin in November, 1994. His appeal challenges the denial of his pretrial motion to suppress the inculpatory drugs, which were seized from his pocket by a police officer who had run up to his car while Joe was stopped at a red light. He contends that the police did not have probable cause to stop and search him on the basis of a confidential informant’s tip and subsequent police observations. Viewing “the facts and circumstances as a whole in assessing the reasonableness of the officers’ conduct” here, Commonwealth v. Williams, 422 Mass. 111, 116…