Commonwealth v. Berment

In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), the United States Supreme Court wrote that “[s]treet encounters between citizens and police officers are incredibly rich in diversity.” Id. at 13. It is that diversity that yields the abundance of “highly fact-based questions,” Commonwealth v. Willis, 415 Mass. 814, 815 (1993), frequently implicating, as here, constitutional rights. Based on the particular facts of the case before us, we conclude that the motion judge should have allowed, on constitutional grounds, the defendant’s motion to suppress the handgun and ammunition that the police, *523after a pat…