State v. Sawyer

The defendant, Buffie Mary Sawyer, appeals the Superior Court’s (Fitzgerald, J.) denial of her motion to suppress the fruits of a warrantless entry into her dwelling. For the reasons that follow, we reverse.

On September 9, 1998, Officer Jeffrey T. Williams of the Haverhill Police Department was called to the scene of a motor vehicle stop. The driver of the vehicle could not produce identification, and he asked the defendant, a passenger, to go to the apartment they shared to obtain some form of identification. Because the defendant did not have a driver’s license and the weather was…