State v. Rivera

OPINION

FLANDERS, Justice.

This case concerns a 1993 drug raid during which Providence police officers executed search warrants for the second- and third-floor apartments in a Providence tenement. The searches yielded enough evidence of heroin and other drug-processing paraphernalia from the third-floor apartment to convict the defendants, Luis Rivera (Rivera),- Noel Cres-po (Crespo), and Manuel Barboza (Barboza), of a slew of drug-possession offenses. 1

On appeal, Crespo and Barboza (defendants) claim that their trials should have been severed, that their motions for acquittal and a new trial…