Whether a district court clerk-magistrate may issue a search warrant for premises falling outside the district court’s jurisdiction, but within the district court’s county.

The Barnstable Police Department investigated the defendant and his family, who were allegedly running a drug distribution enterprise, from 1999 to 2007. By 2007, the defendant had moved to the town of Bourne, allegedly to escape the investigation. Barnstable police obtained a search warrant from the Barnstable District Court for the defendant’s Bourne apartment. Bourne is in the jurisdiction of the Falmouth District Court, rather than the Barnstable District Court. Both courts are in Barnstable County.

The seized evidence led to conviction of the defendant on some ten drug and firearm charges, the defendant appealed, and the SJC transferred the case sua sponte from the Appeals Court.

The issue is whether the clerk-magistrate could issue a search warrant for an apartment in Bourne, which is outside the Barnstable District Court’s jurisdiction but within Barnstable County.

The defendant argues that district courts may issue search warrants only within their jurisdiction, resting almost entirely on a venerable — but not controlling — text: Grasso & McEvoy, Suppression Matters Under Massachusetts Law § 7-3(a) (2008). The Commonwealth rests on a statute: G.L. c. 218, § 32, which states that “District courts may receive complaints and issue warrants and other processes for the apprehension of persons charged with crime and found within their county … returnable before a court of the county having jurisdiction of the trial.” The Commonwealth argues that, there being no other jurisdictional limit on the specific authority of clerks to issue search warrants (see G.L. c. 218, § 33), their authority too must run county-wide.

The Commonwealth seems to have the better of this argument; if the district court can issue warrants for persons found within their county, it is hard to see why a district court clerk should not be able to issue search warrants, and the defendant cites no statute that explicitly imposes a narrower limit. It is not clear whether the warrant was in fact returned “before a court of the county having jurisdiction of the trial” (or even exactly how to read that language), but any defect in the return is likely insufficient to assist the defendant at this stage.

On a side note, the defendant apparently obtained a five-year sentence in this case by stipulating to entry of the police report at a bench trial, effectively pleading guilty but retaining the right to appeal the validity of the warrant. If that is the case, it’s an interesting example of a defendant obtaining some measure of grace from the prosecutor while still preserving appeal of his most viable argument.