Commonwealth v. Camerano

677 N.E.2d 678 (1997)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Members of the hut-hut team drug task force engaged in fly-over surveillance by helicopter. They spotted a green-colored, roofless structure in which vegetation was growing. As soon as they returned to base, some of the officers obtained, a warrant to search the open structure, as well as a house, a house trailer, and a utility trailer that were in the clearing. The search party found the residence of D and his wife; some sixty feet behind it, the roofless structure that had attracted their interest; some one hundred feet behind that, a house trailer; and another one hundred feet behind the house trailer, a blue utility trailer. D's property was in a pine woods. There were no neighbors within one hundred yards. Sylvia Camerano, D's wife, was home when the police arrived and denied knowledge of what was going on in the green enclosure. Agents could smell the contraband 60 feet away. Also present was Robert Howell, a tenant of d. For $ 200 a month, Howell had arranged to rent land on which he pitched his house trailer and on which, sometime after the initial rental arrangement, he built his garden enclosure. A plastic water line ran on the ground from an outside tap on D's house to Howell's trailer. Howell denied any knowledge of marijuana and told the police, 'You won't find nothing.' Inside the garden, enclosure was 107 marihuana plants, twelve to fifteen feet high. Howell later said the marijuana plants were his. Buried behind D's trailer, the police found five pounds of dried, cut, and packaged marijuana. In the trailer, they found a food processor with marihuana residue, two scales, a box of gallon-sized zip-lock bags, and a small amount of cut and dried marihuana. The utility trailer belonged to Gary Pomerlow, a friend of D, for whom D occasionally repaired trucks. D had allowed Pomerlow to store the utility trailer on the property. Pomerlow had introduced D to Howell. In the utility trailer, the police found a suitcase stuffed with eight pounds of marijuana, cut, dried, and packaged in approximately one-pound bags. D's house turned up no drugs or drug paraphernalia, no key to the padlock of the green structure, nor anything else connected to drug use or distribution. D was convicted of conspiracy and appealed.