Presiding Justice Ariane Bueno and the two-justice panel heard competing views over whether police should have frisked a defendant’s backpack before opening it.

Catherine Jansen, counsel for the Commonwealth, told the court the video and Detective Santos’ testimony show an Xbox protruding from a soft-sided backpack and argued that observation made a pat frisk “impracticable,” endorsing a direct search to locate a reported firearm. “You can see it’s taking the shape of the Xbox,” Jansen said, urging the panel to find that a frisk would not have confirmed or dispelled the officers’ suspicions.

Defense counsel Edward Crane countered that the SJC’s Pagan standard requires police to take the minimally intrusive step necessary to determine whether a weapon is present. Crane argued the motion judge correctly concluded the Commonwealth had not shown a search of the backpack was “minimally necessary” and that a pat frisk or removing the obstructing item (the Xbox) would have been the next minimally intrusive steps.

Justices probed whether the video alone permits the panel to make de novo factual findings about what a pat frisk would have shown and whether unzipping and briefly looking inside the bag over a few seconds is actually less intrusive than manipulating a closed bag for minutes. The panel also asked whether the open bag and visible Xbox distinguished this case from Rutledge and Pagan.

No ruling was announced from the bench; the court took the arguments under advisement. The case will be decided on the written record and the video evidence, according to the panel.

The central legal question is how to apply the SJC’s container-search jurisprudence (Pagan, Rutledge and related precedents) to body-worn video and to an open bag that reveals a bulky nonweapon object but leaves the possibility of a concealed weapon below.