Title: In re D.D.

State: maryland

Issuer: Maryland Supreme Court

Document:

In re: D.D., No. 27, September Term, 2021. Opinion by Biran, J. 
 
 
FOURTH AMENDMENT – SEARCHES AND SEIZURES – INVESTIGATORY 
DETENTIONS – REASONABLE SUSPICION BASED ON THE ODOR OF 
MARIJUANA – D.D., a juvenile, and his four companions were detained by police 
officers after the officers smelled the odor of marijuana coming from the group. While 
frisking D.D. for weapons, one of the officers discovered a loaded gun in D.D.’s waistband. 
After being charged with firearms offenses, D.D. moved to suppress the gun. The Court of 
Appeals held that the odor of marijuana gives rise to reasonable suspicion that criminal 
activity may be afoot, and thus provides the basis for a brief investigatory detention. 
Possession of 10 grams or more of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Maryland, and 
the odor of marijuana, therefore, remains evidence of a crime. Although that odor, without 
more, does not provide probable cause to arrest a person for a criminal possession of 
marijuana, it does meet the less stringent standard of reasonable suspicion necessary to 
justify an investigatory stop. This distinction makes sense, given the differing level of 
intrusion associated with an arrest compared to an investigative detention. Thus, the Court 
held that the initial detention of D.D., based solely on the odor of marijuana, did not violate 
the Fourth Amendment. 
 
FOURTH AMENDMENT – SEARCHES AND SEIZURES – PAT-DOWN FOR 
WEAPONS – REASONABLE SUSPICION THAT THE SUSPECT IS ARMED AND 
DANGEROUS – The Court of Appeals held that the officer who frisked D.D. had 
reasonable suspicion that D.D. was armed and dangerous, based on the totality of the 
circumstances. The factors supporting reasonable suspicion included the evasive behavior 
and body language of D.D. and his companions, the discovery of what was claimed to be 
a BB gun on one of the other young men in the group, D.D.’s baggy clothing, the officers’ 
smelling the odor of marijuana, their concern that the group was trespassing, and the fact 
that the officers were outnumbered five to two. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS 
 
OF MARYLAND 
 
No. 27 
 
September Term, 2021 
 
 
 
IN RE: D.D. 
 
 
*Getty, C.J. 
*McDonald 
Watts 
Hotten 
Booth 
Biran 
Raker, Irma S. 
(Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), 
 
JJ. 
 
 
Opinion by Biran, J. 
Watts, J., concurs. 
Hotten and Raker, JJ., dissent. 
 
 
Filed: June 21, 2022 
 
*Getty, C.J., and McDonald, J., now Senior Judges, 
participated in the hearing and conference of this 
case while active members of this Court; after being 
recalled pursuant to Maryland Constitution, Article 
IV, Section 3A, they also participated in the decision 
and adoption of this opinion.
Circuit Court for Prince George’s County 
Case No. JA-19-0409 
Argued: January 6, 2022 
Pursuant to Maryland Uniform Electronic Legal 
Materials Act 
(§§ 10-1601 et seq. of the State Government Article) this document is authentic. 
 
 
 
 
 
Suzanne C. Johnson, Clerk 
2022-06-21 15:03-04:00
In 2014, the Maryland General Assembly decriminalized possession of less than 
10 grams of marijuana. However, the Legislature did not legalize marijuana possession. 
Rather, possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana currently is a civil offense punishable 
by fines and other remedies, and possession of more than 10 grams of marijuana remains 
a criminal offense.  
In the aftermath of this partial decriminalization, this Court has issued several 
opinions concerning warrantless searches and seizures based on the odor of marijuana. The 
most recent of these cases, Lewis v. State, 470 Md. 1 (2020), involved a search incident to 
an arrest, where the probable cause for the arrest was based solely on the fact that officers 
smelled marijuana on the defendant. We held that the odor of marijuana on a person, 
without more, does not provide probable cause to believe that the person is in possession 
of a criminal amount of the drug. Therefore, the officers lacked probable cause to arrest the 
defendant, and the evidence found in the search incident to that arrest had to be suppressed.  
In this case, we consider whether to extend the holding in Lewis to an investigatory 
detention, which requires a showing of reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal 
activity may be afoot – a standard that is significantly less stringent than probable cause. 
That is, we must decide whether the odor of marijuana, by itself, provides reasonable 
suspicion to support an investigatory detention.  
On November 15, 2019, two police officers stopped a group of five young men as 
the group was getting ready to leave an apartment building in Capitol Heights, Maryland. 
D.D., the Respondent/Cross-Petitioner before us, was one of the five members of the group. 
He was 15 years old at the time. The officers had been called to the building based on a 
2 
complaint involving the odor of marijuana. The officers smelled a strong odor of marijuana 
coming from the group of young men and directed them to sit down, thus seizing them for 
purposes of the Fourth Amendment. The young men would not tell the officers where they 
lived, and D.D., in particular, exhibited behavior that one of the officers believed was 
“evasive,” suggesting to the officer that D.D. might be armed. The officers subsequently 
began patting down the members of the group for weapons. One of the officers found a 
suspected handgun (possibly a BB gun) in the waistband of one of D.D.’s companions. The 
other officer then frisked D.D. and found a loaded gun in D.D.’s waistband. A delinquency 
petition subsequently was filed in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County charging 
D.D. with firearms offenses. 
D.D. moved to suppress the gun, arguing that his initial detention and subsequent 
frisk both violated the Fourth Amendment. The circuit court, sitting as the juvenile court, 
denied D.D.’s suppression motion and found him involved as to the charged offenses. D.D. 
appealed the juvenile court’s denial of his suppression motion. 
The Court of Special Appeals reversed, holding that the odor of marijuana, without 
more, does not provide reasonable suspicion of possession of a criminal amount of 
marijuana. Thus, the intermediate appellate court held that the investigatory detention of 
D.D., which was based solely on the odor of marijuana, violated the Fourth Amendment. 
Having ruled that the gun should have been suppressed due to the invalid detention, the 
Court of Special Appeals did not decide whether the frisk also was impermissible. 
We hold that the odor of marijuana provides reasonable suspicion of criminal 
activity sufficient to conduct a brief investigatory detention. Thus, the officers’ initial stop 
3 
of D.D. did not violate the Fourth Amendment. We also conclude that the discovery of a 
weapon on one of D.D.’s companions, combined with the group’s evasive behavior and 
other circumstances, provided the officers with reasonable suspicion that D.D. was armed 
and dangerous. Thus, the pat-down that led to the discovery of the gun on D.D. also was 
reasonable. Accordingly, we will reverse the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals and 
hold that the juvenile court properly denied D.D.’s suppression motion. 
I 
 
Background 
A. The Investigatory Detention and Pat-Down of D.D. 
On November 15, 2019, shortly after 7:30 p.m., Sergeant Jeff Walden and Officer 
Alexandra Moser of the Prince George’s County Police Department (the “Department”) 
responded to a call for service to investigate a group of males in an apartment building 
located at 6626 Ronald Road in Capitol Heights, Maryland. The call was based on a 
complaint of “loud music and the smell of marijuana” coming from the basement of the 
building. 
After opening the front door of the apartment building, the officers saw a group of 
five young men walking up the stairs from the basement. The officers “smelled a strong 
odor of marijuana” coming from the group. Sergeant Walden – a 21-year veteran of the 
Department – stopped the group and directed them to “have a seat” on the stairs. The young 
men were wearing baggy clothes, and D.D. was wearing a “big puffy jacket.” There were 
two sets of stairs leading away from the landing where the officers were located when they 
entered the building and stopped the group. The stairs to the left of the officers led up to 
4 
the next level of the building. The stairs to the right led down to the basement.1 After 
Sergeant Walden told the young men to sit down, four of the members of the group sat 
down on the ascending staircase. The young man later identified as D.D.2 was the only 
member of the group who sat down on the descending staircase. 
According to Sergeant Walden, he and Officer Moser began their discussion with 
the young men by asking, “[W]ho lives here?” The officers received no response. None of 
the members of the group “could provide any identification of where they lived.” When 
Sergeant Walden specifically asked D.D. where he lived, D.D. “shrugged his shoulders and 
didn’t say anything.” When Officer Moser asked D.D. the same question, D.D. replied “my 
dick.” The other members of the group were “snickering, laughing, very carefree, [and] not 
cooperative.” Sergeant Walden noticed that D.D. kept turning away from him and “seemed 
to be evasive,” which, based on Sergeant Walden’s “training and knowledge,” is “a sign 
that you could be carrying a weapon.” Sergeant Walden also was concerned because he 
could not “really see [D.D.’s] hands.” According to Sergeant Walden, D.D. “would speak 
to me, but I can’t see his whole body language, I can’t see what he’s doing.” 
Because of the “odor of marijuana,” the group’s “evasive body language,” and the 
fact that there were “five of them in baggy clothes” in a place “where they could run out 
the door,” Sergeant Walden was concerned that one of the group members might be in 
possession of a weapon and “wanted to feel safe that there was nobody that was armed at 
 
1 Although it is not explicit in the record, we infer that it was this set of stairs that 
the young men were ascending as the officers entered the building. 
 
2 In this opinion, we refer to D.D. and other juveniles by their initials. 
5 
the time.” The officers told the group members that they would each be frisked. At that 
point, the officers were investigating the young men for the crimes of trespassing and 
possession of controlled dangerous substances.  
Officer Moser first conducted a pat-down of one of D.D.’s companions. As she did 
so, Officer Moser felt what she believed to be a handgun inside the waistband of the 
subject’s pants. Officer Moser then placed the young man in handcuffs. At that point, 
Sergeant Walden moved to assist Officer Moser and stood in front of the door because 
“through [his] training and knowledge and understanding” he “knew as soon as she put 
him in handcuffs that she had recovered a weapon.” After she placed the young man in 
handcuffs, Officer Moser conducted a more thorough pat-down and removed the suspected 
handgun from the subject’s waistband.  
After securing the group member with the suspected handgun and placing him to 
the side, Sergeant Walden turned his attention to D.D. Sergeant Walden “had [D.D.] stand 
up, place his hands on top of his head and … step against the wall.” Sergeant Walden then 
“started a pat-down … and as soon as [he] went to the waistband, which is the first place 
that [he] went, [he] could feel the butt of a handgun in his waistband.” Sergeant Walden 
then placed D.D. in handcuffs “so he wouldn’t be able to reach for it or fight or anything.” 
From D.D.’s waistband, Sergeant Walden retrieved a loaded nine millimeter handgun. 
When asked to explain “how officers are trained to respond when they’re 
outnumbered,” Sergeant Walden responded: 
At first you’re in a terrible disadvantage. We were taught in the academy, it’s 
basic, you’d want to also go with back-up and you shouldn’t handle any call 
by yourself. 
6 
 
But there are times where you’re put in that position to where there are 
several people coming at you, so you have to get the advantage. And one of 
the first concerns is a weapon that they could use against you. 
 
And my first concern was one of them having a weapon. And there was five 
of them and they were right by a door where they could run out the door, plus 
the odor … of marijuana, that there was illegal drug activity there, the fact 
that nobody could provide any identification that they live inside that 
building. 
 
So the first thing we want to do is secure them and make sure that they don’t 
have any weapons on them. Once we found the weapon on them, then they 
were secured and handcuffed. 
 
B. The Juvenile Court’s Ruling 
On November 18, 2019, a delinquency petition was filed in the Circuit Court for 
Prince George’s County charging D.D. with possession of a regulated firearm by a person 
under the age of 21 and two other firearms-related offenses. On December 13, 2019, D.D., 
through counsel, filed a motion to suppress the handgun recovered from his waistband. The 
circuit court, sitting as the juvenile court, held a hearing on D.D.’s motion on December 
17, 2019. The State called one witness, Sergeant Walden, who testified to the facts set forth 
above. 
D.D. called one witness, D.A., another juvenile who was in the group of five. D.A. 
testified that, after he and the others encountered the officers as they walked up the stairs 
from the basement, the officers immediately told them to sit down. According to D.A., the 
“first thing they asked was does anybody have dope, where’s the dope.” The group 
responded that they had no drugs. The male officer then asked them if there was anything 
they wanted to tell him about. The group said that there was not, but D.A. told the officer 
7 
that he had a “funnel” on him, which was “not a drug.”3 After that, according to D.A., the 
officers “were like okay, we’re going to search everybody.” D.A. acknowledged that he 
and the others had been smoking marijuana in the basement prior to their encounter with 
the officers. D.A. also stated that none of the five young men lived in the building and 
confirmed that, after the female officer frisked one of the other young men, “J.”, she 
removed a weapon from J.’s waistband. According to D.A., after the female officer felt the 
weapon, J. “called out” that he had a BB gun. D.A. confirmed that the female officer 
discovered the alleged BB gun on J. before the male officer began frisking D.D. 
After hearing argument from counsel for D.D. and the State, the juvenile court 
denied D.D.’s suppression motion: 
The Court finds there’s … reasonable articulable suspicion that the 
Respondent was engaged in criminal activity, a lot of facts as they were 
outlined in the testimony, it was … 7:00 in November…. It was … cold. That 
there was a strong odor of marijuana. The Court credits the testimony of the 
officer regarding the response from some of the males in response to his 
questions, that the young man was evasive. The Court also credits the 
officer’s testimony … that he asked where he lived and the, they responded, 
replied, you know, at my dick. So the Court finds there’s a reasonable 
articulable suspicion for criminal activity. The Court is going to deny the 
motion to suppress. 
 
(Paragraph breaks omitted.) 
 
On January 7, 2020, the juvenile court found that D.D. was involved as to all counts 
charged in the delinquency petition. After holding a disposition hearing on February 7, 
 
3 D.A. did not provide any further explanation about what a “funnel” is. In its brief, 
the State tells us that “it appears [D.A.] was referring to a tobacco leaf product used for 
rolling cigarettes.” 
8 
2020, the juvenile court ordered D.D. placed on probation/protective supervision with 
probation to be terminated on November 30, 2020. 
C. Appeal 
The Court of Special Appeals reversed the juvenile court’s denial of D.D.’s 
suppression motion. In re D.D., 250 Md. App. 284 (2021). Although the Court of Special 
Appeals acknowledged that this Court’s opinion in Lewis “addressed probable cause, a 
higher standard than reasonable suspicion,” it observed that reasonable suspicion “still is 
tied to suspicion of criminal conduct.” Id. at 300-01. The intermediate appellate court 
concluded that “because the ‘odor of marijuana alone does not indicate the quantity, if any, 
of marijuana in someone’s possession,’ Lewis, 470 Md. at 27, it cannot, by itself, provide 
reasonable suspicion that the person is in possession of a criminal amount of marijuana or 
otherwise involved in criminal activity.” Id. at 301. Because the officers detained D.D. and 
his companions based solely on the odor of marijuana, the Court of Special Appeals held 
that the officers lacked reasonable suspicion for the stop. Id. Accordingly, the Court 
concluded that the seizure was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment and that the 
juvenile court erred in denying D.D.’s suppression motion. Id. Having concluded that 
suppression of the gun was required due to the unconstitutionality of the initial detention, 
the Court of Special Appeals did not decide whether the subsequent frisk of D.D. 
independently violated the Fourth Amendment.  
The State filed a petition for certiorari in this Court, seeking review of the following 
question: “Does the scent of marijuana provide reasonable suspicion to conduct an 
investigatory stop to determine if someone possesses a criminal amount of marijuana or 
9 
could be cited for civil violations of marijuana laws?” D.D. subsequently filed a conditional 
cross-petition presenting the question: “Assuming, arguendo, that the stop was 
constitutional, was the frisk unlawful because the police lacked reasonable suspicion to 
believe that D.D. was armed and dangerous?” We granted both petitions. In re D.D., 475 
Md. 701 (2021). 
II 
 
Standard of Review 
In reviewing a trial court’s ruling concerning the admissibility of evidence allegedly 
seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment, we accept the trial court’s findings of fact 
unless they are clearly erroneous. Grant v. State, 449 Md. 1, 31 (2016). We independently 
appraise the ultimate question of constitutionality by applying the relevant law to the facts 
de novo. See id.   
Where “there is any competent evidence to support the factual findings below, those 
findings cannot be held to be clearly erroneous.” Givens v. State, 459 Md. 694, 705 (2018) 
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We review “the trial court’s findings of 
fact, the evidence, and the inferences that may be drawn therefrom in the light most 
favorable to the party who prevails on the issue that the defendant raises in the motion to 
suppress.” Robinson v. State, 451 Md. 94, 108 (2017) (citation omitted). 
 
 
10 
III 
Discussion 
The Fourth Amendment provides:  
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and 
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and 
no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or 
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the 
persons or things to be seized. 
 
U.S. Const. amend. IV. 
Under the Fourth Amendment, “subject only to a few specifically established and 
well-delineated exceptions, a warrantless search or seizure that infringes upon the protected 
interests of an individual is presumptively unreasonable.” Grant, 449 Md. at 16-17 
(footnote omitted). “The default rule requires that a seizure of a person by a law 
enforcement officer must be supported by probable cause, and, absent a showing of 
probable cause, the seizure violates the Fourth Amendment.” Crosby v. State, 408 Md. 490, 
505 (2009) (citation omitted). However, “a law enforcement officer may conduct a brief 
investigative ‘stop’ of an individual if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that criminal 
activity is afoot.” Id. at 505-06 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 17 (1968)). In addition, 
a police officer may conduct “a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the 
police officer, where [the officer] has reason to believe that [the officer] is dealing with an 
armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he [or she] has probable cause to 
arrest the individual for a crime.” In re David S., 367 Md. 523, 533 (2002) (quoting Terry, 
392 U.S. at 27). 
 
 
11 
A. Reasonable Suspicion and the Odor of Marijuana 
D.D. argues that this Court’s opinion in Lewis v. State is dispositive of the first issue 
presented by this case. D.D.’s position is that “[b]ecause the odor of marijuana alone is not 
indicative of criminal activity and an officer must have evidence of a crime in order to 
conduct an investigatory stop, it necessarily follows that the odor of marijuana alone does 
not provide reasonable suspicion to conduct a Terry stop.”  
The State argues that the Court of Special Appeals erred when it held that the odor 
of marijuana “cannot, by itself, provide reasonable suspicion that the person is in 
possession of a criminal amount of marijuana or otherwise involved in criminal activity.” 
D.D., 250 Md. App. at 301. The State emphasizes that the standard for reasonable suspicion 
is less demanding than that for probable cause. Thus, according to the State, the Court of 
Special Appeals’ decision in this case improperly “elevates the standard for reasonable 
suspicion, requiring police at the nascent stage of an investigation to have certainty that 
criminal activity is afoot before being able to conduct an investigatory stop meant to 
confirm or dispel that suspicion.” We agree with the State. 
1. The Odor of Marijuana and Probable Cause 
Prior to the General Assembly’s partial decriminalization of marijuana possession 
in 2014, possession of any amount of marijuana generally was illegal.4 As a result, before 
2014, the odor of marijuana gave law enforcement officers probable cause to search a 
vehicle, see, e.g., Wilson v. State, 174 Md. App. 434, 441-42 (2007), and the odor of 
 
4 Maryland adopted a medical marijuana program in 2013. See H.B. 1101, 2013 
Leg., 433rd Sess. (Md. 2013). 
12 
marijuana particularized to a person provided probable cause for an arrest. See McGurk v. 
State, 201 Md. App. 23, 52 (2011) (citation omitted).  
Currently, the use or possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana is a “civil 
offense” punishable by a fine not exceeding $100 for a first offense, increasing to a fine of 
$250 for a second offense, and $500 for a third or subsequent offense. Md. Code Ann., 
Crim. Law (CR) § 5-601(c)(2)(ii) (2002, 2021 Repl. Vol.). Smoking marijuana in a public 
place is a civil offense punishable by a fine not exceeding $500. Id. § 5-601(c)(4). The “use 
or possession” of 10 grams or more of marijuana remains a criminal offense, specifically a 
misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment not exceeding six months or a fine not 
exceeding $1,000, or both. Id. § 5-601(c)(2).5  
The partial decriminalization of marijuana changed the legal landscape 
significantly, leading to a series of decisions by the Court of Special Appeals and this Court 
that considered whether and how the odor of marijuana continues to provide probable cause 
to conduct warrantless searches and seizures in Maryland. 
The first of these cases was Bowling v. State, 227 Md. App. 460 (2016). Bowling 
involved a traffic stop that subsequently resulted in a K-9 alert indicating that the vehicle 
contained a controlled dangerous substance. Id. at 462-65. As such, the case dealt with the 
automobile exception to the warrant requirement, also known as the “Carroll doctrine,” 
which allows an officer to “search an automobile, without a warrant, if he or she has 
 
5 The General Assembly has provided exceptions to this enforcement regime for 
those who have obtained marijuana “directly or by prescription or order from an authorized 
provider acting in the course of professional practice.” CR § 5-601(a)(1). 
13 
probable cause to believe it contains evidence of a crime or contraband goods.” Id. at 468 
(citing Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925); Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 
300 (1999)). The Court of Special Appeals noted that “Maryland appellate courts 
consistently have held that the detection of the odor of marijuana by a trained drug dog 
establishes probable cause to conduct a warrantless Carroll doctrine search of a vehicle,” 
before going on to consider “whether the recent Maryland law, which decriminalized the 
possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana and made it a civil offense, changes this 
analysis.” Id. at 469 (citations omitted). 
The Court of Special Appeals held that the partial decriminalization did “not change 
the established precedent that a drug dog’s alert to the odor of marijuana, without more, 
provides the police with probable cause to authorize a search of a vehicle pursuant to the 
Carroll doctrine.” Id. at 476. Important to the intermediate appellate court’s holding was 
the fact that “although the Maryland General Assembly made possession of less than 
10 grams of marijuana a civil, as opposed to a criminal, offense, it is still illegal to possess 
any quantity of marijuana, and marijuana retains its status as contraband.” Id.  
Robinson v. State, 451 Md. 94 (2017), also concerned the automobile exception to 
the warrant requirement, but involved the smell of marijuana by an officer, not a drug dog. 
In Robinson, this Court analyzed the “Fourth Amendment jurisprudence of the Supreme 
Court, Bowling, and authority from other jurisdictions that have addressed the 
decriminalization – or, in one instance, the legalization – of marijuana,” and held that “a 
law enforcement officer has probable cause to search a vehicle where the law enforcement 
officer detects an odor of marijuana emanating from the vehicle.” Id. at 125. Similar to 
14 
Bowling, our holding in Robinson was based largely on the idea that “[d]ecriminalization 
is not the same as legalization” and that “[d]espite the decriminalization of possession of 
less than ten grams of marijuana, possession of marijuana in any amount remains illegal in 
Maryland.” Id. (emphasis in original). We further explained: 
[A]t oral argument and in its brief, the State argued that, separate from the 
odor of marijuana providing probable cause to believe that a vehicle contains 
contraband, the odor of marijuana provides probable cause to believe that a 
vehicle contains evidence of a crime. Put simply, we agree. Despite the 
decriminalization of possession of less than ten grams of marijuana, the odor 
of marijuana remains evidence of a crime. The odor of marijuana emanating 
from a vehicle may be just as indicative of crimes such as the possession of 
more than ten grams of marijuana, possession of marijuana with the intent to 
distribute, or the operation of a vehicle under the influence of a controlled 
dangerous substance, as it is of possession of less than ten grams of 
marijuana…. [I]t is unreasonable to expect law enforcement officers to 
determine, based on odor alone, the difference between 9.99 grams or less of 
marijuana and 10 grams of marijuana. In short, possession of ten grams or 
more of marijuana, crimes involving the distribution of marijuana, and 
driving under the influence of a controlled dangerous substance have not 
been decriminalized in Maryland, and, thus, the odor of marijuana emanating 
from a vehicle provides probable cause to believe that the vehicle contains 
evidence of a crime, and a law enforcement officer may search the vehicle 
under such circumstances. 
 
Id. at 133-34. 
Just a few months later, in Norman v. State, 452 Md. 373 (2017), we considered 
whether the odor of marijuana emanating from a vehicle with multiple passengers alone 
could serve as “reasonable articulable suspicion that the vehicle’s occupants are armed and 
dangerous and subject to frisk.” Id. at 412. We answered that question in the negative, 
reasoning that  
for a law enforcement officer to frisk, i.e., pat down, an individual, there must 
be reasonable articulable suspicion that the individual is armed and 
dangerous, even where a law enforcement officer detects the odor of 
15 
marijuana emanating from a vehicle. We hold that, where an odor of 
marijuana emanates from a vehicle with multiple occupants, a law 
enforcement officer may frisk an occupant of the vehicle if an additional 
circumstance or circumstances give rise to reasonable articulable suspicion 
that the occupant is armed and dangerous. Stated otherwise, for a law 
enforcement officer to have reasonable articulable suspicion to frisk one of 
multiple occupants of a vehicle from which an odor of marijuana is 
emanating, the totality of circumstances must indicate that the occupant in 
question is armed and dangerous. 
 
Id. at 411-12. Thus, while the smell of marijuana can justify a quick pat-down of a vehicle’s 
occupants if combined with some other pertinent circumstance(s), the odor, in and of itself, 
is insufficient to give rise to reasonable suspicion that a specific individual within the 
vehicle is armed and dangerous. Id. at 412. The Court stated that Robinson was not 
“determinative of the issue at hand,” id. at 409, as “[n]o frisks or searches of persons were 
at issue in Robinson, and nowhere in Robinson did this Court imply, one way or the other, 
whether a frisk of a person would be permissible based on an odor of marijuana alone 
emanating from a vehicle.” Id. at 411. 
Next, in Pacheco v. State, 465 Md. 311 (2019), we considered whether the smell of 
marijuana in a car, combined with the observation of a “fresh burnt” joint that could not 
possibly have contained more than 10 grams of marijuana, provided probable cause 
sufficient both to search the car and to arrest, and thereby search, the occupant of the car. 
Although we indicated that “the police lawfully searched Mr. Pacheco’s car for contraband 
or evidence of the three crimes identified in Robinson,” we observed that it “does not 
follow” from the existence of probable cause to search the car that the police “likewise had 
the right to search [Pacheco’s] person.” Id. at 330. We explained that “[t]he same facts and 
circumstances that justify a search of an automobile do not necessarily justify an arrest and 
16 
search incident thereto. This is based on the heightened expectation of privacy one enjoys 
in his or her person as compared to the diminished expectation of privacy one has in an 
automobile. The arrest and search of Mr. Pacheco was unreasonable because nothing in the 
record suggests that possession of a joint and the odor of burnt marijuana gave the police 
probable cause to believe he was in possession of a criminal amount of that substance.” Id. 
at 333-34. Although we noted that, “[i]n a different case, additional facts or testimony 
beyond what we have here may well have compelled a different result,” we concluded that 
the State had not met its burden to prove that the warrantless arrest and search of the 
occupant was reasonable. Id. at 333. 
Finally, in Lewis v. State, we held that the odor of marijuana on a person, without 
more, does not provide probable cause to arrest the person (and to conduct a search of the 
person incident to the arrest). In Lewis, the State based its argument on the fact that, unlike 
Pacheco, where the police saw a singular marijuana joint in the car that was suggestive of 
a non-criminal offense, the police in Lewis only had the odor of marijuana to go on in 
deciding whether to arrest the suspect:  
[W]hile the scent of marijuana left unexplained provides probable cause to 
believe that a criminal amount may be present, see Robinson, that scent plus 
the sighting of a non-criminal amount should diminish suspicion. And 
without some other factual basis to conclude that, where there is some 
marijuana, there may be more, the inference of criminal possession in 
Pacheco simply receded into the constitutionally unreasonable. 
 
Pacheco is, therefore, best understood as a case-specific application of the 
totality-of-the-evidence test, and the facts here are different than in Pacheco. 
This case does not feature a fact, akin to the less-than-10-gram-cigarette, that 
explained the source of the marijuana emanating from Lewis’s person in a 
17 
way that should have diminished Officer Burch’s probable cause arising 
from the scent alone. 
 
Brief of Respondent, Lewis v. State, 2019 WL 8014537, at *47-*48 (Dec. 10, 2019). 
We rejected the State’s attempt to distinguish Pacheco, and held that the search of 
Lewis incident to his arrest, based solely on the odor of marijuana emanating from his 
person, was unreasonable. Lewis, 470 Md. at 27. “Under Pacheco, that information fell 
short of supplying the requisite probable cause to conduct that search.” Id. (citing Pacheco, 
465 Md. at 333-34). We further explained:  
Probable cause to conduct a lawful arrest requires that the arrestee committed 
a felony or was committing a felony or misdemeanor in a law enforcement 
officer’s presence. Possession of less than ten grams of marijuana is a civil 
offense, not a felony or a misdemeanor, therefore law enforcement officers 
need probable cause to believe the arrestee is in possession of a criminal 
amount of marijuana to conduct a lawful arrest. The odor of marijuana alone 
does not indicate the quantity, if any, of marijuana in someone’s possession. 
 
Id. Thus, we held that for the arrest and search of a person “to be supported by probable 
cause, the police must possess information indicating possession of a criminal amount of 
marijuana.” Id. Because there was no indication in the record suggesting that Lewis 
possessed a criminal amount of marijuana, we held that his arrest and search incident to 
arrest violated the Fourth Amendment. Id. 
2. A Less Stringent Standard: Reasonable Suspicion Versus Probable Cause as 
Applied to the Odor of Marijuana following Decriminalization 
 
Lewis does not necessarily control this case because the initial seizure at issue here 
(unlike in Lewis) is not an arrest requiring probable cause, but rather is an investigatory 
detention requiring reasonable suspicion. While investigatory detentions are seizures 
within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, “the limited nature of a brief investigative 
18 
stop does not demand a standard as stringent as probable cause.” Crosby, 408 Md. at 506 
(citation omitted). Rather, to conduct a brief investigatory detention, an officer must have 
only reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activity may be afoot. Id. at 505-06. 
“Reasonable suspicion exists somewhere between unparticularized suspicions and 
probable cause.” Sizer v. State, 456 Md. 350, 364 (2017) (citation omitted); see also Stokes 
v. State, 362 Md. 407, 415 (2001) (“[M]ere hunches are insufficient to justify an 
investigatory stop; for such an intrusion, an officer must have reasonable articulable 
suspicion.”) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). “While there is no litmus test 
to define the reasonable suspicion standard,” law enforcement officers must have “a 
particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal 
activity.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); see also Heien v. North 
Carolina, 574 U.S. 54, 60 (2014) (reasonable suspicion means “a particularized and 
objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of breaking the law”) (internal 
quotation marks and citation omitted). We have explained that “the level of suspicion 
necessary to constitute reasonable, articulable suspicion is considerably less than proof of 
wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence and obviously less demanding than that 
for probable cause.” Graham v. State, 325 Md. 398, 408 (1992) (internal quotation marks 
and citations omitted). 
The probable cause standard does not require an officer “to rule out a suspect’s 
innocent explanation for suspicious facts.” District of Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 
588 (2018). The same is true, of course, for the reasonable suspicion standard. See, e.g., 
United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 277 (2002). But, as discussed above, the two 
19 
standards are not equivalent. Reasonable suspicion is a less stringent standard than 
probable cause. That is true “not only in the sense that reasonable suspicion can be 
established with information that is different in quantity or content than that required to 
establish probable cause, but also in the sense that reasonable suspicion can arise from 
information that is less reliable than that required to show probable cause.” Alabama v. 
White, 496 U.S. 325, 330 (1990).  
Put simply, a particular circumstance or set of circumstances may satisfy the 
reasonable suspicion standard but fall short of probable cause. That is precisely the case 
with respect to the odor of marijuana. Contrary to D.D.’s argument, decriminalization has 
not rendered the odor of marijuana free of all criminal suspicion. Rather, “the odor of 
marijuana remains evidence of a crime,” Robinson, 451 Md. at 133, because the use or 
possession of 10 grams or more of marijuana remains a criminal offense in Maryland. In 
other words, partial decriminalization has reduced the level of certainty associated with the 
odor of marijuana on a person from probable cause that the person has committed a crime 
to reasonable suspicion that the person has committed a crime or is in the process of 
committing a crime.6  
 
6 During the 2022 Legislative Session, the General Assembly passed House Bills 1 
and 837. House Bill 1 proposes an amendment to the Maryland Constitution legalizing the 
use and possession of cannabis for individuals in Maryland who are at least 21 years old. 
The proposed amendment will be on the ballot as part of the 2022 general election. If 
Maryland voters ratify the constitutional amendment, the voting results will be sent to the 
Governor and, upon his proclamation, the amendment will take immediate effect. 
However, the amendment is contingent on the requirement that the General Assembly pass 
legislation regarding the use, distribution, possession, regulation, and taxation of cannabis. 
Dep’t Legis. Servs., Fiscal and Policy Note, House Bill 837, at 2 (2022 Session), available 
at https://perma.cc/3R3S-9XMH. House Bill 837, among other things, addresses the use of 
20 
It follows that a brief investigatory detention based solely on the odor of marijuana 
is reasonable, whereas an arrest (and a search incident to such arrest) is unreasonable if 
based solely on the odor of marijuana. The different outcomes make sense, given the 
differing levels of intrusiveness of the two Fourth Amendment events. An arrest is the 
“most intrusive encounter” that a police officer has with a citizen. Swift v. State, 393 Md. 
139, 150 (2006); see also State v. Wells, 859 N.W.2d 316, 326 (Neb. 2015) (observing that 
an arrest “involves a highly intrusive or lengthy search or detention”). “[G]enerally, a 
display of force by a police officer, such as putting a person in handcuffs, is considered an 
arrest.” Longshore v. State, 399 Md. 486, 502 (2007). An investigatory detention to 
determine whether criminal activity is afoot “is less intrusive than a formal custodial 
arrest[.]” Swift, 393 Md. at 150. It “is limited in duration and purpose and can only last as 
long as it takes a police officer to confirm or to dispel his suspicions.” Id.  
 
cannabis. Under House Bill 837, persons who are 21 years old or older would be able 
legally to possess up to 1.5 ounces of usable cannabis (defined in the legislation as the 
“personal use amount”). The use or possession of more than 1.5 ounces but not more than 
2.5 ounces of usable cannabis (defined as the “civil use amount”) would be a civil offense 
punishable by a fine and other remedies. The use or possession of more than 2.5 ounces of 
usable cannabis (like 10 or more grams under current law) would be a misdemeanor 
punishable by up to six months of imprisonment, a fine of $1,000, or both. If the 
constitutional amendment is ratified, additional legislation will be needed to address the 
remaining outstanding issues. See Madeleine O’Neill, Still on Different Paths: Md. House, 
Senate disconnected on path to legal cannabis in advance of referendum, The Daily Record 
at 1 (June 6, 2022), available at https://perma.cc/F3VJ-CYVK. 
 
We express no opinion concerning the potential impact of the adoption of the 
proposed constitutional amendment and the provisions of House Bill 837 on this Court’s 
Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.  
21 
As to an investigatory detention based on the odor of marijuana, if the officer does 
not quickly obtain additional information that provides probable cause to believe that the 
person has committed a violation of CR § 5-601(c)(2) or another criminal offense, the 
officer must allow the person to go on their way. The public interest in investigating and 
prosecuting criminal offenses, balanced against an individual’s freedom of movement and 
reasonable expectation of privacy in their person, leads us to conclude that the odor of 
marijuana by itself justifies a brief investigatory detention, but (as we held in Lewis) not 
an arrest. See United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 685 (1985) (observing that “the brevity 
of the invasion of the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests is an important factor in 
determining whether the seizure is so minimally intrusive as to be justifiable on reasonable 
suspicion”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Thus, if a police officer stops 
a person based on the smell of marijuana, the officer must “diligently pursue[] a means of 
investigation that [is] likely to confirm or dispel their suspicions quickly[.]” Id. at 686 
(citations omitted). There is no particular amount of time that is per se reasonable or 
unreasonable. Whether an investigative detention that begins as reasonable based on the 
odor of marijuana becomes unreasonable because of its length will depend on the particular 
circumstances of each case. However, we emphasize that such detentions must be brief, 
especially in light of the reality that many individuals who choose to possess marijuana do 
so under the criminal threshold of 10 grams.  
The Court of Special Appeals reversed the juvenile court’s suppression ruling 
because it believed Lewis required that outcome. Although the intermediate appellate court 
acknowledged that “Lewis addressed probable cause, a higher standard than reasonable 
22 
suspicion,” D.D., 250 Md. App. at 300, it reasoned that Lewis’s holding rendered D.D.’s 
investigatory detention unconstitutional “because an officer cannot tell by the smell of 
marijuana alone that a person is involved in criminal activity.” Id. at 301. 
However, Lewis must be read in conjunction with the cases that came before it, 
including Robinson. In Robinson, we acknowledged that the odor of marijuana does not 
reveal the quantity of marijuana held by a given individual. Yet, we recognized that such 
uncertainty does not render the odor of marijuana irrelevant to a criminal investigation. To 
the contrary, we stated that, “[d]espite the decriminalization of possession of less than ten 
grams of marijuana, the odor of marijuana remains evidence of a crime.” Robinson, 451 
Md. at 133. 
Notably, in Pacheco and Lewis, we did not call this language in Robinson into 
question. Indeed, in Pacheco, we reaffirmed the holding of Robinson, explaining that “the 
police lawfully searched Mr. Pacheco’s car for contraband or evidence of the three crimes 
identified in Robinson[.]” Pacheco, 465 Md. at 330 (emphasis added). However, we drew 
a distinction between the showing necessary to establish probable cause to justify an arrest 
and the showing necessary to demonstrate probable cause to search an automobile, given 
the different expectations of privacy that apply in those settings. See id. at 333. We further 
elaborated on this distinction in Lewis, citing the “evidence of a crime” language from 
Robinson and stating that “[a]rresting and searching a person, without a warrant and based 
exclusively on the odor of marijuana on that person’s body or breath, is unreasonable and 
does violence to the fundamental privacy expectation in one’s body; the same concerns do 
not attend the search of a vehicle.” Lewis, 470 Md. at 26.  
23 
D.D. contends that “cases discuss[ing] how the odor of marijuana provides probable 
cause to search a vehicle ... for reasons this Court explained in Lewis, are not instructive 
here.” We disagree. In order to accept this proposition, we would need to disclaim 
Robinson’s key language quoted above, which we are not prepared to do. There can be no 
real dispute that the odor of marijuana still provides evidence of a crime – as we explained 
in Robinson – even if it may not rise to the level of probable cause in every situation.  
D.D. correctly observes that there are many wholly innocent reasons why someone 
might smell of marijuana. However, that does not render the odor of marijuana free of 
reasonable suspicion. As Terry itself demonstrates, wholly innocent conduct may provide 
reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is occurring or is about to occur.7 In sum, 
although the quantum of evidence that the odor of marijuana provides is insufficient to 
justify an arrest based on the probable cause standard, it meets the reasonable suspicion 
standard necessary to justify a brief investigatory detention. Put another way, under Lewis, 
 
7 In Terry, a police officer saw what he reasonably believed to be three men planning 
a daytime store robbery. However, each individual action that the officer observed was 
wholly innocent. See Terry, 392 U.S. at 5-7. Two of the men walked up and down a street 
in downtown Cleveland separately several times, repeatedly looking into the same store 
window. Id. at 6. They also spoke with each other and then with the third man. The third 
man then walked away from the two others. Id. The first two men then resumed their 
“measured pacing, peering and conferring.” Id. Later, the two men met up with the third 
man down the street and the group again conversed. Id. Based on the officer’s observations 
of this facially innocent conduct, which indicated to the officer that the men were “casing 
a job, a stick-up,” the officer seized Terry and frisked him. Id. at 6-7. The Supreme Court 
upheld the frisk, concluding that the officer’s suspicion that Terry might be armed and 
dangerous, based on this wholly innocent conduct, was reasonable. See id. at 27-28. The 
suspects’ actions were consistent with planning a daytime robbery, and nothing the officer 
observed lessened that suspicion. Id. at 28.  
 
24 
the officers could not have arrested D.D. or any of the members of the group based solely 
on the odor of marijuana, but that does not mean the officers’ suspicion that one or more 
of the group might possess at least 10 grams of the drug – based on odor alone – was 
unreasonable.8 
The distinction in the standards applied in these situations exists, in large part, 
because a brief investigatory stop does not raise “the same concerns” as “[a]rresting and 
searching a person, without a warrant.” Lewis, 470 Md at 26. Being stopped for a short 
amount of time so that an officer can ask a few questions does not do the same “violence 
to the fundamental privacy expectation in one’s body” that being placed in handcuffs and 
physically searched does. Id. Indeed, it would be peculiar if the odor of marijuana was 
sufficient to meet the higher standard of probable cause needed to search a vehicle, but 
insufficient to meet the lower standard of reasonable suspicion needed to briefly stop a 
person on the street. This Court did not contemplate such an incongruous result in deciding 
Robinson, Pacheco, and Lewis.  
Extending Lewis’s holding to Terry stops also would be problematic because of its 
implications for investigating crimes besides possession of marijuana. In its principal brief, 
the State provides several examples: 
For instance, … it would be impossible for an officer who sees the 
butt of a handgun protruding from a person’s waistband to conduct an 
investigatory stop. Just as the odor of marijuana alone cannot tell an officer 
 
8 D.D. did not argue in the juvenile court that the stop was improper because the 
officers could not particularize the odor of marijuana to him. He made that argument in the 
Court of Special Appeals, but the Court held that the argument was not preserved and 
declined to consider it. See D.D., 250 Md. App. at 298. D.D. has not renewed that argument 
before us, and therefore we also do not consider it. 
25 
whether a person possesses a criminal amount of the drug, an officer’s visual 
inspection of a handgun cannot definitively say whether the person may 
legally possess the firearm. See Crim. Law § 4-101(b) (describing individuals 
who may lawfully carry a weapon). If no definitive criminal activity is afoot, 
no investigatory stop would be permitted. 
 
The same logic undermines the rationale for any number of stops. 
Consider, for example, a traffic stop for excessive window tinting, which the 
intermediate appellate court considered in Baez v. State, 238 Md. App. 587 
(2018). There, the court concluded that an officer had reasonable suspicion 
to make an investigatory stop based on the window tint of a vehicle 
potentially being in violation of the law. Id. at 597. Because an officer’s 
visual inspection of a tinted widow cannot definitively tell whether the tint 
exceeds the legal limit, no investigatory stop would be permitted, and 
enforcement of that law would necessarily be stymied. The same holds true 
for many similar traffic violations. 
 
Taken to extremes, this reasoning could apply to nearly any potential 
criminal behavior. People die of natural causes every day. A person standing 
over a dead body, therefore, is probably more likely to have witnessed the 
person have a fatal heart attack as to have killed the person. Because police 
cannot immediately tell whether the witness has committed a criminal act or 
come to the aid of the seemingly stricken, an investigatory stop would be out 
of the question. Only after police determine that the death was a killing could 
they seek to hold the witness. These examples, made possible by the 
reasoning below, turn the constitutional inquiry on its head, mistakenly 
asking whether “particular conduct is ‘innocent’ or ‘guilty,’” instead of 
probing the “the degree of suspicion that attaches to particular types of 
noncriminal acts.” Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 588. 
 
D.D. attempts to distinguish his case from the State’s examples by asserting that 
“[t]he key facts in all of [the State’s] proposed hypotheticals – butts of handguns, window 
tints, and dead bodies on the ground – include concrete observations made by the officer 
that support further investigation. After Lewis, the odor of marijuana alone does not provide 
that same type of concrete information that allows an officer to reasonably infer that an 
individual is engaged in criminal activity.”  
26 
D.D.’s argument is unconvincing. An officer’s detection of the odor of marijuana is 
also a “concrete observation” that supports further investigation. See Bailey v. State, 412 
Md. 349, 379 (2010) (noting marijuana’s “readily identifiable, distinctive odor”); State v. 
Secrist, 589 N.W.2d 387, 391 (Wis. 1999) (referring to the “unmistakable odor of 
marijuana”).  
We agree with the State that accepting D.D.’s argument could significantly hamper 
the legitimate investigation of criminal activity in Maryland. As stated above, law 
enforcement officers do not need to rule out innocent explanations for suspicious conduct 
before conducting a Terry stop. Given the important governmental interest in detecting, 
preventing, and prosecuting crime, the Fourth Amendment allows a brief seizure, based on 
reasonable suspicion, to attempt to determine whether criminal activity is afoot. An officer 
who lacks probable cause to arrest is not required “to simply shrug his shoulders and allow 
a crime to occur or a criminal to escape.” Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 145 (1972) 
(citation omitted). When a police officer smells marijuana on someone, it is certainly the 
case that the person may possess less than 10 grams of marijuana or they may possess no 
marijuana at all. But it also is possible that the person is presently in possession of 10 or 
more grams of marijuana. Under D.D.’s reasoning, police officers would be powerless to 
conduct a brief investigatory detention to try to determine which category the person is in. 
That is not what the Fourth Amendment requires. To the contrary, the odor of marijuana 
27 
permits an officer to briefly detain an individual to investigate whether that person has 
committed a criminal offense.9  
Our conclusion differentiating between reasonable suspicion and probable cause 
with respect to the odor of marijuana is consistent with the rationales of cases from several 
other jurisdictions concerning the odor of marijuana in a post-decriminalization context. 
See, e.g., People v. Looby, 68 V.I. 683, 697-98 (2018) (“[A]lthough a person in possession 
of an ounce or less of marijuana may now avoid criminal penalization, the presence or 
absence of criminal penalization does not disturb our constitutional frisk and seizure 
inquiry. This is because reasonable suspicion – the predicate for a valid stop and frisk – 
does not depend on whether the People proved beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant 
is ‘guilty’; instead, reasonable suspicion is a matter of constitutional and evidentiary 
concern turning on whether an officer reasonably concludes that evidence of contraband or 
of a crime may be present…. [T]he scent of marijuana (which remains contraband subject 
to seizure in this Territory) alone may be sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion or 
even ‘probable cause’ to conduct further investigation into possible criminal acts or 
evidence of contraband.”); In re O.S., 112 N.E.3d 621, 634 (Ill. App. Ct. 2018) (concluding 
“that case law holding that the odor of marijuana is indicative of criminal activity remains 
 
9 The State also argues that, if an officer smells the odor of marijuana on a person, 
the officer is permitted to briefly detain the person to investigate whether the person is in 
possession of a quantity of marijuana that would subject the person to a civil penalty, i.e., 
less than 10 grams. Because we conclude that the odor of marijuana provides reasonable 
suspicion of a criminal offense, thereby justifying the investigatory detention that occurred 
in this case, we need not address the State’s alternative argument concerning investigation 
and enforcement of the civil penalties under CR § 5-601(c)(2)(ii).  
28 
viable notwithstanding the recent decriminalization of the possession of not more than 10 
grams of marijuana” and “find[ing] that the search and seizure of respondent did not run 
afoul of the fourth amendment”; “Given that Illinois prohibits the knowing possession of 
marijuana and prohibits operating a vehicle while impaired and under the influence of 
marijuana, the distinctive odor of marijuana was indicative of criminal activity and 
provided the officers with reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity was 
afoot.”); People v. Zuniga, 372 P.3d 1052, 1059 (Colo. 2016) (although state law permits 
possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, because other marijuana-related activities 
remain unlawful, “the odor of marijuana is still suggestive of criminal activity”); State v. 
Senna, 79 A.3d 45, 50-51 (Vt. 2013) (medical marijuana exemption from prosecution for 
marijuana possession “does not undermine the significance of the smell of marijuana as an 
indicator of criminal activity”).  
To be sure, courts in several other states have held or suggested that, given changes 
in their laws regarding marijuana, the odor of the drug alone does not provide reasonable 
suspicion to conduct an investigatory stop. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Meneide, 52 N.E.3d 
167, 171 n.4 (Mass. App. Ct. 2016) (“The smell of burnt or unburnt marijuana, standing 
alone, no longer provides either reasonable suspicion or probable cause.”); State v. Moore, 
488 P.3d 816, 821 (Or. Ct. App. 2021) (although a “very strong” odor of unburnt marijuana 
may be consistent with criminal activity, because adults may legally possess certain 
quantities of marijuana in Oregon, the odor by itself does not provide reasonable suspicion 
of an unlawful amount of marijuana); People v. Brukner, 25 N.Y.S.3d 559, 572 (N.Y. City 
Ct. 2015) (concluding that “the mere odor of marihuana emanating from a pedestrian, 
29 
without more, does not create reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred”) (emphasis 
deleted); cf. State v. Francisco Perez, 239 A.3d 975, 985 (N.H. 2020) (odor of marijuana 
“may serve as a basis for a reasonable suspicion that activities involving marijuana, that 
are indeed criminal, are underway, when considered among the totality of circumstances”) 
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). However, we find the reasoning of cases 
such as Looby and O.S. more persuasive, as well as more consistent with our body of 
marijuana-related Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. 
Here, the juvenile court correctly ruled that the initial seizure of D.D. and his 
companions was permissible under the Fourth Amendment. The court credited Sergeant 
Walden’s testimony that the officers smelled the strong odor of marijuana when they 
encountered the group upon entering the building.10 Directing the group to stop and sit on 
the steps while the officers briefly investigated whether their behavior constituted a 
criminal offense was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. It was a relatively minor 
intrusion on the group’s freedom of movement. If no probable cause of a criminal offense 
had developed, the group would have been free to go on its way in short order. See Illinois 
v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 126 (2000) (“If the officer does not learn facts rising to the level 
of probable cause, the individual must be allowed to go on his way.”); Trott v. State, 473 
Md. 245, 269 (in case involving seizure of a defendant in his car, explaining that, if the 
 
10 The parties believe that this case concerns the odor of marijuana alone – i.e., 
whether the odor provides reasonable suspicion to conduct a brief investigatory detention. 
The Court of Special Appeals viewed it that way as well. We granted certiorari in this case 
to decide this important question. Having considered the arguments of the parties, we 
conclude that we should accept their framing of the issue. 
30 
officer had not smelled alcohol on the driver’s breath, “the stop would have ended, and [the 
defendant] would have been free to go”), cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 240 (2021). However, as 
discussed below, a frisk of D.D. for weapons led to the discovery of a loaded firearm in his 
waistband. We now consider the validity of that pat-down under the Fourth Amendment. 
B. The Pat-Down of D.D. 
D.D. argues that Sergeant Walden lacked reasonable suspicion to believe that he 
was armed and dangerous before frisking him. D.D. interprets Sergeant Walden’s 
testimony at the suppression hearing as revealing an unconstitutional policy to always frisk 
the members of a group when officers are outnumbered, whether or not the particular 
circumstances suggest that anyone in the group may be armed and dangerous. In addition, 
D.D. contends that Sergeant Walden unreasonably viewed his behavior and that of his 
companions as “evasive.” Regarding the discovery of the suspected handgun on D.D.’s 
companion, D.D. argues that this Court should not accept the proposition that “if there’s 
one weapon, there could be more.” Further, D.D. asserts that the other factors Sergeant 
Walden relied on in concluding that D.D. might be armed and dangerous – including his 
baggy clothing and the officers’ detection of the odor of marijuana – provide no support 
for the pat-down. According to D.D., an apt description of the State’s showing regarding 
the frisk is “zero plus zero plus zero still equals zero.” Thus, in D.D.’s view, the totality of 
the circumstances in this case “does not come close” to satisfying the reasonable suspicion 
standard. 
The State contends that its showing at the suppression hearing was not an offering 
of several zeroes that cumulatively added up to zero. Rather, according to the State, 
31 
Sergeant Walden’s decision to frisk D.D. was supported by reasonable suspicion that D.D. 
may have been armed and dangerous. Among other factors, the State relies on the discovery 
of the weapon on J. and on Sergeant Walden’s assessment of the behavior of D.D. and his 
companions as evasive. We agree with the State. 
A police officer is not permitted to frisk a person just because the officer has 
detained the person to investigate whether criminal activity is afoot. See Simpler v. State, 
318 Md. 311, 319 (1990) (explaining that “a reasonable frisk does not inevitably follow in 
the wake of every reasonable stop”). Rather, during a Terry stop, a police officer may pat 
down an individual for weapons if the officer “has reason to believe that [the officer] is 
dealing with an armed and dangerous individual.” Sellman v. State, 449 Md. 526, 541 
(2016) (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 27). The purpose of this “limited search, known in 
common parlance as a frisk, is not to discover evidence, but rather to protect the police 
officer and bystanders from harm.” Id. at 542 (internal quotation marks and citation 
omitted).  
“A law enforcement officer has reasonable articulable suspicion that a person is 
armed and dangerous where, under the totality of the circumstances, and based on 
reasonable inferences from particularized facts in light of the law enforcement officer’s 
experience, a reasonably prudent law enforcement officer would have felt that he or she 
was in danger.” Norman, 452 Md. at 387. As we said in Sellman, reasonable suspicion  
is a common sense, nontechnical conception that considers factual and 
practical aspects of daily life and how reasonable and prudent people act. 
While the level of required suspicion is less than that required by the probable 
cause standard, reasonable suspicion nevertheless embraces something more 
than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch…. [A] court’s 
32 
determination of whether a law enforcement officer acted with reasonable 
suspicion must be based on the totality of the circumstances. Thus, the court 
must not parse out each individual circumstance for separate consideration. 
In making its assessment, the court should give due deference to the training 
and experience of the law enforcement officer who engaged the stop at issue. 
Such deference allows officers to draw on their own experience and 
specialized training to make inferences from and deductions about the 
cumulative information available to them that might well elude an untrained 
person. To be sure, a factor that, by itself, may be entirely neutral and 
innocent, can, when viewed in combination with other circumstances, raise 
a legitimate suspicion in the mind of an experienced officer. 
 
Sellman, 449 Md. at 543 (quoting Crosby, 408 Md. at 507-08) (cleaned up). The test that 
a reviewing court applies “is objective: the validity of the stop or the frisk is not determined 
by the subjective or articulated reasons of the officer; rather, the validity of the stop or frisk 
is determined by whether the record discloses articulable objective facts to support the stop 
or frisk.” Id. at 542 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).  
Based on the totality of the circumstances in this case, we conclude that the officers 
had reasonable suspicion that D.D. was armed and dangerous. As such, the gun recovered 
from D.D.’s waistband was the fruit of a lawful frisk, and the juvenile court correctly 
declined to suppress it. 
Sergeant Walden’s proffered reasons for the pat-down included the “odor of 
marijuana,” the group’s “evasive body language,” and the fact that there were “five of them 
in baggy clothes” in a place “where they could run out the door.” The juvenile court 
credited Sergeant Walden’s testimony “regarding the response from some of the males in 
response to his questions,” and “that the young man was evasive.” In addition, before 
Sergeant Walden frisked D.D., Officer Moser discovered a suspected handgun in J.’s 
waistband that J. said was a BB gun. These circumstances, viewed collectively, would lead 
33 
a reasonably prudent law enforcement officer to suspect that D.D. was armed and 
dangerous. 
Evasive behavior is a factor that may support a pat-down for weapons. See, e.g., 
Flowers v. State, 195 A.3d 18, 27-28 (Del. 2018) (suspect’s turning his body away from 
advancing officers contributed to reasonable suspicion that he might be armed); United 
States v. Dortch, 868 F.3d 674, 680 (8th Cir. 2017) (suspect responded to the sight of an 
approaching officer by “pressing the front of his body” against a vehicle “as to further 
conceal what, if anything, he had in his coat”); United States v. Diriye, 818 F.3d 767, 769 
(8th Cir. 2016) (subject “appeared to be continuously turning his body to keep his right 
side away from” the officer, which caused the officer to suspect that the subject may have 
a gun); United States v. Patton, 705 F.3d 734, 739 (7th Cir. 2013) (describing a suspect 
who “set himself apart from the other men” by not complying with an officers’ instruction 
and taking a number of steps backward).  
Here, D.D. and his companions appeared evasive to Sergeant Walden, a 21-year 
veteran of the Department. None of the members of the group would tell the officers where 
they lived. After Sergeant Walden specifically asked D.D. where he lived, D.D. shrugged 
his shoulders and did not respond. D.D. then responded to the same question from Officer 
Moser by saying “my dick.” The group was snickering, laughing, and being uncooperative. 
In addition, unlike the other four young men in the group, D.D. chose to sit on the staircase 
that led him to have his back to the officers. D.D.’s positioning prevented Sergeant Walden 
from seeing D.D.’s hands. Even when D.D. spoke, he kept his body turned away from the 
34 
officers. Sergeant Walden believed that D.D.’s “evasive body language” indicated that he 
might be armed. 
As D.D. points out, Sergeant Walden did not direct D.D. to sit on the descending 
staircase. Thus, according to D.D., because he complied with Sergeant Walden’s directive 
to sit down, Sergeant Walden should not have been concerned by the fact that D.D.’s back 
was to him and that he could not see D.D.’s hands. But Sergeant Walden was not required 
to rule out every innocent explanation for D.D.’s behavior. Nor is it realistic to expect an 
officer to engage in such fine analysis when deciding whether to pat someone down for 
weapons, given that the safety of police officers and third parties may be at stake. In our 
view, it was reasonable for Sergeant Walden to be concerned that he could not see D.D.’s 
hands and what D.D. was doing. 
In addition to the evasive behavior and body language that Sergeant Walden 
observed prior to any of the group members being frisked, it is significant that Officer 
Moser discovered a weapon in the waistband of J., the first young man the officers frisked. 
35 
Assuming the weapon was a BB gun as J. claimed,11 BB guns can be lethal.12 Once 
Sergeant Walden knew that another member of the group was armed with some sort of 
gun, his level of suspicion concerning D.D. reasonably increased.  
This is not to say that whenever one member of a group is found to possess a 
weapon, officers necessarily have reasonable suspicion to believe that every other member 
of the group may be armed and dangerous, thereby automatically justifying a pat-down of 
all companions present. See United States v. Matías-Maestres, 738 F. Supp. 2d 281, 289 
(D.P.R. 2010) (discovery of handgun on driver of car did not justify frisk of passenger, 
where there was no other basis to suspect that the passenger may be armed and dangerous). 
However, the possession of a weapon by one member of a group is a highly significant 
factor that, in combination with other circumstances, may well support a pat-down for 
weapons of other members of the group. See El-Amin v. Commonwealth, 607 S.E.2d 115, 
118-19 (Va. 2005) (after a frisk of one member of a group revealed a pellet gun, another 
officer patted down El-Amin and discovered a .38 caliber revolver; although the Virginia 
 
11 The juvenile court did not make a finding as to whether the weapon removed from 
J.’s waistband was a BB gun or whether the officers had reason to believe the weapon was 
a BB gun before Sergeant Walden frisked D.D. It is well known that BB guns are difficult 
to tell apart from “real” guns. See Megan Raposa, Real or fake guns: Can you tell the 
difference?, Argus Leader (Mar. 4, 2016), available at https://perma.cc/7VB9-VR5K 
(according to a Captain in the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office, “[e]ven in the best light 
in the best possible conditions, it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a real 
handgun and a BB gun, toy gun, fake gun, replica gun, anything like that”). Sergeant 
Walden and Officer Moser were not required to verify J.’s claim that the weapon in his 
waistband was a BB gun before frisking D.D. 
 
12 See U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, BB Guns Can Kill, CPSC 
Publication 5089, available at https://perma.cc/78BB-8WMH. 
36 
Supreme Court declined to adopt an “automatic companion” rule, the Court held that the 
“circumstances in this case support the officer’s objectively reasonable apprehension that, 
upon discovery of a weapon on the person of one member of the group, the other members 
of the group might also be armed and dangerous”).  
In addition, D.D. wore baggy clothing, including a puffy jacket, that could conceal 
a weapon. To be sure, it is less concerning when someone wears a puffy coat on a cold 
night in November (as was the case here) than on a summer evening. See United States v. 
Key, 621 F. App’x 321, 323 (6th Cir. 2015) (suspect’s “unseasonably heavy attire” was a 
factor that, combined with other circumstances, justified a frisk). However, we cannot say 
that Sergeant Walden was unreasonable in ascribing any significance to D.D.’s baggy 
clothing. See Davis v. State, 133 Md. App. 260, 268 n.5 (2000) (although recognizing that 
many people wear “baggy clothing” “for comfort or to make a fashion statement,” stating 
that “[t]he wearing of baggy clothing may properly be considered in conjunction with other 
factors in formulating reasonable suspicion by a reasonable and cautious police officer 
guided by experience and training”); see also State v. Khingratsaiphon, 572 S.E.2d 456, 
460 (S.C. 2002) (among other circumstances justifying a frisk for weapons was the fact 
that “Petitioner and the two other men were dressed in baggy clothing (which could easily 
conceal a weapon)”). 
Further, Sergeant Walden was permitted to consider the odor of marijuana that he 
smelled coming from the young men, as well as his concern that they were trespassing, as 
additional factors bearing on whether D.D. was armed and dangerous. See Sellman, 449 
Md. at 560-61 (minor crimes, such as possession of marijuana, “do not, in and of 
37 
themselves, justify a Terry frisk without additional circumstances that establish reasonable 
suspicion that a suspect is armed and dangerous”) (emphasis in original). Indeed, in 
Norman this Court acknowledged the “indisputable nexus between drugs and guns” and 
reasoned that “[w]here, in addition to the odor of marijuana, another circumstance or other 
circumstances are present giving rise to reasonable articulable suspicion that an 
[individual] is armed and dangerous, a law enforcement officer may frisk” the individual, 
even following decriminalization. Norman, 452 Md. at 423, 425. 
 
Finally, Sergeant Walden could consider the fact that he and Officer Moser were 
outnumbered five to two. See United States v. Braxton, 456 F. App’x 242, 247 (4th Cir. 
2011) (noting as a factor justifying a frisk that the officers were outnumbered by the 
passengers in the vehicle that the officers had stopped, and observing that “[p]roper 
adherence to the standards of Terry does not require us to gamble with the lives of police 
officers who exercise reasonable judgment in fulfilling their duty in the trying situation 
presented by a roadside car stop”); People v. Colyar, 996 N.E.2d 575, 585 (Ill. 2013) 
(noting that officers were outnumbered three to two as one of several factors that made it 
reasonable for the officers to believe that they were in danger); United States v. Reyes, 349 
F.3d 219, 225 (5th Cir. 2003) (that officer was outnumbered by suspects two to one and 
that the stop occurred at a public bus station, were factors that supported officer’s 
“reasonable belief that his safety and that of others was in danger”). 
 
D.D. interprets Sergeant Walden’s testimony as stating that the Department’s policy 
is to conduct pat-downs for weapons whenever officers are outnumbered during a Terry 
38 
stop. Although we certainly would be concerned if that were the policy of the Department,13 
we do not read Sergeant Walden’s testimony as D.D. does. Sergeant Walden did not testify 
that he frisked D.D. because he always frisks every detainee per departmental policy. 
Rather, in response to a question about “how officers are trained to respond when they’re 
outnumbered,” Sergeant Walden stated that officers are taught to request backup and that 
“you shouldn’t handle any call by yourself.” He then explained that “there are times where 
you’re put in that position to where there are several people coming at you, so you have to 
get the advantage. And one of the first concerns is a weapon that they could use against 
you.” (Emphasis added.) Thus, Sergeant Walden did not link his concern about a weapon 
to every situation in which officers are outnumbered, but rather to those instances “where 
there are several people coming at you.”  
Regarding this case, Sergeant Walden made clear that he decided to frisk D.D. not 
solely because the officers were outnumbered. Rather, his “first concern” was that one of 
the members of the group might have a weapon. Although Sergeant Walden then 
referenced the five-to-two ratio, in the next breath he stated that the young men “were right 
by a door where they could run out the door, plus the odor … of marijuana, that there was 
 
13 In Sellman, this Court described police department policies authorizing the 
blanket, indiscriminate frisking of all individuals present during a police-citizen encounter 
as “pernicious institutionalized procedure[s]” that are “unlawful” and “counter to Terry 
and its progeny.” Sellman, 449 Md. at 557. We emphasized that “[w]hile there undoubtedly 
is some risk to the police in every confrontation, Terry has never been thought to authorize 
a protective frisk on the occasion of every authorized stop.” Id. at 558 (internal quotation 
marks and citation omitted); see also United States v. Hughes, 517 F.3d 1013, 1019 (8th 
Cir. 2008) (“Being outnumbered does not justify a frisk where the initial Terry stop is not 
justified.”). 
39 
illegal drug activity there, the fact that nobody could provide any identification that they 
live inside that building.” Sergeant Walden then went on to say, “[s]o the first thing we 
want to do is secure them and make sure that they don’t have any weapons on them.” A 
fair reading of that statement is that, after Sergeant Walden developed concern that one or 
more of the young men might be armed based on all the factors he had just listed, he and 
Officer Moser decided to check the group for weapons before continuing their 
investigation. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, as we must, 
we agree with the State that “[t]his was not the testimony of an officer who merely did the 
math, concluded there were more people than officers, and applied a departmental policy 
regardless of the situation.”  
In any event, even if there was a policy to pat down all detainees when officers are 
outnumbered – and, again, we cannot conclude based on this record that the Department 
had such a policy – by the time Sergeant Walden frisked D.D., he had developed 
reasonable, articulable suspicion that D.D. might be armed and dangerous based on the 
totality of the circumstances discussed above.  
The pat-down of D.D. for weapons was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. 
Accordingly, the juvenile court correctly declined to suppress the gun that Sergeant Walden 
discovered as a result of the frisk. 
IV 
Conclusion 
Even following partial decriminalization, the odor of marijuana on a person 
provides reasonable suspicion to conduct a brief investigatory detention to attempt to 
40 
determine whether the person has committed a criminal offense. In this case, the officers 
detected the odor of marijuana when they encountered the group of young men of which 
D.D. was a part. The initial stop of D.D. was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The 
subsequent pat-down of D.D. for weapons also was lawful because, under the totality of 
the circumstances, the officers had reasonable suspicion that D.D. was armed and 
dangerous. Accordingly, the juvenile court correctly declined to suppress the gun that the 
officers discovered as a result of the frisk. The Court of Special Appeals erred in 
overturning the juvenile court’s suppression ruling. We therefore reverse the judgment of 
the Court of Special Appeals and remand the case to that Court with the instruction to 
affirm the judgment of the juvenile court. 
JUDGMENT 
OF 
THE 
COURT 
OF 
SPECIAL APPEALS REVERSED AND 
CASE REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTION; 
COSTS IN THE COURT OF SPECIAL 
APPEALS AND THIS COURT TO BE PAID 
BY RESPONDENT. 
 
 
 
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS 
 
OF MARYLAND 
 
No. 27 
 
September Term, 2021 
______________________________________ 
 
 
IN RE: D.D. 
 
______________________________________ 
 
*Getty, C.J. 
*McDonald 
Watts 
Hotten 
Booth 
Biran 
Raker, Irma S. (Senior Judge, 
Specially Assigned), 
 
JJ. 
______________________________________ 
 
Concurring Opinion by Watts, J. 
______________________________________ 
 
Filed: June 21, 2022 
 
*Getty, C.J., and McDonald, J., now Senior 
Judges, 
participated 
in 
the 
hearing 
and 
conference of this case while active members of 
this Court.  After being recalled pursuant to Md. 
Const., Art. IV, § 3A, they also participated in 
the decision and adoption of this opinion.
Circuit Court for Prince George’s County 
Case No. JA-19-0409 
Argued: January 6, 2022 
 
Respectfully, I concur.  I would hold that the odor of marijuana alone is not enough 
to give rise to reasonable articulable suspicion to conduct an investigatory Terry stop,1 but 
would conclude that, in this case, there was more than just the odor of marijuana that gave 
rise to reasonable articulable suspicion to justify the stop.  Like the Majority, I would 
reverse the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals.  See Maj. Slip Op. at 3.  But, I would 
conclude that the totality of the circumstances in this case involved more than the odor of 
marijuana.   
It is now well-established in Maryland that the odor of marijuana, standing alone, 
does not provide probable cause for a law enforcement officer to arrest and conduct a 
warrantless search of a person incident to the arrest.  See Lewis v. State, 470 Md. 1, 10, 
233 A.3d 86, 91 (2020).  The odor of marijuana emanating from a vehicle, however, 
supplies probable cause for a law enforcement officer to conduct a search of the vehicle, 
“as marijuana in any amount remains contraband, notwithstanding the decriminalization of 
possession of less than ten grams of marijuana; and the odor of marijuana gives rise to 
probable cause to believe that the vehicle contains contraband or evidence of a crime.”  
Robinson v. State, 451 Md. 94, 137, 152 A.3d 661, 687 (2017).   
As to vehicles, in Robinson, id. at 128, 131, 152 A.3d at 681, 683, in holding “that 
a warrantless search of a vehicle is permissible upon detection of the odor of marijuana 
emanating from the vehicle[,]” we concluded “that marijuana remains contraband, despite 
 
1“Law enforcement officers may conduct an investigatory stop or detention when 
the officers have reasonable suspicion that a person has committed or is about to a commit 
a crime, commonly known as a Terry stop[,]” Lewis v. State, 470 Md. 1, 12 n.3, 233 A.3d 
86, 92 n.3 (2020) (cleaned up), derived from Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). 
- 2 - 
the decriminalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana, and that, as such, the 
odor of marijuana constitutes probable cause for the search of a vehicle.”  We explained 
that, under the Fourth Amendment, “probable cause to search exists where a person of 
reasonable caution would believe that contraband or evidence of a crime is present[,]” and 
that “‘contraband’ means goods that are illegal to possess, regardless of whether possession 
of the goods is a crime.”  Id. at 128, 252 A.3d at 681-82 (cleaned up).  
 The definition of “contraband” was informed by the conclusion of the Supreme 
Court in Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 158-59 (1925) “that a law enforcement 
officer can search a vehicle based on probable cause to believe that the vehicle’s contents 
are contraband, even if the law enforcement officer cannot arrest the driver.”  Robinson, 
451 Md. at 128, 252 A.3d at 682.  With respect to the automobile exception to the warrant 
requirement, in Carroll, 267 U.S. at 153, the Supreme Court held that, if there is probable 
cause to believe that a vehicle contains contraband, then a law enforcement officer may 
search the vehicle without a warrant given that a vehicle can be quickly moved from one 
jurisdiction to another, thereby making obtainment of a warrant impractical.  In light of the 
Carroll doctrine and the mobility of vehicles, among other reasons, a law enforcement 
officer has probable cause to search a vehicle where the officer detects an odor of marijuana 
emanating from the vehicle. 
A search of an individual is different.  In Pacheco v. State, 465 Md. 311, 330, 214 
A.3d 505, 516 (2019), although we concluded that law enforcement officers had probable 
cause to search the defendant’s vehicle based on an odor of marijuana and the presence of 
a joint in the center console of the vehicle, we concluded that the officers did not likewise 
- 3 - 
have the right to search the defendant’s person.  We explained that the facts of the case did 
not meet the standard for probable cause to arrest and search the defendant incident to arrest 
because the officers did not possess, prior to the search, probable cause to believe that the 
defendant was committing a felony or misdemeanor in their presence.  See id. at 330-32, 
214 A.3d at 516-17.  Stated otherwise, we determined that the record did not support a 
conclusion that the officers had probable cause to arrest the defendant “based on the belief 
that he was committing, had committed, or was about to commit a crime in their presence.”  
Id. at 333, 214 A.3d at 517.  We concluded that, although circumstances may justify the 
search of a vehicle, the same circumstances “do not necessarily justify an arrest and search 
incident thereto.”  Id. at 333, 214 A.3d at 518.  This is due to “the heightened expectation 
of privacy one enjoys in his or her person as compared to the diminished expectation of 
privacy one has in an automobile.”  Id. at 333, 214 A.3d at 518. 
Later, in Lewis, 470 Md. at 10, 233 A.3d at 91, we unequivocally held that the odor 
of marijuana alone does not provide a law enforcement officer with probable cause to arrest 
an individual and then conduct a warrantless search of the individual incident to the arrest.  
In other words, “more than the odor of marijuana is required for probable cause to arrest a 
person and conduct a search incident thereto.”  Id. at 17, 233 A.3d at 95.  Relying on 
Pacheco, we determined that law enforcement “officers must have probable cause to 
believe a person possesses a criminal amount of marijuana in order to arrest that person 
and conduct a search incident thereto.”  Lewis, 470 Md. at 23, 233 A.3d at 99.  We stated 
that, although marijuana in any amount is considered contraband under Robinson, an 
officer may conduct a search incident to arrest “only upon the occurrence of a felony or 
- 4 - 
attempt of a felony or misdemeanor; a civil infraction is neither a felony nor misdemeanor.  
The odor of marijuana alone is not indicative of the quantity (if any) of marijuana in 
someone’s possession[.]”  Lewis, 470 Md. at 23, 233 A.3d at 99.  We concluded that “[t]he 
Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures prohibits law 
enforcement officers from arresting and searching a person without a warrant based solely 
upon the odor of marijuana on or about that person.”  Id. at 27, 233 A.3d at 101. 
Just as the odor of marijuana alone does not give rise to probable cause to arrest and 
search a person incident to arrest, I would hold that the odor of marijuana alone is not 
enough to give rise to reasonable articulable suspicion to stop a person.  Indeed, practical 
reasons militate against using something as amorphous and fleeting as the odor of 
marijuana alone as a ground to stop someone.2  I completely agree with the holding of the 
Court of Special Appeals—“that the odor of marijuana, by itself, does not provide 
reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and therefore, a stop based on this circumstance 
alone is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”  In re D.D., 250 Md. App. 284, 288, 
250 A.3d 284, 286-87 (2021).  I also agree, though, with the Court of Special Appeals’s 
conclusion that “[t]he odor of marijuana may, with other circumstances, provide reasonable 
suspicion that a person is involved in criminal activity.”  Id. at 301, 250 A.3d at 295. 
That said, I disagree with the determination that this case involved only the odor of 
marijuana and that, “[a]ccordingly, Officer Walden did not have reasonable suspicion of 
 
2Moreover, holding that the odor of marijuana alone gives rise to reasonable 
articulable suspicion supporting an investigatory stop could potentially result in 
unnecessary and unwarranted police activity that may have a disparate effect in the 
community. 
- 5 - 
criminality to support the stop, and it was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”  Id. 
at 301, 250 A.3d at 295.  The Court of Special Appeals apparently interpreted this case to 
be a case raising the issue of whether the odor of marijuana alone can form the basis for 
reasonable articulable suspicion for a Terry stop and that interpretation has followed the 
case to this Court.  I see the case somewhat differently.  From my perspective, this case 
raises the question of whether the odor of marijuana along with other circumstances was 
sufficient to give rise to reasonable articulable suspicion to support the stop.  This is not a 
case in which there was solely the odor of marijuana and nothing else.  Although the parties 
framed the issue in this case as involving the question of whether the odor of marijuana 
alone could give rise to reasonable articulable suspicion for a Terry stop, the case presented 
additional facts.  It was everything together that gave rise to reasonable articulable 
suspicion for the stop.  In my view, concluding that the odor of marijuana alone is 
sufficient, even though the case involved more than the odor of marijuana, will lead to 
stops occurring based on much less information than what was available to the officer in 
this case and under circumstances where it may not have been possible to have had 
reasonable suspicion that a person possessed at least ten grams of marijuana. 
 I would conclude that, under the circumstances of this case, which included 
Sergeant Walden detecting the odor of marijuana and additional facts, there was reasonable 
articulable suspicion for the stop.  In this case, Sergeant Walden responded to a police 
dispatch call for service at an apartment complex reporting that there were “males in the 
basement playing music and smoking CDS.”  At trial, on direct examination, the following 
exchange occurred: 
- 6 - 
[PROSECUTOR:] Okay.  And did you receive a call that day to go to Ronald 
Road in Capitol Heights? 
 
[SERGEANT WALDEN:] I did.  
 
[PROSECUTOR:] Okay.  And do you recall where, where were you and 
where did you respond to?  
 
[SERGEANT WALDEN:] I was on routine patrol and I acknowledged the 
radio, so I responded via my police vehicle, along with a back-up officer to 
respond to a call for males in the basement playing music and smoking CDS. 
 
[PROSECUTOR:] Okay.  When you say CDS, what does that mean?  
 
[SERGEANT WALDEN:] CDS is a controlled dangerous substance.  
 
[PROSECUTOR:] Okay.  And was there a specific complaint that you were 
responding to in terms of CDS? 
 
[SERGEANT WALDEN:] Loud music and the smell of marijuana. 
 
[PROSECUTOR:] Okay.  So upon arriving at [] Ronald Road in Capitol 
Heights, what did you do? 
 
[SERGEANT WALDEN]: It’s a split foyer, so I opened the front door and 
as soon as I opened the front door I saw a group of males walking up the 
steps towards me and I smelled a strong odor of marijuana. 
 
[PROSECUTOR:] Okay.  And what do you do next?  
 
[SERGEANT WALDEN:] At that time since there was five subjects and I 
had no idea if they lived there or what was going on, and because of the 
nature of the complaint, it was myself and just one other officer there, so 
there was five of them coming up the stairs.  So I stopped them and I had 
them have a seat on the stairs and I asked them, I said could you please have 
a seat, who lives here. 
 
On cross-examination, the following exchange occurred: 
[DEFENSE COUNSEL:] Officer Walden, the initial call for CDS and loud 
music came through at 7:10 p.m., correct?  
 
[SERGEANT WALDEN:] I believe so, yes. 
- 7 - 
 
[DEFENSE COUNSEL:] And you responded to [] Ronald Road at 7:42?  
 
[SERGEANT WALDEN:] Correct.  
 
[DEFENSE COUNSEL:] And when you responded, you were with Officer 
Moser?  
 
[SERGEANT WALDEN:] Correct, yes. 
 
According to Sergeant Walden, the call came through at approximately 7:10 p.m.  
Sergeant Walden responded to the address at 7:42 p.m., approximately thirty minutes later, 
with Officer Moser.  When Sergeant Walden reached the apartment building and opened 
the front door, he saw D.D. and four other people walking up a set of steps and he “smelled 
a strong odor of marijuana.”  Sergeant Walden had been a certified drug dog trainer for 
over seventeen years and recognized the smell of marijuana.  Sergeant Walden told D.D. 
and his companions to have a seat on the steps and began questioning them. 
In my view, the stop occurred when Sergeant Walden told the group to have a seat 
on the steps.  The responses that Sergeant Walden later received to his questions did not 
play a role in the formation of reasonable articulable suspicion for the stop.  Rather, all of 
the information that Sergeant Walden possessed about the call and his encounter with the 
D.D. and his companions formed the basis for reasonable articulable suspicion—namely, 
Sergeant Walden responded to a call specifically stating that multiple people, in the 
basement of an apartment building, were smoking a controlled dangerous substance.  It is 
unclear from the record whether the dispatcher advised Sergeant Walden that the call was 
for people smoking “CDS” as the Sergeant initially testified or smoking marijuana, but it 
matters not.  A report of individuals smoking CDS would potentially raise the level of 
- 8 - 
reasonable articulable suspicion above suspicion of possession of at least ten grams of 
marijuana given that the acronym CDS could have indicated that the individuals were 
smoking any type of potential controlled dangerous substance.  Even though the State has 
not contended, despite the Sergeant’s testimony, that the call was for anything other than 
smoking marijuana, this is not a case involving the smell of marijuana alone. 
Just over thirty minutes after receiving the dispatch call, Sergeant Walden arrived 
at the building, opened the door, saw a group of people walking up the steps toward him, 
and smelled the strong odor of marijuana.  This corroborated the information in the call—
that people were smoking marijuana, a controlled dangerous substance, in the basement of 
the building.  It was entirely reasonable for Sergeant Walden to believe that the group 
walking up the stairs were the people in the basement who had been reported to be smoking 
marijuana in the building and that they had been doing so for a period of time.  In addition, 
Sergeant Walden smelled a strong odor of marijuana. 
These circumstances, in my view, gave rise to a reasonable articulable suspicion 
that any one or all of the individuals may have possessed ten grams or more of marijuana.  
Ten grams is a small amount of marijuana, and it was reasonable for Sergeant Walden to 
believe that this was a group of people who had been smoking marijuana for at least thirty 
minutes in the basement of the building before he arrived.  Sergeant Walden was not 
required to assume that this could have been a different group or that the caller had been 
wrong.  Under the circumstances, there was reasonable articulable suspicion to believe that 
one or all of the people in the group may have possessed at least ten grams of marijuana, 
thus justifying the investigatory stop.   
- 9 - 
The reasonable articulable suspicion standard is less than the probable cause 
standard.  An investigatory or Terry stop is authorized where a law enforcement “officer 
has reasonable suspicion, supported by articulable facts, that criminal activity may be 
afoot.”  In re David S., 367 Md. 523, 532, 789 A.2d 607, 612 (2002).  By contrast, as we 
explained in Pacheco, 465 Md. at 322, 214 A.3d at 511, a law enforcement officer is 
authorized to conduct a warrantless search incident to arrest where the officer has “probable 
cause to believe that the person subject to arrest has committed a felony or is committing 
a felony or misdemeanor in the presence of the police.”  (Citations omitted).  To conduct 
an investigatory stop, an officer does not need to discern a fair probability that criminal 
activity may have been afoot, just reasonable suspicion.   
Where a law enforcement officer encounters the odor of marijuana, along with 
information about other circumstances, such as multiple people being responsible for the 
odor and the odor existing over a period of time, the officer could reasonably suspect that 
criminal activity—possession of at least ten grams of marijuana—may have been afoot and 
may briefly detain the individual or individuals.  In Maryland, possessing ten grams of 
marijuana or more remains criminal activity, whereas possessing less than ten grams is 
non-criminal conduct for which a civil citation would be warranted.  In other words, the 
odor of marijuana does not equate with entirely innocent or non-criminal behavior, given 
that possession of marijuana is not legalized or fully decriminalized.  Even non-criminal 
behavior can form the basis for reasonable articulable suspicion.  See, e.g., Crosby v. State, 
408 Md. 490, 507-08, 970 A.2d 894, 904 (2009) (This Court stated that a determination as 
to whether an “officer acted with reasonable suspicion must be based on the totality of the 
- 10 - 
circumstances” and that a circumstance or factor, “by itself, may be entirely neutral and 
innocent,” but “can, when viewed in combination with other circumstances, raise a 
legitimate suspicion in the mind of an experienced officer.”  (Cleaned up)).   
Given that the odor of marijuana suggests either criminal behavior or a civil 
violation, under the circumstances in this case—a call to the police reporting a group 
smoking marijuana in the basement of a building with an exact address given, the officer 
responding and seeing a group of people coming up the stairs of the building, that the 
officers responded to the location thirty minutes after receiving the call, and that the officer 
detected what the officer described as the “strong odor” of marijuana—the officer had 
reasonable articulable suspicion to conduct the investigatory stop.  Sergeant Walden 
testified that there were five people coming from the basement, that he had no idea whether 
they lived in the building, and that he smelled a strong odor of marijuana.  The officer 
would have known that the circumstances that he encountered fully corroborated the 
substance of the call and would have had a reasonable basis to believe that the facts 
underlying the call had been substantiated.   
This is not a case in which an officer walked past a person and alleged a fleeting 
whiff of marijuana or even a case in which the officer’s credibility in terms of having 
encountered the smell of marijuana under uncorroborated circumstances is at issue.  The 
officer testified that he smelled marijuana, and there is no doubt that there was a call to the 
police department reporting that people were smoking CDS or marijuana approximately 
thirty minutes before the officer arrived at the location.  When the officer arrived after 
receiving the dispatch call, the strong smell of marijuana was still there, along with five 
- 11 - 
people. The number of people involved, the time that the people had been at the location 
between the call initially reporting the smell of marijuana and the officer’s arrival, and the 
officer’s detection of the strong odor of marijuana, were factors that gave rise to the 
reasonable articulable suspicion that on or more members of the group possessed at least 
ten grams of marijuana.   Where an officer receives a call for multiple people at a precise 
location smoking marijuana, and the officer arrives at the location and multiple people are 
at the location and the strong smell of marijuana is present, the officer has reasonable 
suspicion for an investigatory stop as the facts give rise to reasonable articulable suspicion 
of possession of at least ten grams of marijuana.  Unless the possession of marijuana is 
legalized or further decriminalized, the odor of marijuana with other circumstances that 
suggest possession of at least ten grams of marijuana, under a totality of circumstances 
analysis, may give rise to reasonable articulable suspicion to conduct a stop.3 
For the above reasons, respectfully, I concur. 
 
3I would hold that there was reasonable articulable suspicion justifying the stop, and 
like the majority opinion, I would conclude that the pat-down or frisk of D.D. was lawful 
because, under the totality of the circumstances, “the officers had reasonable suspicion that 
D.D. was armed and dangerous.”  Maj. Slip Op. at 32. 
Circuit Court for Prince George’s County 
Case No. JA-19-0409 
Argued: January 6, 2022 
 
 
 
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS 
 
OF MARYLAND 
 
No. 27 
 
September Term, 2021 
 
__________________________________ 
 
IN RE: D.D. 
__________________________________ 
 
*Getty, C.J., 
*McDonald, 
Watts, 
Hotten, 
Booth, 
Biran, 
Raker, Irma S., 
 (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned) 
 
JJ. 
__________________________________ 
 
Dissenting Opinion by Hotten, J., which 
Raker, J., joins. 
__________________________________ 
 
Filed:  June 21, 2022 
 
*Getty, C.J. and McDonald, J., now Senior 
Judges, participated in the hearing and 
conference of this case while active 
members of this Court; after being recalled 
pursuant to Maryland Constitution, Article 
IV, Section 3A, they also participated in the 
decision and adoption of the majority 
opinion.
 
For the reasons articulated below, I respectfully dissent from both conclusions of 
the majority that the investigatory stop of Respondent D.D. was constitutionally justified 
and that the frisk of Respondent was supported by reasonable suspicion that Respondent 
was armed and dangerous.  I would therefore affirm the decision of the Court of Special 
Appeals that evidence of the firearm recovered from Respondent should have been 
suppressed as the fruit of an unlawful search.  See In re D.D., 250 Md. App. 284, 301–02, 
250 A.3d 284, 295, cert. granted, 475 Md. 701, 257 A.3d 1162 (2021). 
Reasonable Suspicion and the Terry Stop and Frisk 
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Maryland 
Declaration of Rights prohibit warrantless searches and seizures.  U.S. CONST. amend. IV. 
(“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against 
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but 
upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the 
place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”); MD. CONST. DECL. OF RTS. 
art. 26 (“[A]ll warrants, without oath or affirmation, to search suspected places, or to seize 
any person or property, are grievous and oppressive; and all general warrants to search 
suspected places, or to apprehend suspected persons, without naming or describing the 
place, or the person in special, are illegal, and ought not to be granted.”).  However, both 
the United States Supreme Court and this Court have recognized various exceptions to this 
general prohibition.  See, e.g., Grant v. State, 449 Md. 1, 16–17, 141 A.3d 138, 146–47 
(2016) (citing Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S. Ct. 507, 514 (1967)).   
2 
 
One prominent exception to the warrant requirement is known as the “Terry Stop,” 
named after the Supreme Court decision Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868 (1968), 
which permits an officer “with reasonable suspicion, supported by articulable facts, that 
criminal activity ‘may be afoot[]’” to “stop and detain a person, briefly, for investigative 
purposes.”  Longshore v. State, 399 Md. 486, 506, 924 A.2d 1129, 1140 (2007) (citing 
Terry, 392 U.S. at 30, 88 S. Ct. at 1884).  If, while conducting such a stop, the officer 
develops a reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts “that the person with whom 
the officer is dealing is armed and dangerous, the officer may conduct a carefully limited 
[frisk] of the outer clothing of such person in an attempt to discover weapons which might 
be used to assault the officer.”  State v. Smith, 345 Md. 460, 465, 693 A.2d 749, 751 (1997).  
Such an action is known as a “Terry frisk.”  See Norman v. State, 452 Md. 373, 424, 156 
A.3d 940, 970 (2017).   
 
Terry stops and Terry frisks must both be supported by reasonable suspicion.  We 
have explained that although there is “no standardized test governing what constitutes 
reasonable suspicion[,] . . . [i]t has been defined as nothing more than a particularized and 
objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity[.]”  Crosby 
v. State, 408 Md. 490, 507, 970 A.2d 894, 903 (2009) (internal citations and quotations 
omitted).  The standard of reasonable suspicion should be treated as a “common sense, 
nontechnical conception that considers factual and practical aspects of daily life and how 
reasonable and prudent people act[]” but still must be based on more than an “inchoate and 
unparticularized suspicion or hunch.”  Id., 970 A.2d at 903‒04.  Whether reasonable 
suspicion exists must be viewed under the “totality of the circumstances” of the case.  Holt 
3 
 
v. State, 435 Md. 443, 460, 78 A.3d 415, 424 (2013) (quoting United States v. Arvizu, 534 
U.S. 266, 273, 122 S. Ct. 744, 750 (2002)).   
The reasonable suspicion standards for Terry stops and Terry frisks have different 
objects.  In the context of a Terry stop, an officer must have reasonable suspicion that the 
person stopped is engaged in criminal activity, while in the context of a Terry frisk, the 
officer must have reasonable suspicion that the suspect is “armed and dangerous[.]”  Smith, 
345 Md. at 465, 693 A.2d at 751.  We have explained that “[t]he purpose of the Terry frisk, 
by diametric contrast [to the purpose of a Terry stop], is not directly crime-related at all but 
is exclusively concerned with officer safety, with safeguarding the life and limb of the 
officer[.]”  Norman, 452 Md. at 424, 156 A.3d at 970 (quoting Ames v. State, 231 Md. App. 
662, 673, 153 A.3d 899, 905 (2017)).   
The Fourth Amendment Relevance of the Scent of Marijuana after 
Decriminalization in Maryland 
 
In 2014, the Maryland legislature decriminalized possession of less than ten grams 
of marijuana, making it a civil offense punishable by a fine instead of a crime.  Md. Code 
Ann., Criminal Law (“Crim. Law”) § 5-601(c)(2)(ii); see also Lewis, 470 Md. 1, 9, 233 
A.3d 86, 91 (2020).  Possession of more than ten grams of marijuana remains a crime.  See 
Crim. Law § 5-601(c)(2)(i).  In Robinson v. State, the first post-2014 Maryland case to 
discuss the relevance of the scent of marijuana under the Fourth Amendment, we held that 
law enforcement officers have probable cause to conduct a warrantless vehicle search 
based solely on the odor of marijuana, even in light of the legislature’s decriminalization 
scheme.  451 Md. 94, 137, 152 A.3d 661, 687 (2017).  We reasoned that “marijuana in any 
4 
 
amount remains contraband,” and thus “the odor of marijuana gives rise to probable cause 
to believe that the vehicle contains contraband or evidence of a crime.”  Id., 152 A.3d at 
687 (referencing the “automobile exception” from Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 
45 S. Ct. 280 (1925), which permits warrantless searches of automobiles where an officer 
has probable cause to suspect the vehicle contains contraband or evidence of a crime).   
In Norman, issued the same year as Robinson, we clarified that although the odor of 
marijuana can provide probable cause to conduct a search of a vehicle, it does not provide 
reasonable suspicion to conduct a frisk of the occupants in that vehicle.  Norman, 452 Md. 
at 379, 156 A.3d at 943.  We specifically stated that “[a]n odor of marijuana alone 
emanating from a vehicle with multiple occupants does not give rise to reasonable 
articulable suspicion that the vehicle’s occupants are armed and dangerous and subject to 
frisk.”  Id., 156 A.3d at 944.  Similarly, in Pacheco v. State, we dealt with a case in which 
police approached an individual in a parked car and observed a strong odor of marijuana 
and a marijuana cigarette in the car.  465 Md. 311, 317–18, 214 A.3d 505, 508–09 (2019).  
The police immediately told the individual to exit the vehicle, searched him, discovered 
cocaine in his left front pocket, and subsequently searched his vehicle.  Id. at 318, 214 A.3d 
505 509.  We held that although the police’s search of the vehicle was warranted based on 
Robinson, the arrest and subsequent search of Pacheco’s person was not permissible under 
the Fourth Amendment.  Id. at 330, 214 A.3d at 516.  We reasoned that there is a diminished 
expectation of privacy in one’s vehicle, but that there is “‘unique, significantly heightened’ 
constitutional protections afforded a person to be secure in his or her  body[.]”  Id. at 326, 
214 A.3d at 513.   
5 
 
Most recently in Lewis v. State, 470 Md. 1, 233 A.3d 86 (2020), we addressed the 
significance of the odor of marijuana outside of the vehicle context.  In that case, we 
rejected the argument that the odor of marijuana emanating from an individual in a grocery 
store gave police probable cause to arrest and search the individual.  Id. at 27, 233 A.3d at 
101.  We explained that when considering the propriety of an arrest and search incident to 
that arrest, we consider the “likelihood of the guilt of the arrestee and whether probable 
cause existed to believe that a felony was committed or a felony or misdemeanor was being 
committed in the presence of law enforcement.”  Id. at 22, 233 A.3d at 98.  As such, the 
odor of marijuana alone did not give the officers in Lewis probable cause to arrest and 
search the petitioner because marijuana under ten grams is neither a felony nor 
misdemeanor, but a civil offense, and “[t]he odor of marijuana alone is not indicative of 
the quantity (if any) of marijuana in someone’s possession[.]”  Id. at 23, 233 A.3d at 99. 
Application to the Stop and Frisk of Respondent 
The parties before us present two issues.  The first is whether, as a matter of first 
impression, the odor of marijuana alone provided reasonable suspicion to conduct a Terry 
investigatory stop of Respondent.  The second is whether the totality of the circumstances 
provided Officer Jeff Walden with reasonable suspicion Respondent was armed and 
dangerous so that it was permissible for him to conduct a Terry frisk of Respondent.  As 
explained below, I would answer both questions in the negative.   
 
 
6 
 
A. The smell of marijuana alone did not provide reasonable suspicion to conduct 
an investigatory stop of Respondent 
 
The Court of Special Appeals below relied heavily on Lewis in finding that the 
officer’s investigatory stop of Respondent was not supported by reasonable suspicion.  
Lewis dealt with the higher standard of probable cause necessary for an arrest and search 
incident to the arrest.  We have recognized, in line with United States Supreme Court 
precedent, that: 
Reasonable suspicion is a less demanding standard than probable cause not 
only in the sense that reasonable suspicion can be established with 
information that is different in quantity or content than that required to 
establish probable cause, but also in the sense that reasonable suspicion can 
arise from information that is less reliable than that required to show probable 
cause[.] 
 
Cartnail v. State, 359 Md. 272, 287, 753 A.2d 519, 527 (2000) (quoting Alabama v. White, 
496 U.S. 325, 330, 110 S. Ct. 2412, 2416 (1990)).  Probable cause requires the existence 
of “facts and circumstances within the knowledge of the officer at the time of the arrest, or 
of which the officer has reasonably trustworthy information, [that] are sufficient to warrant 
a prudent person in believing that the suspect had committed or was committing a criminal 
offense.’”  Barrett v. State, 234 Md. App. 653, 666, 174 A.3d 441, 449 (2017) (quoting 
Moulden v. State, 212 Md. App. 331, 344, 69 A.3d 36, 44 (2013)).  In contrast, reasonable 
suspicion necessary for a Terry investigatory stop, need only arise from “a particularized 
and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.”  Holt, 
435 Md. at 459, 78 A.3d at 424.  This lesser standard is justified by the fact that a Terry 
7 
 
stop is less intrusive than a formal custodial arrest.1  See Wilson v. State, 409 Md. 415, 
439–40, 975 A.2d 877, 891–92 (2009) (holding that an assessment of the reasonableness 
of an officer’s actions is dependent on the level of the intrusion, and that a Terry stop is 
less intrusive than a formal custodial arrest). 
 
In 2014, Maryland joined other jurisdictions that have decriminalized the possession 
of marijuana.  As the majority observed, several of these jurisdictions have concluded that 
the smell of marijuana, alone, does not provide reasonable suspicion to conduct an 
investigatory stop.  See Maj. slip op. at 28.  In State v. Moore, the Court of Appeals of 
Oregon explained that its “historic treatment of all marijuana odors as equal for purposes 
of reasonable suspicion was grounded in ‘the legal status of marijuana as contraband in 
any amount,’ a premise that no longer applies, requiring us to adjust our analysis 
accordingly going forward.”  311 Or. App. 13, 19, 488 P.3d 816, 819 (2021) (citations 
omitted) (emphasis in original).  The court further explained: 
As the legal status of cannabis in Oregon has changed, so too does the role 
that the odor of marijuana plays in the reasonable suspicion calculus.  [A] 
strong odor can signal the presence of marijuana, but not necessarily the 
 
1 To distinguish between an investigatory Terry stop and a custodial arrest, courts 
will consider: “the length of the detention, the investigative activities that occur during the 
detention, and the question of whether the suspect is removed from the place of the stop to 
another location[]” under a totality of the circumstances.  Chase v. State, 224 Md. App. 
631, 643–44, 121 A.3d 257, 264 (2015).   
8 
 
presence in a quantity that is illegal. . . .  For that reason, odor adds only that 
much to the calculus—that some amount of marijuana may be present.  
 
Id., 488 P.3d at 819–20 (marks and citation omitted) (some emphasis added and some 
emphasis in original). 
 
Similar to how the decriminalized status of marijuana minimized the importance of 
odor in the reasonable suspicion calculus in Oregon, the decriminalized status of marijuana  
in Maryland should accordingly minimize the importance of the odor in the reasonable 
suspicion calculus in our constitutional jurisprudence.  Possession of less than ten grams 
of marijuana is generally no longer a crime in Maryland.  Crim. Law § 5-601(c)(2)(ii).  
Maryland also permits possession of medical marijuana for certain medical necessities or 
usages.  Crim. Law § 5-601(c)(3).  The smell of odor on a person, alone, makes it 
impossible for law enforcement to determine whether the person has engaged in a wholly 
innocent activity, a civil offense, or a crime.  
 
While reasonable suspicion is a relatively low barrier, law enforcement may not rely 
on a hunch that a person may possess ten grams of odor in a non-medicinal capacity to 
form a basis of reasonable suspicion.  See Crosby 408 Md. at 507, 970 A.2d at 904.  In the 
case at bar, law enforcement smelled the odor of marijuana emanating from Respondent 
and his companions, but there was no articulable basis for why any of the individuals were 
carrying more than ten grams of marijuana.  I would have concluded that the odor of 
marijuana, alone, did not provide reasonable suspicion to stop Respondent.  
9 
 
B. The totality of the circumstances did not justify the frisk of Respondent  
Assuming arguendo that the Terry stop of Respondent was lawful, I also depart 
from the majority in my conclusion as to the constitutionality of the frisk of Respondent.  
“Although a reasonable ‘stop’ is a necessary predecessor to a reasonable ‘frisk,’ a 
reasonable ‘frisk’ does not inevitably follow in the wake of every reasonable ‘stop.’”  
Simpler v. State, 318 Md. 311, 319, 568 A.2d 22, 25–26 (1990) (quoting Gibbs v. State, 18 
Md. App. 230, 238–39, 306 A.2d 587, 592 (1973)).  The State does not argue that the odor 
of marijuana alone provided reasonable suspicion that Respondent might have been armed 
and dangerous, nor can it.  See Norman, 452 Md. at 379, 156 A.3d at 944 (“An odor of 
marijuana alone emanating from a vehicle with multiple occupants does not give rise to 
reasonable articulable suspicion that the vehicle’s occupants are armed and dangerous and 
subject to frisk.”).  Rather, the State argues that the totality of the circumstances 
surrounding the officers’ encounter with Respondent justified the frisk   
i. 
Officer Walden’s primary basis for frisking Respondent was that the officers 
were outnumbered by Respondent and his companions 
 
 
Maryland courts have held that “[o]ne of the key requirements of reasonable 
suspicion, for either a stop or a frisk, is not only that it be present but that it be actually 
articulated.”  Graham v. State, 146 Md. App. 327, 359, 807 A.2d 75, 93 (2002) (emphasis 
added).  Specifically, in the context of a frisk, we have explained that it is a 
threshold requirement that the frisking officer articulate his specific reasons 
for believing that the suspect was armed and dangerous.  It is not enough that 
objective circumstances be present that might have permitted some other 
officer in some other case to conclude that the suspect was armed and 
dangerous.  It is required that the frisking officer himself expressly articulate 
the specific reasons he had for believing that the frisk was necessary. 
10 
 
Norman, 452 Md. at 424, 156 A.3d at 970 (emphasis added) (quoting Ames, 231 Md. App. 
at 674, 153 A.3d at 906); see also Graham, 146 Md. App. at 359–60, 807 A.2d at 93 (“For 
a good frisk, it is not enough that in the abstract facts have been developed that might, 
objectively, permit some officer somewhere to conclude that the suspect or stopee was 
armed and dangerous.  It is required that the frisking officer actually articulate the factors 
that lead to his reasonable suspicion that a frisk was necessary for his own protection.”).   
 
We also require that such an articulated basis to justify a Terry frisk be particularized 
to the individual circumstances at hand and cannot be a matter of a routine or a blanket 
policy.  We have rejected authorizing frisks as a matter of routine policy where an officer 
lacks particularized reasonable suspicion that a suspect is armed and dangerous.  In 
Simpler, we recognized that, “[w]hile there undoubtedly is some risk to the police in every 
confrontation, Terry has never been thought to authorize a protective frisk on the occasion 
of every authorized stop.”  318 Md. at 321, 568 A.2d at 26.  In that case, this Court rejected 
the constitutionality of an officer’s frisk of individuals discovered drinking beer in the 
woods, where he claimed his frisk was done as “a matter of routine caution.”  Id. at 322, 
568 A.2d at 27.  Recently in Sellman v. State, we reaffirmed the holding in Simpler and 
rejected an officer’s justification for a frisk of a suspect where the officer stated it was 
routine policy to frisk a suspect when they conducted a search of the suspect’s automobile.  
449 Md. 526, 537–38, 144 A.3d 771, 778 (2016).   
 
In this case, the primary reason articulated by Officer Walden for searching 
Respondent and his companions was that they outnumbered the officers five to two, and it 
11 
 
was protocol to frisk for weapons when officers are outnumbered by suspects.  He 
explained that in situations where officers are outnumbered: 
At first[,] you’re in a terrible disadvantage.  We were taught in the academy, 
it’s basic, you’d want to also go with back-up and you shouldn’t handle any 
call by yourself.   
 
But there are times where you’re put in that position to where there are 
several people coming at you, so you have to get the advantage.  And one of 
the first concerns is a weapon that they could use against you.   
 
And my first concern was one of them having a weapon.  And there was five 
of them and they were right by a door where they could run out the door, plus 
the odor of CDS, the odor of marijuana, that there was illegal drug activity 
there, the fact that nobody could provide any identification that they live 
inside that building.   
 
So[,] the first thing we want to do is secure them and make sure they don’t 
have any weapons on them.  Once we found the weapon on them, then they 
were secured and handcuffed.   
 
Officer Walden later reiterated that the first thing he does whenever he is outnumbered by 
suspects is search for weapons.   
A blanket policy of always checking for weapons in circumstances where the 
officers are outnumbered by suspects is decidedly not a permissible basis for a Terry frisk 
under Simpler and Sellman.  A Terry frisk must be supported by a particularized basis for 
suspecting that an individual is armed and dangerous.  See Thornton v. State, 465 Md. 122, 
143, 214 A.3d 34, 46 (2019) (holding that, when considering the constitutionality of a Terry 
frisk, “[t]he court must decide whether, under the circumstances, a reasonably prudent law 
enforcement officer would have felt that he [or she] was in danger, based on reasonable 
inferences from particularized facts in light of the officer’s experience[]”) (cleaned up) 
(emphasis added).  Officer Walden’s practice of always searching for weapons in cases 
12 
 
where he is outnumbered did not provide him with particularized suspicion that 
Respondent was armed and dangerous.  I would hold that using this blanket policy as the 
primary basis for frisking Respondent renders the frisk unconstitutional under our Fourth 
Amendment standards.   
ii. 
Officer Walden did not have reasonable suspicion under the totality of the 
circumstances that Respondent was armed and dangerous  
 
Neither did the totality of the circumstances surrounding Officer Walden’s 
encounter with Respondent reasonably justify a belief Respondent was armed and 
dangerous.  When determining whether reasonable suspicion exists, “[t]he test is ‘the 
totality of the circumstances,’ viewed through the eyes of a reasonable, prudent, police 
officer.”  Sellman, 449 Md. at 542, 144 A.3d at 781 (2016) (quoting Bost v. State, 406 Md. 
341, 356, 958 A.2d 356, 365 (2008)).  As this Court recently stated in Thornton,  
[t]o articulate reasonable suspicion, an officer must explain how the observed 
conduct, when viewed in the context of all the other circumstances known to 
the officer, was indicative of criminal activity.  [I]t is impossible for a 
combination of wholly innocent factors to combine into a suspicious 
conglomeration unless there are concrete reasons for such an interpretation.  
Law enforcement officers cannot simply assert that innocent conduct was 
suspicious to him or her. 
 
465 Md. at 147, 214 A.3d at 49 (internal citations and quotations omitted).  In this case, 
when asked why he suspected that Respondent and his companions may have been armed, 
Officer Walden stated: 
One [reason] was the evasive body language.  Another reason is because I 
just felt that because there’s five of them in baggy clothes, they were being 
evasive, that for our safety to be able to continue with the investigation, that 
I wanted to feel safe that there was nobody that was armed at that time. 
 
13 
 
I begin with addressing Respondent’s allegedly evasive behavior.  Officer Walden 
described Respondent’s behavior as follows: 
Four of the subjects sit to the stairs to the left and [Respondent] stayed on the 
top of the stairs to the right.  And he was being evasive, because he was like 
man, I’m not doing nothing – 
 
* 
* 
* 
 
He’s to the right of me and I told him to have a seat on top of the stairs.  And 
he just kept facing away from me, he was sitting facing away from me.  His 
body language, he just seemed to be evasive of what he was doing.  Through 
my training and knowledge, I know that if you’re being evasive in how you 
carry your body language, I mean that’s a sign that you could be carrying a 
weapon.   
 
* 
* 
* 
 
So as I’m standing here, he’s right there and he has a seat and he’s just facing 
over here, so body language that I can’t see anything, I can’t really see his 
hands.  He would speak to me, but I can’t see his whole body language, I 
can’t see what he’s doing. 
 
We have explained that we will not “‘rubber stamp’ conduct simply because the 
officer believed he had a right to engage in it” and that when an “officer seeks to justify a 
Fourth Amendment intrusion based on that conduct, the officer ordinarily must offer some 
explanation of why he or she regarded the conduct as suspicious; otherwise, there is no 
ability to review the officer’s action.”  Ransome v. State, 373 Md. 99, 111, 816 A.2d 901, 
908 (2003).  “In other words, there must be an ‘articulated logic to which this Court can 
defer.’”  Crosby, 408 Md. at 509, 970 A.2d at 904 (quoting United States v. Lester, 148 
F.Supp.2d 597, 607 (D. Md. 2001).  In Ransome, we rejected a claim of reasonable 
suspicion that a suspect was armed and dangerous based on an observation that the suspect 
14 
 
had a bulge in his pocket, had stopped and looked at the unmarked police car as it 
approached, and when questioned by law enforcement, had ceased eye contact and acted 
nervously.  Ransome, 373 Md. at 105, 816 A.2d at 904–05.  We reasoned that the officer 
“never explained why he thought that petitioner’s stopping to look at his unmarked car as 
it slowed down was suspicious or why petitioner’s later nervousness or loss of eye contact, 
as two police officers accosted him on the street, was suspicious.”  Id. 109, 816 A.2d at 
907.   
Similar to the officer in Ransome, Officer Walden offered no explanation as to why 
Respondent’s body language of sitting on a different part of the staircase from his 
companions and facing away from the officers was indicative that he might have been 
armed.  Officer Walden simply testified he knew Respondent was being evasive based on 
his “training and knowledge,” but failed to describe the training and knowledge or how it 
would be indicative that a suspect might be armed.  As a result, we have no ability to review 
the officer’s actions and can only “rubber stamp” his conclusion that Respondent’s 
behavior was indicative of someone who was armed.  Without any further explanation from 
Officer Walden, we could also conclude Respondent’s body language was simply 
indicative of any teenager who was nervous, angry, or upset about being questioned by the 
police.  Respondent was not the first person in his group searched, which suggests that the 
officers did not find Respondent’s behavior particularly concerning.  Instead, and 
consistent with Officer Walden’s testimony, law enforcement searched the entire group as 
a matter of policy.   
15 
 
Officer Walden also referenced the fact Respondent was in “baggy clothes” among 
his considerations when developing reasonable suspicion that Respondent was armed.  
Specifically, he testified Respondent was wearing a “puffy jacket.”  The incident in 
question occurred in mid-November, when many Marylanders who are outside or about to 
walk outside will likely be found wearing puffy jackets to stay warm.  Respondent and his 
companions similarly wore puffy jackets as they were about to walk outside; therefore this 
behavior should not have contributed to the officer’s reasonable suspicious calculus.  Cf. 
United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, 207, 122 S. Ct. 2105, 2114 (2002) (noting that it 
could have been relevant to a Terry stop and frisk analysis that the suspects were “dressed 
in heavy, baggy clothes that were ill-suited for the day’s warm temperatures[.]”) (emphasis 
added).   
As recognized by the Third Circuit, “[t]here are limits, however, to how far police 
training and experience can go towards finding latent criminality in innocent acts.”  
Johnson v. Campbell, 332 F.3d 199, 208 (3d Cir. 2003).  In this case, the fact Respondent 
wore a bulky jacket, just as most people would wear in mid-November, should not be 
considered a contributing factor to the officer’s reasonable suspicion that he was armed 
and dangerous.  See, e.g., State v. Broadus, 111 A.3d 57, 61–62 (N.H. 2015) (finding the 
fact that (1) the officer believed “that the defendant lied when she denied drinking alcohol 
in the vehicle; (2) she did not maintain eye contact with Locke; and (3) she wore baggy 
clothes[]” neither “alone or together, could have supported a reasonable suspicion that the 
defendant was armed and presently dangerous[]” and that “nothing about the defendant’s 
‘attire alone could tell the officer[ ] anything about [her], except that [s]he liked to wear 
16 
 
baggy clothing.’”) (quoting State v. Miglavs, 90 P.3d 607, 613 (Or. 2004)); United States 
v. Job, 871 F.3d 852, 861 (9th Cir. 2017) (finding “the facts that Job’s pants appeared to 
be ‘full of items’ and he appeared nervous do not support the conclusion that he was 
engaged in criminal activity[]” warranting a Terry frisk).   
The same is true of the officer’s consideration that “there was five of them” as a part 
of his calculation Respondent could have been armed and dangerous.  Like wearing a puffy 
jacket in November, there is nothing suspicious about travelling with a group of four other 
people, especially as young people.  There is no reason to believe, nor did Officer Walden 
offer any reason to believe, that travelling with such a group might indicate a suspect being 
armed.  As discussed above, a blanket policy of searching members of a group anytime an 
officer is outnumbered is not permissible under Maryland law, and Officer Walden offered 
no reason to believe that Respondent travelling in this particular group of five indicated he 
was armed and dangerous.   
Finally, neither should the fact that the officers were responding to a call reporting 
possible trespass and marijuana use add to the reasonable suspicion calculus.2  In Sellman, 
we explained: 
 
2 Although the Officer Walden did not mention the nature of the call when directly 
responding to the question about why he believed Respondent may have been armed, he 
did mention the nature of the call later when discussing the policy about frisking when 
outnumbered by suspects.  Specifically, he stated: 
  
And my first concern was one of them having a weapon.  And there was five 
of them and they were right by a door where they could run out the door, plus 
           
 
 
 
 
 
 
(continued . . .)                                           
 
17 
 
But for other types of crimes, such as trafficking in small quantities of 
narcotics, possession of marijuana, illegal possession of liquor, prostitution, 
bookmaking, shoplifting and other theft, passing bad checks, underage 
drinking, driving under the influence and lesser traffic offenses, minor 
assault without weapons, curfew information, or vagrancy, as well as when 
the stop is for a legitimate noncriminal reason, or when the officer’s duties 
otherwise necessitate his being in close proximity to the individual, there 
must be, as Justice Harlan noted in Terry, “other circumstances” present.  
Illustrative of the circumstances the courts have deemed sufficient are: the 
suspect’s admission he is armed; a characteristic bulge in the suspect’s 
clothing; an otherwise inexplicable sudden movement toward a pocket or 
other place where a weapon could be concealed; movement under a jacket or 
shirt “consistent with the adjustment of a concealed firearm”; an otherwise 
inexplicable failure to remove a hand from a pocket; awkward movements 
manifesting an apparent effort to conceal something under his jacket; 
backing away by the suspect under circumstances suggesting he was moving 
back to give himself time and space to draw a weapon; awareness that the 
suspect had previously been engaged in serious criminal conduct (but not 
more ambiguous “record” information); awareness that the suspect had 
previously been armed; awareness of recent erratic and aggressive conduct 
by the suspect; discovery of a weapon in the suspect’s possession; discovery 
that the suspect is wearing a bullet proof vest as to which he makes evasive 
denials; and awareness of circumstances which might prompt the suspect to 
take defense action because of a misunderstanding of the officer’s authority 
or purpose. 
 
449 Md. at 560–61, 144 A.3d at 792 (some emphasis added) (quoting WAYNE R. LAFAVE, 
SEARCH AND SEIZURE: A TREATISE ON THE FOURTH AMENDMENT § 9.6(a) 855–62 (5th 
ed. 2012)).  The investigation potential trespass and marijuana possession by teenagers 
surely falls into category of minor, non-violent crimes for which “other circumstances” 
 
(. . . continued) 
the odor of CDS, the odor of marijuana, that there was illegal drug activity 
there, the fact that nobody could provide any identification that they live 
inside that building. 
 
As such, I will still consider this a factor articulated by Officer Walden as one of his 
articulated bases for suspecting Respondent was armed and dangerous. 
18 
 
must be present in order for a police officer to “infer weapons use.”  See id. at 559–61, 144 
A.3d at 791–92.  While the examples of “other circumstances” listed in Sellman are 
certainly not exhaustive, none of the circumstances surrounding the officers’ encounter 
with Respondent are analogous to the examples listed.  Here, the officers did not say that 
Respondent was making furtive or awkward movements manifesting an effort to conceal a 
firearm, but just that he was not facing them, and they could not see his hands.  Far from 
refusing to remove his hands from his jacket when requested, the officers never asked 
Respondent to make his hands visible or face them at all.  As “other circumstances” were 
not present, the officers were not permitted to infer weapons use based on the nature of the 
crimes they were investigating.   
The State mentions a few other circumstances it believes contributed to the officer’s 
reasonable suspicion that Respondent was armed and dangerous, namely: Respondent’s 
refusal to answer the officer’s questions, and the fact that the officer recovered a BB gun 
from one of Respondent’s companions.  Although the officers certainly testified about 
these facts, they notably did not mention them as contributing factors to their determination 
that Respondent might have been armed.  As discussed above, Maryland courts rely on the 
frisking officer’s actual “articul[ation] [of] his specific reasons for believing that the 
suspect was armed and dangerous[]” and find it insufficient “that objective circumstances 
be present that might have permitted some other officer in some other case to conclude that 
the suspect was armed and dangerous.”  Ames, 231 Md. App. at 674, 153 A.3d at 906.  
Rather, it is “required that the frisking officer himself expressly articulate the specific 
reasons he had for believing that the frisk was necessary.”  Id., 153 A.3d at 906.  As such, 
19 
 
I would not consider factors that were not articulated by the officers as a part of their 
consideration for determining Respondent might have been armed and dangerous.  
Even considering such factors, I conclude they still do not amount to reasonable 
suspicion that Respondent was armed and dangerous under the totality of the 
circumstances.  First, pertaining to the fact Respondent refused to answer the officer’s 
questions and said “[m]y dick” in response to the officers’ questions about who lived in 
the building, Respondent was not obligated to respond to the officer’s questions.  See 
Collins v. State, 376 Md. 359, 368, 829 A.2d 992, 997 (2003) (explaining an individual 
detained and questioned during a Terry stop “is not obligated to respond . . . and, “unless 
the detainee’s answers provide the officer with probable cause to arrest him, he must then 
be released.”).  The officers described the group as “snickering, laughing and very 
carefree[;]” they were uncooperative, but not aggressive or agitated.  Respondent’s 
response may have been indicative of his immaturity or desire to impress his friends, but it 
did not reasonably suggest that he was armed or dangerous.   
 
Second, the recovery of the BB gun from one of Respondent’s companions did not 
justify Officer Walden’s frisk of Respondent.  Recently, in Lockard v. State, the Court of 
Special Appeals rejected an officer’s assertion “[i]f there’s one weapon, there could be 
more[]” as a justification of the frisk of a suspect after a knife was observed in his pocket.  
247 Md. App. 90, 98, 233 A.3d 228, 233 (2020).  Additionally, we have stated that “to 
allow the reasonable, articulable suspicion standard to be satisfied based upon a person’s 
status, rather than an individualized assessment of the circumstances, would undermine the 
purpose for requiring officers to justify their reasons for searching a particular individual.”  
20 
 
State v. Nieves, 383 Md. 573, 597, 861 A.2d 62, 77 (2004) (emphasis added).  As such, 
Respondent’s status as a companion to an individual discovered to be carrying a handgun, 
is not sufficient to justify the officers’ reasonable suspicion that he might also be armed 
and dangerous.3   
The State relies on El-Amin v. Commonwealth, 607 S.E.2d 115 (Va. 2005), in which 
police investigated a report that a group of young black males was smoking marijuana on 
a particular street corner.  Id. at 116.  When the officers approached, one of the members 
of the group began walking away and when the officers requested that he stop and face 
them, and the individual instead reached for his waistband.  The officers restrained the 
individual, who continued to attempt to reach for his waist band, and ultimately recovered 
a pellet gun from a search of his person.  Id.  The officers then conducted a frisk of the 
other members of the group, including the defendant who was found to be carrying a 
firearm.  Id.  In that case, the Virginia Court explicitly did not adopt a per se rule approving 
of the search of a companion of a person validly frisked4 and found to be in possession of 
a weapon.  Id. at 118.  Rather, it determined the circumstances present in that case, 
including, the fact it was late at night and they were in a high-crime area, in addition to the 
discovery of the weapon and group activity.  Id. at 119.   
 
3 It is also worth questioning whether possession of a BB gun would warrant 
characterizing Respondent’s companion as armed and dangerous.  
 
4 In El-Amin, the Court found the search of the defendant’s companion was clearly 
justified as the companion did not comply with the officer’s commands to turn around and 
face him and began to reach for his waistband.  607 S.E.2d at 116.  Although the issue is 
not directly before this Court, it is not evident from the record the search of Respondent’s 
companion revealing the BB gun was likewise justified. 
21 
 
Unlike in El-Amin, there were no additional circumstances in this case that justified 
the officers’ search of Respondent.  All of the members of Respondent’s group complied 
with the officers’ commands that they sit on the stairs.  The officers’ encounter with the 
group occurred indoors around approximately 7 p.m. and there was not a suggestion they 
were in a high crime area.  Furthermore, as discussed above, none of the other 
circumstances surrounding the encounter, considered individually or together, warranted 
reasonable suspicion Respondent might have been armed and dangerous.  This Court has 
not adopted a per se rule approving a search based on status as a companion of someone 
from whom a weapon was recovered, and the recovery of the BB gun from Respondent’s 
companion was not sufficient to warrant a frisk of Respondent.   
CONCLUSION 
Considering the foregoing, I dissent and would affirm the Court of Special Appeals’ 
holding that the gun recovered from Respondent should have been suppressed as the fruit 
of an unlawful search.  The totality of the circumstances neither provided a reasonably 
articulable basis that Respondent was in unlawful possession of marijuana nor a reasonably 
particularized suspicion that Respondent was armed and dangerous.   
Judge Raker has authorized me to state that she joins in this opinion.