Case Name: SAMUEL BROWN v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland
Jurisdiction: Maryland
Decision Date: 1968-11-13
Citations: 5 Md. App. 367
Docket Number: No. 51
Parties: SAMUEL BROWN v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Judges: 
Reporter: Maryland Appellate Reports
Volume: 5
Pages: 367–377

Head Matter:
SAMUEL BROWN v. STATE OF MARYLAND
[No. 51,
September Term, 1968.]
Decided November 13, 1968.
The cause was argued before Murphy, C.J., and Anderson, Morton, Orth, and Thompson, JJ.
Robert Allen Sapero for appellant.
Thomas N. Biddison, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, with whom were Brands B. Burch, Attorney General, Charles E. Moylan, Jr., State’s Attorney for Baltimore City, and Stephen Montanarelli, Assistant State’s Attorney for Baltimore City, on the brief, for appellee.

Opinion:
Morton, J.,
delivered the majority opinion of the Court. Anderson and' Orti-i, JJ., dissent. Dissenting opinion by Orti-i, J., in which Anderson, J., concurs, at page 373 infra.
The appellant was convicted of storehouse breaking and stealing $5.00 or upwards under Maryland Code, Art. 27, Sec. 33 in a non-jury trial in the Criminal Court of Baltimore and sentenced to a term of three years. In this appeal, it is first contended that the appellant ivas illegally arrested and that the articles seized as an incident thereto were, therefore, improperly admitted into evidence.
The record indicates that a sexton of a church in Baltimore City reported for work on Sunday morning, November 12, 1967, and noticed a window had been broken; that the doors to the catacombs under the church were broken; and he discovered that a case of Maxwell House coffee, a case of Hawaiian punch, two boxes of Ritz crackers, some jewelry and a baby carriage were missing. The food items were, apparently, to be used in a pre-service social hour and the baby carriage and jewelry were left over from a church bazaar.
A plain clothes police officer testified that about 4:45 A.M. on the morning of November 12, 1967, at the intersection of Hamilton Street and Park Avenue, several blocks from the church, he observed a man pushing a baby carriage in a parking lot situate to the rear of row houses in the 200 block of Franklin Street. He observed the man turn south on Tyson Street and when he reached the corner the man had disappeared. The officer proceeded down Tyson Street, and when he reached its intersection with Franklin Street he observed the man and baby carriage going west on Franklin Street. The officer thereupon alighted from his unmarked car, walked west on Franklin Street and found the man with the baby carriage standing inside an area of a commercial establishment used as a patrons walkway display entrance. Upon reaching the man, whom he identified as the appellant, he looked into the baby carriage and observed a price tag of $7.50 affixed thereto and "cans of coffee and crackers and some clothing strewed about and boxes of jewelry." He also observed that the appellant "was breathing hard as if to have been running." The officer asked him his name and "he told me his name was Samuel Brown. I asked him where he lived. He said 'I don't have to tell you that.' I asked him where he got that property. He said 'I found it in the alley.' " The officer then testified that since "there had been a great amount of burglaries in the area I placed him under arrest for investigation of burglary." He conceded that at the time of the arrest he had no knowledge that the church or any other building in the area had been broken into that night.
It is well established that an arrest without a warrant for a misdemeanor being committed in the presence of the arresting officer is lawful. And it is equally well settled that an arrest by a police officer is lawful if he had probable cause at the time of the arrest to believe that a felony was being committed or had been committed and that the person arrested was committing or had committed it. Edwardsen v. State, 243 Md. 131; Leather-berry v. State, 4 Md. App. 300; Simms v. State, 4 Md. App. 160; Boone v. State, 2 Md. App. 479. "The rule of probable cause is a non-technical conception of a reasonable ground for belief of guilt, requiring less evidence for such belief than would justify conviction but more evidence than that which would arouse a mere suspicion." Edwardsen v. State, supra, 136.
As was so cogently pointed out by Judge Hammond (now Chief Judge) in Braxton v. State, 234 Md. 1 (at p. 6) :
"The freedom of the individual from unwarranted or unjustified harassment and molestation by the police and his right to privacy, guaranteed by the Constitutional proscriptions against unreasonable searches and seizures on the one hand, and the needs of society on the other, require the striking of a balance not easy to achieve and the drawing of lines not always easy to draw."
The case at bar highlights the soundness of the foregoing statement. To the arresting officer, as perhaps to any reasonably cautious citizen, the sight of a man pushing a baby carriage on a parking lot at 4:45 A.M. on a Sunday morning was unusual and, undoubtedly, created a suspicion in the officer's mind that all was not right. Likewise, after listening to the appellant's explanation and his refusal to give his address, the officer's suspicion may have heightened. But the officer himself readily conceded that he was unaware that the church or any other building had been broken into that night. Thus, one of the essential ingredients of the rule of probable cause — reasonable grounds to believe that a felony had been committed — -was not within the knowledge of the officer unless it can be said that a reasonably cautious man, under the facts within the officer's purview, would have had probable cause to believe that a felony had been committed and that the felony had been committed by the appellant. Measured by this standard, we are of the opinion that the facts and circumstances within the officer's knowledge would not compel a reasonably cautious man to conclude that a felony had been committed, since the known conduct of the appellant at the time of the arrest was, at the least, equally consistent with innocent travel on a public thoroughfare. We are not here dealing with items of contraband such as weapons, narcotics, or burglar tools. Nor are we dealing here with items which in themselves are so unique or unusual as to give rise to a probability that they had been stolen. One can think of no more innocent conduct than a baby carriage filled with food stuffs being pushed by a husband or father on a public thoroughfare and, in this day of 24 hour work shifts, we are not prepared to find that such conduct, even at 4:45 A.M. on a Sunday morning, gives rise to such a probability that they were the fruits of a felony as to justify the warrantless arrest of the individual involved in such conduct.
It has been suggested by the State that the element of flight exists in this case and it is true that "flight, though not conclusive, is usually evidence of guilt." Price v. State, 227 Md. 28, 33. However, the only evidence of flight was the testimony concerning the appellant's heavy breathing and the fact that the officer drove around the block to overtake him and found him in a vestibule where he could not be readily seen from any substantial distance. This, in our opinion, is not conclusive evidence of flight for it is equally consistent to conclude that the appellant was unaware that he was being followed by a plain clothes officer in an unmarked car and his heavy breathing could have resulted from the energy expended in pushing the carriage. But even if we assume that flight is an element here, we think the holding of the Court of Appeals in Young v. State, 234 Md. 125, is dispositive of the State's contention. There, two men were seen by a police officer, who had been alerted that two individuals had previously been observed trying automobile door handles on a parking lot, one with his arms full of packages, opened the trunk of an automobile. When the officer approached them, they slammed the trunk lid closed, and one of them "began walking off rapidly." He was overtaken and arrested. In holding this to be an illegal arrest the Court said (at p. 130) :
"Although it was said in Price v. State, supra, at p. 33, that 'flight, though not conclusive, is usually evidence of guilt' — see also Tasco v. State, 223 Md. 503, 165 A. 2d 456 (1960) and Clay v. State, 211 Md. 577, 128 A. 2d 634 (1957) — there must exist other apparent circumstances upon which to base a reasonable assumption of guilt which was lacking here. In addition to this, in the cases last cited, the defendants literally ran from the police or scene of the crime, while in the present case the defendant just walked away rapidly."
The conduct of the appellant here may have aroused the arresting officer's suspicions. But this is not enough. In assessing the legality of a warrantless arrest, we must find probability, as contra-distinguished from suspicion. It is evident that the line is not easy to draw. It must be drawn on a case by case basis. Where it will be drawn can only be determined after a careful analysis of the facts and circumstances of each case which requires the striking of a balance between the Constitutional right of the individual to be free of unwarranted molestation and the requirements of society to be protected from the ravages of the criminal.
In the case at bar, we are of the opinion that the conduct of the appellant was not such as to give the arresting officer sufficient probable cause to believe that a felony had been committed and, since no misdemeanor was being committed in his presence, the arrest without a warrant was illegal.
The State argues, in the alternative, and the lower court so held, that the arrest was legal because the appellant was committing a misdemeanor in the presence of the officer, i.e., receiving stolen goods. We disagree. To so find requires the inference that the articles in the appellant's possession had been previously stolen; that the appellant knew them to have been stolen ; and that he received them with fraudulent intent. There is no more evidence to support such an inference than there is to support a finding of probable cause to believe a felony had been committed'. It has also been suggested that the misdemeanor of "asportating larcenied goods" was being committed but this conclusion must rest upon the same unsupportable inference. Since we are of liie opinion that the arrest was illegal it follows that the articles seized as an incident thereto were improperly admitted into evidence. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643; Belton v. State, 228 Md. 17; Young v. State, supra; McCarthy v. State, 2 Md. App. 400; Randolph v. State, 1 Md. App. 441.
In view of our holding above, we do not reach the appellant's remaining questions.
Judgment reversed.
. And see Robinson v. State, supra, as to receipt by an officer of a police broadcast that a misdemeanor was committed in the presence of another member of the police team.