Opinion ID: 2391136
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: police entry upon appellant's property.

Text: We come next to the question of the legality of the police entry upon Wanzer's property. To indicate that the traverser was conscious of no evil, defense counsel asserted in his opening statement to the jury and repeated during the trial that the gate of the Wanzer place was open to all, including specifically the police of Howard County. When a party makes a show of candor it would seem not unfair to him to accept his statements at their face value, and so it could perhaps be an answer to the claim of illegal entry to say that the appellant invited it. A party is ordinarily bound by admissions made by his lawyer in open court. However, we will decide the question on the merits because the statement is somewhat equivocal, and the testimony in the case seems to disprove the broad statement. This is not a case in which authority to enter the premises could be claimed under Art. 2B, Sec. 179, Annotated Code of Maryland (1951), for the reason that Wanzer was not licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. Consequently, this section which authorizes any peace officer    to inspect and search, without warrant, at all hours, any building    in which alcoholic beverages are authorized to be kept    is inapplicable. Apart from consent, does the law permit entry by officers, without a warrant, upon private property under such facts as this case presents? The traverser concedes that before the entry, the officer, from his position on Guilford Road, heard loud dance music and laughter, and saw people moving about on the lawn. Entry on private premises to execute an arrest warrant is legal. Hubbard v. State, 195 Md. 103, 72 A.2d 733. The precise question of the legality of entry without a warrant turns on whether the events seen and heard by the officers constituted the commission of a misdemeanor in their presence. The term presence is a word of art, denoting that before entry on the premises the commission of a misdemeanor is perceptible to the officer's senses, whether they be visual, auditory, or olfactory. See Turner v. State, 195 Md. 288, 73 A.2d 472, and authorities therein cited. That a peace officer may arrest persons for the commission of a misdemeanor in his presence without a warrant is not to be questioned. Callahan v. State, 163 Md. 298, 162 A. 856; Silverstein v. State, 176 Md. 533, 6 A.2d 465; Bass v. State, 182 Md. 496, 35 A.2d 155. It is established that a breach of the peace is such a misdemeanor as will authorize entry by the police upon private premises. There is a split of authority as to what constitutes a breach of the peace. Some decisions tend to broaden the definition by including any violation of order or decorum, and hold that fighting or rioting or a show or threat of violence is not an essential element; Davis v. Burgess, 54 Mich. 514, 20 N.W. 540; State v. Reichmann, 135 Tenn. 685, 188 S.W. 597; but we think the better rule is that of the common law which required evidence of an affray, actual violence, or conduct tending to or provocative of violence by others. Some states are so insistent on violence, or acts tending to provoke it, as an element of a breach of the peace which will authorize officers to enter that it has been held that the use of vile, insulting and abusive language falling short of direct threats or incitements to immediate personal violence or mischief will not suffice. State v. Steger, 94 W. Va. 576, 119 S.E. 682, 34 A.L.R. 570. In Regina v. Prebble, 1 Frost. & F. 325, the defendants were indicted for assaulting a constable who attempted to evict them from a barn, attached to a public house, where they were drinking at a late hour of the night. Baron Bromwell, for the court, said, The people were doing nothing illegal, nor contrary to any act of Parliament, and therefore the constable was not acting in the execution of his duty as such, although what he did may have been very laudable and proper. It would have been otherwise had there been a nuisance or disturbance of the public peace, or any danger of a breach of the peace. The New York Court of Appeals has said, The right of a police officer at common law to arrest summarily was a limited one. `The common law did not authorize the arrest of persons guilty or suspected of misdemeanors, except in cases of actual breach of the peace either by an affray or by violence to an individual.' People v. Phillips (1940), 284 N.Y. 235, 30 N.E.2d 488; citing Stephen's History of the Criminal Law of England, p. 193, Chase's Blackstone 4th Ed., pp. 998, 999, and 6 C.J.S., Arrest, sec. 6 c. What might warrant an arrest for disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace in a public place might still not be sufficient to warrant police intrusion on a citizen's privacy. The Attorney General referred to certain statutes which it is said were then and there being violated. An examination of these statutes convinces us that they furnish no basis for the police action. See Annotated Code of Maryland (1951). Art. 25, Sec. 23, makes it a misdemeanor to operate a public dance hall outside the incorporated limits of any town or city without a permit. It is questionable whether a 12' x 27' concrete surface, formerly the floor of a fire-gutted chicken house, on which couples were found dancing to a three-piece band, can be considered a public dance hall. Art. 27, Sec. 142, prohibits and punishes wilfull disturbances in a city or town by loud and unseemly noises. No evidence was offered to show that Wanzer's home was in a city or town, but it was shown that eleven other homes are located in proximity to Wanzer's. In Enfield v. Jordan, 119 U.S. 680, 7 S.Ct. 358, 30 L.Ed. 523, it was said: In Maryland and most of the southern states, the political unit of territory is the county, though this is sometimes divided into parishes and election districts for limited purposes. The word `town' is used in a broad sense to include all collections of houses from a city down to a village. This was, however, a civil case and the issue involved was the authority of a town-ship to subscribe for railroad stock  a field remote from the criminal law. Whether this broad interpretation of the word town is permissible in a criminal statute is to be doubted for the rule is as stated in 3 Sutherland's Statutory Construction (3 ed.), sec. 5503: An example [of strict construction] is legislation imposing criminal penalties, where the courts are committed to a strict construction in favor of the citizen and against the State. See also, Bishop on Statutory Crimes, (3 ed.) (1901), sec. 299 a. So also, Art. 27, sec. 146, cited by the State, punishes and prohibits disturbances of the peace, but is expressly made applicable only in Charles, Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, and Art. 27, sec. 144 prohibits and punishes disorderly conduct on certain public conveyances. Art. 27, sec. 578, denounces as a violation working or doing bodily labor on Sunday, or suffering one's children to do so. It is silent as to noise or other disturbances. Absence of any clear common law authority, coupled with the existence of such statutes as above recited of limited application, indicates caution in sanctioning police entry into the curtilege (i.e. the area surrounding a dwelling house) to suppress mere playing of music. The requirements of public order can ordinarily be met by police knocking on the door and giving admonition. Such, in fact, is the common practice. Entry upon the premises, where the complaint is only against the playing of music, is not practically necessary or sanctioned in law. Turner v. State, supra , rules this case. There officers responded to a radio call informing them of an alleged altercation at a restaurant. Finding no disturbance there and observing a small building across the road near the entrance to which were a number of people carrying bottles of beer, the officers proceeded to enter. Although admonished that it was a private club, the officers nevertheless persisted. In reversing the conviction, this court, speaking through Judge Collins, said, We are of the opinion that the search and seizure in this case, made without a search warrant or other warrant, not for the purpose of making an arrest, and no offense being committed in the presence and view of the officers, was unlawful and the evidence procured thereby was not admissible. [195 Md. 288, 73 A.2d 475] We hold that the entrance of the police on the appellant's lawn and then into the house and the seizures made were illegal. We have no occasion to consider whether if the entry on the lawn had been legal the search could lawfully have been extended to the house. As there is not sufficient evidence independent of the discoveries made in the search to warrant a verdict of guilty, the judgment will be reversed. Reversed and new trial awarded.