Opinion ID: 178471
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Common law definitions

Text: There is some support in English common law for the view that arrest includes custody. [A] constable, having reasonable cause to suspect a person has committed a felony may detain such person until he can be brought before a justice of the peace to have his conduct investigated. Horace L. Wilgus, Arrest Without a Warrant, 22 Mich. L.Rev. 673, 689 (1924) (quoting Beckwith v. Philby, 108 Eng. Repr. 585 (1827)). However, common law commentators have reached divergent conclusions with respect to the definition of an arrest under English common law. See Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 328, 121 S.Ct. 1536, 149 L.Ed.2d 549 (2001). Neither has traditional American common law developed a consistent definition of the term arrest. The state of Maryland, as one of the original colonies, and the first of the colonies to be a proprietary government (the proprietor and the freemen are allowed to make laws independent of England). See Henry William Elson, History of the United States of America Chapter IV, 75-83 (The MacMillan Company, New York, 1904), provides a particularly instructive example of the imprecision of a common law definition of arrest. See Thomas K. Clancy, What Constitutes An Arrest Within The Meaning Of The Fourth Amendment, 48 Vill. L.Rev. 129, FN 27 (2003). Maryland courts have defined arrest in a variety of ways determined by the context in which the term was used. See Little v. State, 300 Md. 485, 479 A.2d 903, 915-16 (1984) (concluding that brief stop at sobriety checkpoint was not arrest); Morton v. State, 284 Md. 526, 397 A.2d 1385, 1388 (1979) (arrest occurred when there was manual seizure of suspect and subsequent restraint on his liberty); Bouldin v. State, 276 Md. 511, 350 A.2d 130, 133-34 (1976) (citing several formulations of common law definition of arrest). Maryland common law is but one example of a body of American common law that has not developed one consistent definition for arrest.