Opinion ID: 2358021
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the decision with respect to the caretaking ground

Text: Exercising our independent judgment on the underlying constitutional issue presented by the facts of this case, as we are obligated to do, Cady v. Dombrowski, supra, 413 U.S. at 443, we conclude that the seizure of the challenged evidence here cannot be held to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment standard as an exercise of police caretaking functions. The procedure failed to meet the fundamental element present in all caretaking searches that the automobile be lawfully in police custody. The evidence is clear that the automobile was parked on private property, not on a public highway or street. It patently was not impeding traffic or threatening public safety and convenience. We cannot agree with the bald declaration of the Court of Special Appeals that where a homeowner has called the police to make a complaint, the taking of the automobile into police custody because it is illegally parked upon a woman's front lawn is as compellingly reasonable as the taking of an automobile into police custody after it has been damaged at an accident scene. The present case of getting the automobile off of the lawn is more compelling than the impounding of a vehicle which has violated the parking ordinances. Duncan v. State, supra, 34 Md. App. at 273. The Court of Special Appeals cites no law authorizing the police, at the time of the incident here, to impound a vehicle parked on private property, and we have not been referred to such a law. [4] Maryland Code (1957, 1970 Repl. Vol.) Art 66 1/2, § 11-1004 (e) provided: No person shall stop, stand, or park a vehicle on any private property not owned by the owner or driver of the vehicle after he has been requested by the property owner, his tenant, or his agent to remove the vehicle from the premises. There was no evidence that the property owner here requested appellants to remove the automobile. It appears that the police had no authority to impound the automobile merely because it was parked on private property without permission. The short of it is that the search here simply did not involve a standard caretaking procedure such as has been uniformly upheld by the state and federal courts. [5] On the contrary, unlike Opperman and Cady, and despite the disavowal of the searching officer, in light of the information within the knowledge of the officer and the scope of the search, there is the strong suggestion that the search was actually a pretext concealing an investigatory police motive. The Court of Special Appeals recognized in Dixon v. State, 23 Md. App. 19, 20-21, 327 A.2d 516 (1974) that [w]ith the possible exception of the `dropsy' cases, no aspect of Fourth Amendment litigation has afflicted law enforcement with the yawning credibility gap wrought by inventory searches. That yawning credibility gap is present on this record. As the police were not indisputably engaged in a caretaking search of a lawfully impounded automobile, the search and seizure cannot be said to be reasonable under the caretaking doctrine. [6]