Opinion ID: 2303013
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Search in the Instant Case

Text: Appellant urges this Court to hold that the Circuit Court erred in finding that the search conducted by the State was reasonable. Relying on our decisions in Blake I, Arey I, and Horton, Appellant maintains that the State, and law enforcement agencies, continually shirked their duty to provide evidence retention policies despite this well settled obligation and an initial court order requiring each party to `identify any and all policies relating to the retention and destruction of such materials which have been in place from January 1, 1989 until the present time[.]' Appellant asserts that without the requisite production of these retention policies, the search cannot be considered reasonable. Appellant claims that the only evidence retention policies provided at the evidentiary hearing by Roberta Mandelson, Director of Laboratory Services for Peninsula Regional Medical Center, were adopted in December 1996 and September 2007. Furthermore, Ms. Mandelson admitted that she had no knowledge of any procedures or policies that predated 1996. With regard to testimony at the evidentiary hearing given by Lieutenant Wilson and Corporal Donahoe of the Wicomico County Sheriff's Office, Appellant notes that Lieutenant Wilson's knowledge of the evidence retention policies only goes back to October 2007 and Corporal Donahoe's knowledge of the retention policies only goes back to August 2008. In addition, although older versions of evidence retention policies are retained by the Administrative Captain, according to Appellant, those policies were not produced at or before the hearing. Thus, Appellant asserts that the State did not meet its burden and the case must be remanded for further proceedings because [t]he hospital failed to produce any policy predating 1996, and [the] Sheriff's [O]ffice not only failed to produce the present written policy, but candidly admitted that it retained written versions of the [prior] policies it refused to disclose. In contrast to Appellant's claims, the State maintains that the search performed was reasonable based on the voluminous evidence presented regarding the non-existence of the evidencethe affidavits, the hearing testimony, [and] the hand-searches of any place the evidence could conceivably be. The State claims that [w]hile it is undeniably true that the Sheriff's Department did not provide [the evidence retention] procedures, it is equally clear that no matter what the procedures were, they would not indicate that the evidence was anywhere except in the possession of the Sheriff's Department. Moreover, the State highlights the fact that the evidence storage facilities of the Sheriff's Department were hand-searched in 2002 and 2009 in a fruitless attempt at locating Washington's slides. Thus, according to the State, the exhaustive search of the Sheriff's Office and the failure to locate any evidence there relating to Appellant's case provide strong support for the conclusion that the evidence no longer exists. The State interprets Blake II as holding that not every location listed in the NIJ Report must be searched. The State claims that, pursuant to this Court's holding in Blake II, it is logical to only search in places where the evidence might reasonably be expected to be found, and the State asserts that it has complied with this standard. Based upon our case law construing § 8-201 of the Criminal Procedure Article, specifically the requirement that the State perform a reasonable search for the requested scientific identification evidence, we hold that the Circuit Court's conclusion that the search performed by the State in this case was reasonable was not clearly erroneous. We stress that the underlying purpose of § 8-201 is to locate and test evidence that might exonerate defendants who have been allegedly wrongfully convicted. See Thompson I, 395 Md. at 252, 909 A.2d at 1042-43. This initiative underscores the need to perform an extensive search to determine whether evidence has actually been destroyed. The hearing judge had substantial evidence before him in this case to determine that the scientific identification evidence requested by Appellant no longer exists and that it was destroyed prior to the enactment date of the statute. As we stated in Blake I, the burden is on the State to establish, prima facially, that evidence requested pursuant to a petition for DNA testing no longer exists. Blake I, 395 Md. at 232, 909 A.2d at 1031. The search conducted by the State in this case involved an extensive search of all the places the scientific identification evidence from Appellant's case might reasonably be located, including the State's Attorney's Office, the Sheriff's Office, the Maryland State Police Crime Laboratory, the Circuit Court, and Peninsula Regional Medical Center. The State's search thus included almost every location suggested in the NIJ Report. See Blake II, 418 Md. at 448-49, 15 A.3d at 789-90 (quoting Blake I, 395 Md. at 221-22, 909 A.2d at 1024-25). Sampson Vincent personally conducted a search of each shelf and box in the State's Attorney's Office and was unable to find any evidence, evidence logs, or documentation related to Appellant's case. Lieutenant Wilson and Corporal Donahoe personally searched each shelf and box in the Sheriff's Office property and evidence room, including the areas behind the shelves where evidence is kept. Lieutenant Wilson also indicated in his letter filed with the court that the last documentation in the chain of evidence log regarding scientific identification evidence from Appellant's case shows that on June 12, 1991, Wendy Restein, a clerk of the Circuit Court, returned the evidence to Howard Perdue, the Property Custodian at the time. Ms. Restein's testimony at the evidentiary hearing was that the property log from Appellant's case similarly indicated that she released the evidence from Appellant's trial to Howard Perdue on June 12, 1991. The State produced a memorandum from James J. Nealon, the current Property Custodian, that was written in 2002 and indicated that a search of the Maryland State Police Crime Laboratory and all of the evidence vaults in the Sheriff's Office did not produce any scientific identification evidence related to Appellant's case. The court also received a letter from Sergeant Bromwell that stated that a search of the files at the Maryland State Police Department did not result in locating any of the requested evidence. In addition, an affidavit from Teresa Long, Director of the Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division, asserted that she and her staff searched the current logbooks, the logbooks for the long-term storage facility, the files kept for cold case analysis, and the current inventory list. This extensive search did not produce any evidence related to Appellant's case. The affidavit and testimony of Roberta Mandelson indicated that she personally performed a search of Peninsula Regional Medical Center by looking in the slide storage areas in the Cytology Department, in her office, and in the old section of the hospital. During that search, Ms. Mandelson was unable to locate any hematology and histology samples, underwear, vaginal swabs, or laboratory slides related to Appellant's case. Ms. Mandelson asserted that the hospital's policy regarding retention of cytology slides is to keep the slides for ten years; after that period of time, the slides are microwaved and removed by an outside company that comes to the hospital twice per year. Because the victim in this case was examined in 1989, it was not clearly erroneous for the hearing judge to conclude that the hospital no longer has the slides related to Appellant's case. We conclude that the facts of this case are analogous to the facts in Blake II. After we remanded the case to the Circuit Court in Blake I, the court held hearings during which it received testimony, documentary evidence, affidavits, and proffered information about the State's extensive efforts to locate the requested evidence. Blake II, 418 Md. at 450, 15 A.3d at 790. We held in Blake II that, based on the record, it [was] unreasonable to conclude that the evidence at issue ended up anywhere other than in the Evidence Control Unit [of the Police Department]. Blake II, 418 Md. at 461-62, 15 A.3d at 797. By conducting a reasonable search of the Evidence Control Unit, in addition to other law enforcement agencies, we held that the Circuit Court was not clearly erroneous in concluding that a reasonable search had been conducted by the State. Id. Similar to the circumstances in Blake II, the hearing judge in this case had substantial evidence before him to determine that the State conducted a reasonable search and satisfied its burden of persuasion that the evidence no longer exists. The judge was not clearly erroneous in concluding that the State searched for the scientific identification evidence from Appellant's case in every place where the evidence might reasonably be located and that the evidence was not present in any of those locations. With regard to Appellant's contention that the State is required to produce the protocols from the Sheriff's Office, we agree with the State's assertion that even if the protocols from the time of Appellant's conviction to the time he filed his Petition for DNA Testing were produced, they would only indicate that the requested scientific identification evidence was in the possession of the Sheriff's Office. In light of the evidence presented by the State detailing the extensive search of the Sheriff's Office that was conducted in connection with these post-trial matters, it was not clearly erroneous for the hearing judge to determine that the requested scientific identification evidence no longer exists, within the possession of the Sheriff's Office or any other law enforcement agency.