Court Opinion

ID: 9759340
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:13:31.296058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:01.286126
License: Public Domain

BELL, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
George Junior Spry, the petitioner, was a part of a gathering of approximately forty to fifty people gathered at the Garden Court Apartments in Federalsburg, who, according to the police, in the aftermath of a fight or an argument, were loitering, “standing in the middle of the roadway and the parking lot, screaming, yelling loud, carrying on----” The police ordered the crowd to disperse, an order that many in the crowd, including the petitioner, did not immediately heed. The petitioner’s refusal apparently caught the police’s attention, especially because it was not a silent refusal or a dawdling, gradual refusal. It was, instead, an emphatic and vocal one. As described, and emphasized, by Officer Jester, one of the police officers on the scene and the arresting officer, “[h]e stood his ground firmly, like he’s not going anywhere,” standing in front of him, eyeballing him, glaring at him, “like he was looking through [him],” “defiantly refusing to move and to leave the area,” and his adamance was punctuated and emphasized by profanity, especially the word, “fuck”: “Fuck you bitch,” “fuck the police, nobody’s scared of you fucking cops or something like fuck you all.” Despite his defiance and adamance about not leaving, after being ordered to do so four or five times over a five to ten minute time span, the petitioner left the area, thus complying with the police order. That was not the end of the matter, however.
The following day, the police obtained a warrant charging the petitioner with, inter alia,1 willful failure to obey a lawful order of a law enforcement officer made to prevent a distur*698bance of the peace, pursuant to Maryland Code (2002) § 10-201(c)(3) of the Criminal Law Article.2 The petitioner was convicted of that offense after a jury trial and sentenced. In sending the case to the jury, the trial court opined: “a snarling compliance twenty minutes after an order is given does not negate nineteen antecedent minutes of non-compliance.” In affirming the conviction, the majority makes a similar statement:
“To squelch the disturbance, [the officer] ordered those present, who did not live at the Garden Court Apartments, to disperse, which included Spry. Instead, Spry refused to leave, acted menacingly and loudly. Although Spry eventually left, it was at the insistence of a colleague and after Officer Jester had repeated his order at least four or five times. Spry’s noncompliance until that point is not negated by his eventual and untimely decision to leave.”
Spry v. State, 396 Md. 682, 696, 914 A.2d 1182, 1190 (2007).
The offense of which the petitioner was convicted is willfully failing to obey a law enforcement officer’s reasonable and lawful order made to prevent a disturbance to the public peace. Because the object of the statute is the prevention of a disturbance of the public peace, when the arrest is made the threat to the public peace must yet exist, and the willful failure to obey the order made in pursuance of abating it must also persist. Under this statute, there is no offense committed if the defendant complies and if there is no threat to the public peace. Here, the petitioner complied with the officer’s order, albeit quite belatedly. The statute does not provide a temporal or numerical standard by which a defendant’s refusal or compliance is be judged. Nor is there a provision requiring that the compliance be cheerful, willful or even the opposite of “snarling,” or that it must be the defendant’s alone; a third person’s persuasive influence on a defendant is not singled out *699as a factor to be discounted when a defendant is tardy complying with the order to leave the area, but leaves on that third person’s “insistence.” The fact is that when a defendant leaves, even if after multiple orders from the police, and even if at the insistence of a friend or done grudgingly or cheerfully, the defendant complies with the order and the threat to the public peace is abated.3
The majority rejects this common sense approach, suggesting that whether to arrest, and when, is matter of the police officer’s discretion.4 That discretion, it reminds us, “is ‘basic to the police power function of government! ] ... and ... critical to a law enforcement officer’s ability to carry out his duties.’ ” 396 Md. at 693, 914 A.2d at 1189, quoting Askburn v. Anne Arundel County, 306 Md. 617, 633, 510 A.2d 1078, 1086 (1986), quoting Everton v. Willard, 468 So.2d 936, 938 (Fla.1985). I do not disagree with the proposition that discretion to arrest is critical to the police function. I do not agree, however, that the issue is presented in this case. It simply does not apply where the conduct that constitutes the offense consists of the defendant’s failure to respond to a police order. The police have the authority, discretion, to arrest so long as the defendant’s conduct and their order are at variance—so *700long as the defendant does not conform his conduct to that the police require. When, however, the defendant conforms his conduct to what is being required by the police there really is no longer any discretion, there being no longer any offense to be violated.
It may well be that, during his refusal and perhaps the refusal itself, the petitioner may have committed some other criminal offense—he was charged with, but acquitted of, several—that, however, is not an issue to be decided here. A § 10-201(c)(3) conviction will not lie, and should not lie, to vindicate the officer’s apprehension or dignity. Wfiiat is quite evident on this record is the exception that the police took to the language that the petitioner used in stating his refusal to leave and the attitude, lack of respect, if you will, for the officers, rather than for authority, that he displayed toward them. The use of profanity and the failure to show what an officer may regard as proper respect are not the elements of the offense with which the petitioner was charged and, consequently, can not, and should not, be the basis for his conviction.
I dissent.

. The petitioner also was charged with riot, obstructing and hindering a police officer, disorderly conduct, Maryland Code (2002) § 10-201(c)(2), and a number of disturbing the peace offenses: §§ 10-201(c)(1); 10-201(c)(4); 10-201(c)(5). He was either acquitted or the State nolle prossed each of these offenses.

. Maryland Code (2002) § 10-201(c)(3) of the Criminal Law Article provides: "A person may not willfully fail to obey a reasonable and lawful order that a law enforcement officer makes to prevent a disturbance to the public peace.”

. The statute is clear in its requirements, a police order, reasonable and lawful, aimed at preventing a disturbance of the public peace and a willful failure to comply with that order. To reach the result the majority does, one has to read into the statute a further requirement, that there can be gradations of willful refusal and, if not a temporal factor, an officer tolerance one. 'This would suggest that the statute is ambiguous. Ambiguity, however, implicates the rule of lenity, the result of which is an interpretation favorable to the petitioner.

. The majority cites, in support of its assertion that "we have never held that a person must be arrested after the first disobedience rather than after repeated refusal to move in order for a conviction to be sustained,” 396 Md. at 693, 914 A.2d at 1188, Polk v. State, 378 Md. 1, 17-18, 835 A.2d 575, 585 (2003); Drews v. State, 224 Md. 186, 193, 167 A.2d 341, 344 (1961). That may be so, but it also is true that, until today, we had not held that a person who ultimately complied with a police order after multiple failures to do so, could be charged under § 10—201(c)(3). Today’s holding certainly does not follow from Polk and Drews. In both those cases, the conduct was on-going; it had not ceased.