Court Opinion

ID: 9699639
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:43:17.679558+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:54.989584
License: Public Domain

RAKER, J.,
dissenting:
Unless this Court is prepared to state explicitly that the Court decides this case on Article 26 of the Maryland Declara*412tion of Rights and that the Court deviates from Fourth Amendment jurisprudence as explicated by the United States Supreme Court, the judgment of the Circuit Court on the Motion to Suppress evidence should be affirmed, based on Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 165 L.Ed.2d 56 (2006). See e.g., U.S. v. Acosta, 502 F.3d 54 (2nd Cir.2007) (applying Hudson v. Michigan, even though Hudson was decided after defendant was convicted and his case was on appeal). Hudson held that the exclusionary rule did not apply to Fourth Amendment knock-and-announce violations.
Notwithstanding our opinion in Kostelec v. State, 348 Md. 230, 703 A.2d 160 (1997), I do not believe that “the peculiar circumstances of a case” should be the source of an exclusionary rule, or that perfectly reliable evidence should be excluded merely because the State failed to argue a particular ground, particularly one based upon a Supreme Court decision that arose after the petition for certiorari was granted. A case by case determination that results in exclusion of evidence, without a bright line rule to be applied, such as a state exclusionary rule as a part of Article 26, serves no deterrent purpose. As Judge Moylan pointed out in State v. Savage, 170 Md.App. 149, 906 A.2d 1054 (2006):
“... Hudson v. Michigan reminds us that the exclusion of evidence is by no means an automatic sanction to be blithely taken for granted. The exclusion of evidence is branded as a sanction that exacts a heavy cost.
‘Suppression of evidence, however, has always been our last resort, not our first impulse. The exclusionary rule generates ‘substantial social costs, ’ United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 907, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984), which sometimes include setting the guilty free and the dangerous at large. We have therefore been ‘cautio[us] against expanding’ it, Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 166, 107 S.Ct. 515, 93 L.Ed.2d 473 (1986), and ‘have repeatedly emphasized that the rule’s ‘costly toll’ upon truth-seeking and law enforcement objectives presents a high obstacle for those urging [its] application, ’ Pennsyl*413vania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 364-365, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 141 L.Ed.2d 344 (1998).
[547 U.S. at 591] 126 S.Ct at 2163, 165 L.Ed.2d at 64 (emphasis supplied).”
Id. at 200-01, 906 A.2d at 1083.
Accordingly, I would affirm the Circuit Court’s ruling and hold that the motion to suppress was denied properly, albeit for different reasons than that stated by the Court of Special Appeals.