Court Opinion

ID: 9716156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:28:59.792058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:58:54.396130
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
filed the following concurring dissent, in which Brunb, C. J., concurred.
I concur in the dissent prepared by Judge Marbury but I deem it appropriate to add further observations.
The majority decides this case on a point (that the arrest was lawful because Sharpe had violated Code (1957), Art. 66-Sec. 97 — failure to exhibit license) that was not raised, considered or decided below, was not mentioned in either brief and was not referred to — or apparently even thought of — by the arresting officer, and then, it is clear to me, decides it wrongly.
The majority opinion suggests that refusal to obey a proper order of an officer “may” constitute an offense “particularly where there is profanity in the presence of others that may threaten a breach of the peace,” (which is so when a statute makes it so, but Maryland has no such statute) and then expressly — and understandably — avoids deciding that Sharpe was guilty of disorderly conduct. There was no evidence that profanity likely to threaten a breach of the peace was used in the presence of others.
Nor was there, taking the arresting officer’s version of the affair, evidence sufficient to convict one of violation of Art. 66 Sec. 97. When Sharpe was asked for his license, he took his wallet from his pocket and exhibited the license to the officer. It is not clear from the meagre record, but it well may be that the license was in a plastic “page” of the wallet, so that both front and back could be seen without its removal. The arresting officer’s testimony could so indicate. He said that Sharpe said “You can see it enough where it is,” and that he, the officer, “didn’t answer.” The officer has never said he could not sufficiently see the license while it was in the wallet. The majority says that the officer’s request that the license be removed from the wallet was “not unreasonable.” If this be assumed, as well as that Sharpe’s refusal to remove it was unreasonable, mere unreasonableness is not a crime. What is more to the point, *408the officer did not think that Sharpe had violated the inspection of licenses statute because it was only when Sharpe used the words “God damned” (in reference to the license) that the officer arrested him. He then immediately told Sharpe he was under arrest for disorderly conduct.
The arrest was illegal because Sharpe had not been guilty either of disorderly conduct, with which he was then charged, or of violation of Sec. 97 of Art. 66½, of which the majority of this Court, in effect, trying the case de novo for the second time, now find him guilty.
Since Sharpe was told he was under arrest for disorderly conduct, of which he was not guilty, his right to resist arrest was established; and the means availed of under the circumstances, including the subsequent profanity, were not beyond the permissible range, if the black letter right to resist illegal arrest is to be more than a paper or theoretical right and is to be recognized in practice.
The police have a difficult time in performing their onerous duties, and citizens should cooperate with them. Nevertheless, a police officer has no right to throw his weight around and require subservience to his authority just because he has it or to take out his irritation on the other driver because a car backs out of an alley in front of him (he was not charged with a traffic violation). Sharpe was foolish and boorish; and his reaction to being pushed around, as he saw it, should have been restrained, as should his use of profanity which was ill-advised, unattractive and an empty substitute for thought, as it usually is. In this case, it brought him only a severe beating by the two officers, arrest and conviction.
The officer’s impolitic conduct should not have produced Sharpe’s discourtesy or arrogance in return, but while discourtesy or arrogance to a policeman may infuriate him, and so are unwise to indulge in, they are not crimes which the policeman may translate into disorderly conduct in order to vent his annoyance by making an arrest.
I would reverse. Judge Bruñe has authorized me to say that he concurs in the views herein expressed.