Court Opinion

ID: 9649915
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:13:59.557272+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:19:45.257930
License: Public Domain

ADKINS, Judge,
dissenting.
In Buie v. Maryland, 494 U.S.-,-, 110 S.Ct. 1093, 1096, 108 L.Ed.2d 276, 283 (1990) the State importuned the Supreme Court to construe the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution as permitting a warrantless “protective sweep whenever [police] make an in-home arrest for a violent crime.” The Supreme Court rejected that request. 494 U.S. at - n. 2, 110 S.Ct. at 1098 n. 2, 108 L.Ed.2d at 286 n. 2. Because a majority of this Court now has given the State what the Supreme Court refused it, I respectfully dissent.
To begin with, I am distinctly uncomfortable with the majority’s conclusion that the reasonable suspicion necessary to justify a protective sweep may be based on a purely objective standard. See at p. 703. That sweeping holding would validate a sweep executed in the most cynical bad faith, provided only that sufficient facts existed to satisfy the majority’s rather liberal notions of objective reasonableness. But I shall not belabor that point, for in my view this *707case does not require the Court to address that question. If subjectively held articulable suspicion is required, in addition to suspicion that is objectively reasonable, the sweep here was clearly impermissible. The majority does not argue to the contrary. But even if only an objective test is called for, the facts here do not meet it. I shall rehearse the pertinent facts in somewhat more detail than the majority, keeping in mind that what the police officers said they subjectively believed has considerable bearing on what a reasonable officer’s objective beliefs might be, under the circumstances.
I.
Jerome Buie and an accomplice, Lloyd Allen, were allegedly involved in an armed robbery of a Godfather’s Pizza store on 3 February 1986. The Prince George’s County Police Department obtained arrest warrants for the two men. The warrant for Buie’s arrest was issued on 3 February, and the police began surveillance of Buie’s home that day. The police arrested Buie on 5 February 1986, between 3:00 and 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Police Corporal Rozar testified that when the police arrested Buie they had been working surveillance at Buie’s home “for about three days,” “trying to locate a suspect in a robbery.”
The day of the arrest Detective Frolich had one of the police secretaries call Buie’s home and ask for him. A female answered the phone, but a man came to the phone when the caller requested Buie. Following the call seven officers went to Buie’s house to execute the arrest warrant for Buie. Detective Frolich had that arrest warrant, but none of the officers had a search warrant.
When Corporal Rozar arrived at the scene two officers were outside and four officers were already in the house. Rozar testified that there was a female on the front steps. When Rozar entered the house one officer informed him that he had called into the basement but received no response, the officers had cleared only the main floor, and *708that he was about to check the upstairs. Corporal Rozar offered to “freeze” the basement; he posted himself at the top of the basement stairs with a revolver drawn, so that if someone was in the basement he or she could not come up behind the officers. Rozar twice “yelled down to the basement for anyone there to come out.” When a voice from below asked who was calling, the officer said it was the police and directed the man to come up the steps with his hands showing. Buie, for it was he, responded to that request peacefully.
Rozar put Buie up against the hallway wall and searched him, but he did not discover any weapons or other significant items on him. The officer did not search the immediate area at that time, nor did he search any part of the house. When asked by the defense attorney whether he was “worried about there being any danger or anything like that,” he responded in the negative.
Detective Frolich testified that after he saw Rozar put the handcuffs on Buie, Frolich entered the basement. In the basement he found a red running suit matching the description given by the robbery victim of a suit worn by one of the robbers. The suit was “in a drying position across a stack of clothing.” When Buie’s attorney questioned Frolich about what he was looking for when he entered the basement, he answered that he “just went down there in case there was someone else in the basement.”
Frolich added that he thought there were “two young girls” sitting in front of the house when he entered the first floor. When asked whether he had “any reason to believe that anyone else was in the house besides Mr. Buie” he responded that, “[h]e had no idea who lived there.” Frolich testified that he knew a man and a girl were at the house at the time his secretary called to ask for Buie.
II.
The State points out that the Supreme Court has recently stated that in Terry -stop cases articulable suspicion means *709only that “ ‘some minimal level of objective justification’ ” is necessary to make the stop. United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1,-, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 1585, 104 L.Ed.2d 1, 10 (1989) (quoting INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 217, 104 S.Ct. 1758, 1763, 80 L.Ed.2d 247, 232 (1984)). The Court also noted in Sokolow, however, that “[t]he officer, of course, must be able to articulate something more than an ‘inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch.’ ” 490 U.S. at-, 109 S.Ct. at 1585, 104 L.Ed.2d at 10 (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 27, 88 S.Ct. at 1883, 20 L.Ed.2d at 909). The court must consider all of the circumstances together in determining whether the police had reason to believe that danger was lurking. Sokolow, 490 U.S. at-, 109 S.Ct. at 1585, 104 L.Ed.2d at 10. The burden is on the State at the suppression hearing to establish that a protective sweep was warranted. See Simpler v. State, 318 Md. 311, 322, 568 A.2d 22, 27 (1990); Stackhouse v. State, 298 Md. 203, 220, 468 A.2d 333, 342 (1983).
A review of the facts established at the suppression hearing leads me to the conclusion that the State failed to meet its burden. Essentially all that the State showed at the suppression hearing was that Buie allegedly committed an armed robbery of a Godfather’s Pizza, that Buie had a male accomplice, that a female answered the phone when Detective Frolich’s secretary called Buie’s home, and that Detective Frolich “didn’t know who lived in the house.” It appears that the police were operating on “hunches” and nothing more.
We know nothing of Buie’s alleged accomplice, Lloyd Allen, except his name and that an arrest warrant was issued for him on 3 February. From the information elicited at the suppression hearing, we do not know whether Allen had been arrested or was still at large. The testimony at the hearing does not give any indication that Allen was seen entering or leaving Buie’s home during the three day surveillance period. In fact there was no testimony that placed Allen at Buie’s home at any time prior to Buie’s arrest. Neither is there information as to what type of *710relationship.Buie and Allen had; that is, we do not know whether they were long-time friends who spent a great deal of time together or whether the only time they, were ever together was the night of the alleged robbery.
The inconclusive surveillance (inconclusive, at least, on this record) does not help the State. It surely does not permit the inference that the police thought Allen was at Buie’s house, for if they had believed that they would have brought along his arrest warrant as well as Buie’s. The record does not show that they possessed Allen’s warrant. At best, we may infer that this surveillance indicated Buie’s probable presence at his residence.
As for the robbery being an “armed robbery”-, we certainly do not know whether the weapon used for the robbery was in . the house, or whether any weapons were in the house. We do not know whether Allen or Buie carried the weapon the night of the robbery, or whether either of them habitually carried a weapon.1 Even if there was a weapon in the house, after his arrest Buie no longer had .access to it, so. there would have to be some showing that someone who posed a danger to the police had access to . a weapon.
The- State argues that the female who answered the phone when Detective Frolich’s secretary called was “a potentially dangerous” individual. Yet there is nothing to show who this female was, how old she was, or her relationship, if any, to Buie. It is possible that she was one of the “two girls” that the police saw on the porch .at the time they entered Buie’s house. There is nothing to suggest that these “girls,” or the unidentified female, were actually or even potentially dangerous.
*711The majority highlights the fact that Buie did not come out of the basement when Rozar first called into the basement; instead Rozar called out several times before Buie responded. This, it is said, indicates that Buie was hiding and that someone else might have been hiding, too. This supposed delay in response hardly gives rise to the reasonable belief that a dangerous individual was in the basement. We do not know how rapidly Rozar called out, or how much time elapsed before Buie answered. We do know that when Buie did respond he peacefully ascended the stairs, offering no resistance at all.
We know, too, that the situation at Buie’s home at the time in question did not cause Corporal Rozar to have any apprehension of danger. And, when asked whether he had reason to believe someone besides Buie was in the house Detective Frolich said he “had no idea who lived” at Buie’s home. Thus, he could scarcely have had knowledge or even a reasonable suspicion of the presence of any dangerous person there. What is more, if there was a reasonable likelihood that a dangerous individual occupied the basement, a reasonable police officer who so believed might well have “frozen” the area (as did Corporal Rozar) until the police and their prisoner had departed, rather than descending into the zone of danger. See Buie, 494 U.S. at-, 110 S.Ct. at 1100, 108 L.Ed.2d at 288 (Stevens, J., concurring).
Finally, except for the fact that stairs led down from the first floor of Buie’s home to the basement, we have little information about the layout of the dwelling. We cannot tell, for example, if there were other means of ingress to and egress from the basement in addition to the stairs, or whether the basement contained windows from which an assault upon officers on the sidewalk might be made.
A sampling of cases involving protective sweeps does not support the validity of the protective sweep that the police performed in Buie’s basement.
In several of these cases the circumstances demonstrated a need for the police to perform a protective sweep. In *712United, States v. Baker, 577 F.2d 1147 (4th Cir.1978), the Court upheld a protective sweep of a house following the arrest of a drug suspect and his cohort outside the former’s home. The police had information from the neighbors that one of the arrested men had been seen at the house the previous day and he was armed at that time. Id. at 1152. The police also had knowledge of a confederate associated with the man who had been armed, and information that the confederate was with the arrested man the day before. Id.
In another drug case, United States v. Gardner, 627 F.2d 906 (9th Cir.1980), the court gave several reasons for upholding the warrantless search of the house where the drug suspects were apprehended. One agent had seen weapons during an initial search of the house, making it reasonable for him to conclude that violence could potentially erupt. Id. at 911. Officers who had the house under surveillance had seen one of the suspects disappear from the house and reappear on the street some distance from the house. Id. The lower court found that it was quite possible for someone to enter the house from the back undetected. These facts gave the officers reason to believe that undetected access to or exit from the house was possible.
In United States v. Bernard, 757 F.2d 1439 (4th Cir. 1985), the court upheld the protective search of a house during the seizure of some marijuana fields. Facts supporting this result included: the officers’ recent experiences with dangerous booby traps when securing marijuana fields; the officers had seen another person from their helicopter surveillance and when they questioned the suspects on the ground about that missing person they received answers inconsistent with what they had seen; the commercial nature and value of the crop; evidence of recently harvested marijuana plants; and the officers’ encounter with a Doberman Pincher in the immediate area. Id. at 1443.
In another drug-related case, United States v. Castillo, 866 F.2d 1071 (9th Cir.1988), a protective sweep was upheld because the knowledge that the narcotics officers had at the *713time of the search justified it. The officers testified that it was their experience that cocaine dealers “had a tendency to carry weapons and would resort to violence.” Id. at 1080. One of the suspect’s co-conspirators had hired an assassin to kill one of the undercover agents if it turned out that he was a law-enforcement officer. Id. at 1081. The arresting officers were also aware that several persons were part of the suspect’s conspiracy. Id.
This Court recently addressed the adequacy of information necessary to sustain a Terry stop. In Quince v. State, 319 Md. 430, 572 A.2d 1086 (1990), we held that a gun recovered during a “pat-down” search of the defendant during the stop, was admissible evidence. The arresting officer had been told to respond to a complaint from a dining hall manager that there was a man with a gun on the premises. Id. at 434, 572 A.2d at 1088. The manager “knew” the man carried a gun because other employees told him so. Id. at 432, 572 A.2d at 1087. When the officer spotted the defendant at a bus stop down the road he was able to match up several identifying characteristics reported by the complainant. Id. at 435, 572 A.2d at 1088-1089. There was enough articulable suspicion to support the stop and subsequent frisk.
In each of these cases, there were relatively hard and specific facts from which a reasonable police officer could have inferred the presence of danger sufficient to justify a protective sweep, or a stop-and-frisk. The record before the Court in this case is barren of facts of this kind. We are asked to permit the sweep based on speculation, “hunches,” and “inchoate and unparticularized suspicion.” But this, as Buie itself teaches, cannot be done. 494 U.S. at-, 110 S.Ct. at 1097, 108 L.Ed.2d at 285.
What the State’s argument boils down to is that it is possible that dangerous people may be in an arrestee’s home when the police come to arrest him or her, and so protective sweeps always should be allowed. The premise is correct — many things are theoretically possible. But to allow a protective sweep based on that notion is to allow a *714protective sweep whenever the police go to a home to make an arrest. As I have already pointed out, the Supreme Court’s Buie rejects that proposition.
I would hold that the record in this case fails to show that a reasonable police officer could have possessed a reasonable belief, based on specific and articulable facts, that Buie’s house harbored an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene. The protective sweep violated the fourth amendment. The red running suit seized as a result thereof should have been suppressed. The judgment of the Court of Special Appeals should be reversed.
ELDRIDGE and COLE, JJ., join in this dissent.

. The majority’s argument that Detective Frolich knew that Buie used a gun in the robbery is based upon information that was not presented to or considered by the court at the suppression hearing, and is thus unavailable for use here. Trusty v. State, 308 Md. 658, 670, 521 A.2d 749, 755 (1988). But even if it were permissible to assume that Frolich knew Buie had had a gun several days earlier at the robbery, there was nothing but "hunch" to suggest that with Buie in custody, there was any potentially dangerous person in the house.