Court Opinion

ID: 9694874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:58:50.355369+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:06.138889
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
MURPHY, J.,
which HARRELL and ADKINS, JJ., join.
I dissent from the holding that, because “Officer Russell never made a custodial arrest of the petitioner^] ... the marijuana seized from the petitioner’s pockets should have been suppressed.” In my opinion, because that marijuana was seized from his person during a search incident to a lawful “constitutional” arrest, Petitioner was not entitled to suppression on the ground that he was subjected to a “custodial” arrest more than two months after the date on which the seizure occurred.1
*130I agree with the motions court that Officer Russell “had probable cause for a search and arrest at the time he smelled the raw marijuana [emanating from Petitioner] and consequently that the [custodial] arrest was not made until later” did not invalidate the legality of the seizure. Because the motions court was not clearly erroneous in believing Officer Russell’s testimony that the odor of marijuana emanating from Petitioner’s person was “extremely strong,” this testimony established that Officer Russell had probable cause to believe that Petitioner was in possession of marijuana. Under these circumstances, there are two reasons why the seizure at issue did not violate Petitioner’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable government intrusion.
I.
First, it is of no consequence that Petitioner was not subjected to a “custodial” arrest until October 12, 2006. A “custodial” arrest occurs when “a known or suspected offender” is detained and taken into custody “for the purpose of prosecuting him [or her] for a crime.” Cornish v. State, 215 Md. 64, 67-68, 137 A.2d 170, 172 (1957). The defendant who is subjected to a “custodial” arrest is taken into custody regardless of whether any incriminating evidence is turned up during a search incident to that arrest. In State v. Evans, 352 Md. 496, 723 A.2d 423 (1999), however, while analyzing a forcible stop and search to which the Fourth Amendment was applicable — a “constitutional” arrest, which is distinguishable from a “custodial” arrest — this Court held that a “custodial” arrest is *131not the only lawful or valid arrest recognized by Maryland law. Id. at 515, 728 A.2d at 432.
In Evans, while rejecting the argument that contraband lawfully seized pursuant to a search of the defendant’s person must be suppressed if — at the time of the search — the intent of the officer conducting the search was to (1) release the defendant when the search was completed, (2) file charges against the defendant only if the search turned up incriminating evidence, and (3) file any charges at a much later date, this Court stated:
There is no question in these cases that Evans and Sykes-Bey were seized by the police prior to the search which uncovered the evidence that Respondents sought to suppress. Respondents argue, however, and the Court of Special Appeals agreed, that there was required on the part of the officers an intent to prosecute, which intent did not exist because the police did not intend to formally charge either Evans or Sykes-Bey until a date much later than the initial detention and search incident thereto. Neither Evans nor Sykes-Bey argues that the police wholly lacked the intent to prosecute; their argument is solely that the intent to prosecute had to be manifested contemporaneously with the initial seizure.
We hold that for a lawful arrest in Maryland for the commission of a felony, a police officer must have probable cause to believe the suspect has committed a felony and must either physically restrain the suspect or otherwise subject the suspect to his or her custody and control. We reject Respondents’ argument that failure of the police to initiate the formal criminal charging process at or near the time of the initial detention precludes a valid arrest under Maryland law. This State’s law of arrest extends no talismanic significance to the act or intention of initiating the formal booking process. On the contrary, formally charging a suspect is not a sine qua non to a lawful arrest in Maryland.
*132This Court and the Court of Special Appeals have often recognized the inherent danger of drug enforcement, such that an investigatory stop based upon a reasonable suspicion that a suspect is engaged in drug dealing “can furnish the dangerousness justifying a frisk” for weapons. Simpler v. State, 318 Md. 311, 318, 568 A.2d 22, 25 (1990). See State v. Blackman, 94 Md.App. 284, 299, 617 A.2d 619, 626 (1992); Aguilar v. State, 88 Md.App. 276, 283, 594 A.2d 1167, 1170-71 (1991). Myriad other courts have likewise held that the justification to conduct a weapons frisk of a person stopped for suspected involvement in drug trafficking can flow directly from the nature of the criminal activity itself. See, e.g., United States v. Rivers, 121 F.3d 1043, 1045 (7th Cir.1997); United States v. Robinson, 119 F.3d 663, 667 (8th Cir.1997); United States v. McMurray, 34 F.3d 1405, 1410 (8th Cir.1994); United States v. Cruz, 909 F.2d 422, 424 (11th Cir.1989); United States v. Anderson, 859 F.2d 1171, 1177 (3rd Cir.1988). Where the officers who arrested each Respondent Had probable cause to beHeve the two were trafficking in drugs, we can neither dismiss nor diminish the safety concerns of those officers. While admittedly not transporting the arrestees to the station house, the officers were nonetheless engaged in more than a routine investigatory stop. The arrest, identification, evidence procurement and recordation procedures for the undercover narcotics operations took some time to effect and consequently placed the officers at significant risk should they not have immediately and fully searched each arrested suspect.
In addition to officer safety, the threat to valuable evidence was a substantial concern in the instant cases. Even though Evans and Sykes-Bey may have perceived themselves as not having been arrested because they were not carted off to the police station, it is indisputable that had they simply been released after their identification was secured, the police would have lost valuable evidence of the crimes for which Respondents were arrested, i.e. the marked money and additional drugs. See 3 Wayne R. *133Lafave, Search and Seizure § 5.2(h), at 99 (3d ed. 1996) (A search based on the need to procure evidence “is no less lawful when incident to an arrest not of a ‘custodial’ nature.”). The State’s prosecution of Evans and Sykes-Bey for the crimes at issue, without recovery of the marked money and additional drugs, would certainly have been weakened significantly. Therefore, because of the officers’ legitimate concerns both for their own safety and for the preservation of evidence, we hold that the searches incident to Respondents’ valid arrests satisfied the requirements of the Fourth Amendment and were constitutional.
Id. at 514-15, 522-24, 723 A.2d at 432, 435-436. (Emphasis supplied).
Rather than overrule Evans “to the extent that it is inconsistent” with the majority opinion in the case at bar, I would reaffirm what this Court stated in that case, and therefore affirm the ruling of the motions court on the ground that the marijuana seized from Petitioner’s person was seized during a search incident to a valid “constitutional” arrest based upon probable cause.
II.
Second, the marijuana was seized during a search that complied with the requirements of Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 93 S.Ct. 2000, 36 L.Ed.2d 900 (1973), in which the United States Supreme Court recognized an exception to the warrant requirement for searches for “highly evanescent evidence” when the facts establish (1) “the existence of probable cause” and (2) “the ready destructibility of the evidence.” Id. at 296, 93 S.Ct. at 2004. In Commonwealth v. Washington, 449 Mass. 476, 869 N.E.2d 605 (2007), while affirming the denial of a motion to suppress incriminating evidence seized from defendants who were not arrested at the time of the search, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts stated:
In general, a police search or seizure must be supported by a valid warrant----However, it is well settled that, in *134certain “exigent circumstances” that make obtaining a warrant impracticable, ... a search or seizure may be justified by probable cause____One such exigent circumstance is the threat of imminent loss of evidence. See generally Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 296, 93 S.Ct. 2000, 36 L.Ed.2d 900 (1973); Commonwealth v. Skea, 18 Mass.App.Ct. 685, 697, 470 N.E.2d 385 (1984). Here, because there was probable cause to arrest the defendants for participating in an illegal drug transaction, and crucial evidence of that transaction would have been lost if the police had not searched immediately, the search of the defendants was justified.
The motion judge determined that, at the time the defendants were stopped, the troopers had probable cause to arrest them for trafficking in cocaine. We agree.
Because there was probable cause to arrest, the motion judge upheld the search as one incident to an arrest. The problem with this analysis is that the defendants were not arrested at the time of the search or at a time “substantially contemporaneous” thereto. New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 465, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981).... The judge noted correctly that a suspect need not be formally under arrest at the precise moment of a search incident to an arrest; the search may precede the formal arrest so long as probable cause exists independent of the results of the search____However, the search and the arrest still must be roughly contemporaneous.
We may affirm the denial of a motion to suppress on any ground supported by the record, ... and in this case, the search was amply justified by probable cause and exigent circumstances. In Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 295-296, 93 S.Ct. 2000, 36 L.Ed.2d 900 (1973), the United States Supreme Court recognized that imminent loss of evidence presents exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless search or seizure. In that case, the defendant had gone to the police in connection with the strangulation murder of his *135wife. Id. at 292, 93 S.Ct. 2000. It was undisputed that the police had probable cause to arrest him. Id. at 293, 93 S.Ct. 2000. However, without a formal arrest or a warrant, and over the defendant’s protest, the police took scrapings from the defendant’s fingernails that yielded incriminating physical evidence. Id. at 292, 93 S.Ct. 2000. In upholding the search, the court held that because the police had probable cause to arrest, and because the evidence under the defendant’s fingernails would have been lost or destroyed if the police had delayed, the circumstances justified a limited search “to preserve the highly evanescent evidence.” Id. at 296, 93 S.Ct. 2000.
This exception was applied by the Appeals Court in a carefully reasoned opinion in Commonwealth v. Skea, 18 Mass.App.Ct. 685, 470 N.E.2d 385 (1984). There, the police had probable cause to arrest the defendant for possession of marijuana, but did not do so. Id. at 689-690, 470 N.E.2d 385. Instead, they searched the defendant’s person for more marijuana or other controlled substances, and found a package of diamonds that ultimately were determined to be stolen. Id. at 686-687, 470 N.E.2d 385. The court observed that any further marijuana or other drugs on the defendant’s person would most likely have been lost or destroyed before a warrant could be obtained. Id. at 691-692, 470 N.E.2d 385. Because there was probable cause to arrest and the “police action literally [had to] be ‘now or never’ to preserve the evidence of the crime,” id. at 694, 470 N.E.2d 385, quoting Roaden v. Kentucky, 413 U.S. 496, 505, 93 S.Ct. 2796, 37 L.Ed.2d 757 (1973), the court upheld the search under the Cupp rationale. Id. at 697-698, 470 N.E.2d 385.
We recognize that it is possible to read the Cupp decision more narrowly than the Appeals Court did in its Skea opinion — for instance, as applying only to evidence as “highly evanescent” as the fingernail scrapings in the Cupp case, which were subject to “physical dissipation.” People v. Evans, 43 N.Y.2d 160, 167, 371 N.E.2d 528, 400 N.Y.S.2d 810 (1977). Yet we agree with the Skea court that there is no principled reason not to apply the same rationale to any *136evidence likely to vanish before a warrant is obtained. See Commonwealth v. Skea, supra at 697-698, 470 N.E.2d 385; 3 W.R. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 5.4(b), at 195 (4th ed. 2004) (“At a minimum, Cupp should be applied so as to permit, when there are grounds upon which a formal arrest could have been made, a more extensive search for any evidence reasonably believed to be in the possession of the suspect which might be unavailable later”). We note that the Skea decision has been cited by the Appeals Court for the proposition that the presence of evidence likely to vanish creates exigent circumstances justifying a warrant-less search or seizure upon probable cause. Similarly, most other jurisdictions to consider the question have taken at least as broad an interpretation of the exception in Cupp.
In the present case, the police had probable cause to arrest the defendants, having good reason to suspect that they had just participated in an undercover drug purchase. They likewise had reason to believe that the defendants were now carrying the money from this transaction, possibly the only physical evidence of their guilt. Given the fungible nature of money in general, and the tendency of illicit money to change hands quickly, this evidence would never be found if the police did not search immediately. In short, “the police officers’ choices were limited to two: search now or never.” Commonwealth v. Skea, supra at 699, 470 N.E.2d 385. Accordingly, the police pat frisked the defendant and found an object in his pocket that turned out to be the very wad of bills they anticipated finding. This was just the type of search upheld in the Cupp and Skea cases.
869 N.E.2d at 611-614 (footnotes and some citations omitted). I agree with the Massachusetts appellate courts’ interpretation of Cupp.
On the occasion at issue in the case at bar, Officer Russell’s choices were similarly “limited to two: search [Petitioner] now or never.” The contraband seized pursuant to that search should not be suppressed.
*137Judge Harrell and Judge Adkins have authorized me to state that they join this dissenting opinion.

. If a substantially contemporaneous “custodial” arrest is a condition precedent to the introduction of contraband seized during a lawful *130warrantless search, the officer who seizes a suspected controlled dangerous substance under these circumstances will never be able to exercise the option of (1) releasing the defendant pending a scientific test of the suspected contraband, and (2) upon confirmation that what was seized is indeed contraband, presenting an APPLICATION FOR STATEMENT OF CHARGES to a District Court Commissioner, who is required by Md. Rule 4-212 to decide whether a warrant should be issued for tire defendant’s arrest or whether "a summons shall be issued to the defendant[.]” Busy law enforcement officers — and the citizens who need them "on the street” — should not be denied that option.