Bordley v. State

• Decision Date: 27 June 2012
• Docket Number: Sept. Term, 2010.,No. 0464,0464
• Citation: 205 Md.App. 692,46 A.3d 1204
• Parties: Charles Vernon BORDLEY v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

205 Md.App. 692

46 A.3d 1204

Charles Vernon BORDLEY

v.STATE of Maryland.

No. 0464, Sept. Term, 2010.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

June 27, 2012.

Celia Anderson Davis (Paul B. DeWolfe, Public Defender, on the brief), Baltimore, MD, for Appellant.

Todd W. Hesel (Douglas F. Gansler, Atty. Gen., on the brief), Baltimore, MD, for Appellee.

Panel: KRAUSER, C.J., MATRICCIANI, J. FREDERICK SHARER, (Retired, Specially Assigned), JJ.

SHARER, J.

The prosecution of Charles Vernon Bordley, appellant, stemmed from the discovery of controlled dangerous substances (“CDS”) and paraphernalia during a warrantless entry by police into an unoccupied and locked-out hotel room in Grasonville, Queen Anne's County, which had been rented by appellant.

After denying appellant's motion to suppress the evidence seized from Room 118, and statements made by him thereafter, the Circuit Court for Queen Anne's County, in a bench trial (Hon. Thomas G. Ross), convicted appellant of nine drug-related offenses.¹ Appellant challenges those convictions, raising the following issues for our review, which we quote:

I. Did the court err by denying Appellant's motion to suppress evidence?

II. Was the evidence legally insufficient to sustain Appellant's convictions?

We have found no Maryland precedent addressing the constitutionality of a police officer's warrantless entry of a locked-out hotel room at the request of the hotel staff. Nor have we been directed to a case deciding whether hotel management may consent to a warrantless entry and search of a room that it locked out for security reasons involving someone other than the registered guest. Applying Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, we conclude that the circuit court did not err in denying appellant's motion to suppress because the hotel asserted control over the room for valid and legitimate security reasons after appellant advised that he was no longer occupying it, so that appellant did not have a subjective expectation of privacy and the hotel could consent to the warrantless entry and search. In addition, we conclude that there was sufficient evidence to establish that appellant constructively possessed the CDS and paraphernalia found in his hotel room, and therefore to convict him of possession, possession with intent to distribute, and conspiracy offenses based on such possession.

To develop the factual history, we shall separately review the records of the suppression hearing and the trial.

FACTS and LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

Before trial, appellant moved to suppress the tangible evidence seized from Room 118 as well as statements made by him to police. The circuit court denied that motion and then convicted appellant based on such evidence.

Suppression Hearing

Appellant testified in support of his motion and also presented the testimony of his mother, who was the night auditor on duty at the Kent Island area Sleep Inn on August 31–September 1, 2009. Barbara Bordley recounted that while she was alone at the front desk that evening, a short African American man whom she had never seen before came into the hotel talking on a cell phone and “was looking ... around, ... surveying the property.” When she offered help, the man asked, “ ‘May I go to my room?’ ” Thinking that was unusual for a hotel guest, Ms. Bordley asked his name so she could check it against the list of registered guests. In response, the man “just walked out the door” back into the parking lot.

Because she “was a little uncomfortable,” Ms. Bordley “locked the door and ... started looking at the video monitor.” She observed the same man walk around to the back door, and shortly thereafter she saw him inside the hotel in the company of a “real tall person.” The two men “were up and down the hallway” until they finally went into a room. Although Ms. Bordley could not see the specific room, she knew it had to be one of “two or three rooms that are ... blocked together.” She “looked at the in house list,” which identified “who's in the hotel ... by room number.” According to Ms. Bordley, “in that area there were several vacant rooms and then there was room # 118 which was the room that was in [her] son's name.”

Ms. Bordley testified that she knew that “room # 118 [was] occupied” but that her son “wasn't in the room because [she] left him home” with his daughter when she left for work that evening.² After observing the two men in the hallway, Ms. Bordley called home and talked with appellant, telling him, “now I don't know whether it's your room or what but there is activity in the hallway and I'm going to lock out the room.”

She continued, “In the meantime, these guys were back up and down in the hallway” and eventually “went out the back door[.]” At that point, Ms. Bordley telephoned the hotel owner, because she “was afraid” that the hotel was “going to be robbed.” According to Ms. Bordley, the owner “said that if at any time you are feeling uncomfortable, call the police, which is normal.” But Ms. Bordley did not do so right away. Instead, while the two men were outside, she made a new key card and put it in the door lock, thereby invalidating the key cards that previously had been issued to appellant so that they would no longer open Room 118 or the back door to the hotel.

Unable to enter the back door, the two men in the parking lot returned to the front door and “starting beating on the glass[.]” Ms. Bordley again called the owner, who reiterated his advice to use her discretion and “to call the police if she was uncomfortable.” She called 911, asking “would [police] secure the ... hotel parking lot because there was unusual traffic in the parking lot at that point.” She then hid under a desk in the office until the police arrived.

Two police officers responded and reported that there was no one in the parking lot. Ms. Bordley recounted to them the events that prompted her to call 911. She told them that she believed the two men had gone into Room 118, “[b]ased on the fact that there were no occupancies in and around that same area where these two men were walking.” She claimed that she only “asked [the officers] to secure the parking lot ... and the hallway” and denied telling the officers that “room 118 wasn't to have anyone in it because it was only rented for one day,” or asking them to enter the room and clear anyone out “because no one was allowed to be in the room.” Differing from the officers' testimony, Ms. Bordley insisted that she told the officers that the room was rented, and that they went to the room then “came back and asked for a key,” which she provided.

Appellant testified that he rented Room 118 at the Sleep Inn for the nights of August 30 and 31, 2009. He explained that he was home with his daughter on the evening of August 31, until his “distraught” mother “called the house between like 11:00 and 12 o'clock.” As a result of her call, appellant phoned a relative to come stay with his daughter, and he went to the Sleep Inn with his friend Sidney Roy, arriving about 45 minutes after his mother called. According to appellant's account, he and Roy went into the hotel through the back door and proceeded down the hall toward Room 118 because Ms. Bordley told him that he “needed to take care of” his room due to “the activity there.” Police officers stopped them in the hallway, saying that they “fit the description” of the two men seen by Ms. Bordley.

Appellant explained that he was “letting other people use” the room, that those people had both of the room keys that had been issued to him, that he never entered the room, and that he did not “know what was in the room.” In addition, he denied telling his mother that there was not supposed to be anyone in the room and denied that after she called him, he came to the hotel “to correct ... drug activity in there[.]”

Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Deputy Christopher Schwink testified that Ms. Bordley told him and Deputy Jason Rickard “that there was some gentlem[e]n trying to gain access to the hotel through the rear entry door, and that she had seen them going in and out of room 118 earlier in the evening and nobody was suppose[d] to be in that room because it was not paid for.” The officers knocked on the door of Room 118 and got no answer. According to Schwink, Ms. Bordley then “made a copy of the room key” and “[t]old [them] to go in and make sure nobody was in the room. If anybody was in the room, they were to leave, because the room was not paid for.”

Schwink said that the officers found no one in the room, but “[a]s soon as [they] entered the room” they “found contraband laying throughout the room.” On the top of the dresser in plain view were what Schwink, based on his experience and training, believed to be “marijuana, cocaine, heroin, smoking devices, scales and bags.” Specifically, he “saw a small bag full of glassine baggies, a white rock, later identified and tested as cocaine, two small bags of greenish vegetable substance” that he “recognized ... to be marijuana,” “a piece of brown paper that had a line of brown powder which was tested and proven to be heroin, and then a smoking devi[c]e made out of an airplane ... liquor bottle.” In addition, next to the suspected heroin, there was a scale with “traces of a brown powder,” which indicated that it had been used “to measure different amounts of heroin for purposes of sale.” Although Schwink also saw “a checkbook on the bed,” “it was left there at that time.”

Deputy Rickard stayed in the room while Schwink went “to notify ... Ms. Bordley” of the discovery. While Schwink was away from the room, “two individuals came through the back door of the hotel,” and Rickard “made contact with them. They saw him in the room and tried to elude him [by] running down the hallway.” The officers stopped the two men, and both claimed “that they knew nothing about the room.” However,when Schwink returned to the room to “run their I.D.'s, he “ picked up the checkbook and noticed it had the same name ... as...