Carter v. State
| Decision Date | 11 January 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. 35,35 |
| Citation | 788 A.2d 646,367 Md. 447 |
| Parties | Lisa Cheere CARTER, v. STATE of Maryland. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
George E. Burns, Jr., Assistant Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, and Anne Gowen, Assistant Public Defender, on brief), Baltimore, for petitioner.
Celia Anderson Davis, Assistant Attorney General (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General of Maryland, on brief), Baltimore, for respondent.
Argued before BELL, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RAKER, WILNER, CATHELL, HARRELL, and BATTAGLIA, JJ.
In the matter now before us, the petitioner, Lisa Cheere Carter, asks us to consider whether a Frederick police officer's search of individual cigarettes in a pack contained in petitioner's lunch bag subsequent to her arrest on an outstanding warrant issued by a Montgomery County court was a valid search incident to arrest under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. In so doing, petitioner also challenges the legality of her arrest by arguing that the State improperly failed to produce the arrest warrant at trial.
In the summer of 1999, the petitioner, Lisa Cheere Carter (hereinafter "Carter"), took a job with Macro Janitorial Services, Inc., which had contracted with Frederick County to clean the Frederick County Courthouse and the facilities of the Frederick Police Department. As an employee of Macro, Carter had to undergo a preliminary background check for security purposes, which was undertaken by the Frederick Police Department at the behest of Bea Trout, the building manager for the Courthouse. As a result of this background check, the Frederick police found that there was an outstanding arrest warrant for Carter in Montgomery County.
On July 1, 1999, Carter reported for work at the Frederick Police Headquarters at which time Officer Steven Cirko of the Frederick Police Department, who had been notified by the police department dispatcher that Carter was wanted on the outstanding arrest warrant in Montgomery County, approached Carter, inquired as to her name, and took her into custody by bringing her into the processing area of the police station. At that time, he informed Carter that there was an outstanding warrant for her arrest in Montgomery County and that she was being placed under arrest based on the outstanding warrant. Within moments, Officers Cirko and Dawn Moore, also of the Frederick Police Department, searched Carter's belongings, which included a purple lunch sack that Carter had been carrying with her to work within which there was an open pack of cigarettes in which Officer Cirko discovered what he believed to be a marijuana cigarette. He field-tested the suspected marijuana cigarette, which tested positive for the substance. Officer Moore then transported Carter to the Frederick County Detention Center, served the outstanding warrant from Montgomery County and charged her with possession of marijuana in violation of Maryland Code, Art. 27, § 287 based on discovering the marijuana cigarette in the cigarette pack found in Carter's lunch bag.1
On September 17, 1999, Carter filed a Request for Discovery and Motion to Produce Documents pursuant to Maryland Rule 4-263. In her discovery request, Carter asked the State to produce any relevant material concerning "[a]ny search or seizure of any kind of the Defendant... together with a copy of all arrest warrants, search warrants, applications and affidavits in support thereof, inventories, and all reports regarding any such searches and seizures whether or not the State intends to use any so seized at any hearing in the above-captioned case or at the trial of this matter."
Contemporaneous with her motion for production of documents, Carter filed a motion to suppress the evidence of the marijuana cigarette seized by Officer Cirko following her arrest.2 Specifically, the motion stated, "[t]hat articles of evidence taken from [Carter] by police authorities were obtained as the result of an illegal search and seizure in violation of [Carter's] constitutional rights."
A hearing was held on the motion to suppress on November 19, 1999, at which time the State called Bea Trout and Officers Cirko and Moore to testify about Carter's arrest and the seizure of the marijuana cigarette. In the midst of the State's questioning of Bea Trout concerning her role in identifying Carter as the subject of the outstanding warrant defense counsel objected:
Your Honor, the State has an additional problem in, the case is Duggins v. State, it's 7 Md.App. 486, 256 A.2d 354, it's a 1969 case. And the blurb is where defendant's counsel challenged the legality of a federal arrest warrant on [the] theory... that ... the warrant was not properly completed and, therefore, legally defective, the State could not overcome the challenge by producing only testimony of those who procured warrants to the effect that it did exist and it was a lawful warrant. Now assuming the State is going to introduce a warrant somewhere in the evidence they produce, or testimony they produce before this Court, they need the warrant here in court. Hearsay testimony, what people say about the warrant is not sufficient under Maryland Law. It's, it's based in the best evidence rule, but it goes further than that actually.
The trial court overruled the objection on both hearsay and Duggins grounds.
Officer Cirko thereafter gave the following account of the arrest, search and seizure of the marijuana cigarette during direct examination:
Thereafter, defense counsel cross-examined Officer Cirko:
Following closing remarks by both parties, the court denied Carter's motion to suppress the seizure of the marijuana cigarette:
In this case what you have is a search incident to an arrest. Certainly as [defense counsel] points out it's not an inventory search, and I won't consider it as such. Background check was done, warrant was found to be outstanding from Montgomery County. Officer Cirko testified they verified that was a valid warrant. I do not agree that you have to physically produce the warrant today.... the arrest was a valid ... arrest. Pursuant to that arrest there is a search. He used the term bag. Even based upon her testimony this is akin to more like something that's traveling with her, not separate luggage or things of that nature. This is a search incident to arrest, it's something that's akin to her. Motion to suppress is denied.
A bench trial began on February 28, 2000. The trial court heard testimony from Bea Trout, Officer Cirko, and Officer Moore who testified on behalf of the State, and Carter who testified in her own defense. The State introduced the marijuana cigarette found in Carter's possession into evidence over defense counsel's continuing objections during direct examination of Officer Moore. At the conclusion of the presentation of the State's evidence, defense counsel made a motion for a judgment of acquittal, which the trial court denied. Carter took the stand and gave the following account of the events and circumstances surrounding her July 1, 1999 arrest:
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