Crosby v. State

• Decision Date: 07 May 2009
• Docket Number: No. 91, September Term, 2008.,91, September Term, 2008.
• Citation: 970 A.2d 894,408 Md. 490
• Parties: Garry Dennis CROSBY, Jr. v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

970 A.2d 894

408 Md. 490

Garry Dennis CROSBY, Jr. v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 91, September Term, 2008.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

May 7, 2009.

Nancy S. Forster, Public Defender, Baltimore, for Petitioner.

Brian S. Kleinbord, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Douglas F. Gansler, Atty. Gen., Baltimore), on brief, for Respondent.

Argued Before BELL, C.J., HARRELL, BATTAGLIA, GREENE, MURPHY, ADKINS and BARBERA, JJ.

HARRELL, Judge.

In this case, Petitioner, Garry Dennis Crosby, Jr., questions the denial, by the Circuit Court for Harford County, of his motion to suppress evidence. Crosby contends that the tangible evidence against him was seized unlawfully when he was detained by deputy sheriffs in violation of the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. Because we hold that Crosby's detention was not supported by reasonable suspicion, as required by Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), we reverse the judgment of conviction by the Circuit Court.

I.

The relevant facts¹ unfolded in the early morning hours of 16 August 2007. Harford County Deputy Sheriff Gregory Young testified that he was on patrol in an unmarked car in Edgewood, Maryland, cruising in the general area where a homicide occurred five days earlier during daylight hours. There were also reports, on the day after the homicide, of shots fired into a residence located in the same general area. According to Young, as a member of the department's Community Action Response Team ("CART"), he was assigned specially to this particular area of Edgewood because it was designated as a "hot spot."² At approximately 12:30 a.m., he observed a gold-colored Cadillac maneuvering in and out of parking spaces in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Windstream Way. Believing the car's movements to be suspicious, he drove towards it. As his cruiser passed the Cadillac ("driver's side door to driver's side door"), Deputy Young observed the Cadillac's driver "slumped down" in the driver's seat, giving him the impression that the driver sought to "avoid identification."³ He immediately ran the Cadillac's tags, which revealed that the car was registered to a seventy year old woman and a forty-six year old man sharing the same address in Bel Air, Maryland. The records check did not reveal a stolen car report.

Deputy Young lost sight of the Cadillac, but, still having misgivings about the car's slouching occupant or occupants,⁴ he broadcast a description of the car to other officers in the vicinity. Within minutes, he received a call from another deputy informing him that the car was at a Texaco gas station at the corner of Route 40 and Tree Top Drive, approximately one quarter of a mile from Deputy Young's then current location. He proceeded there, where he parked at an adjacent bowling alley and covertly observed the Cadillac's driver pumping gasoline into the car. When finished, the driver got back into the car and drove off of the gas station lot. Once on the road, the driver signaled a left turn onto Pulaski Highway towards Baltimore; however, before actually executing a left turn, he stopped signaling left and signaled a right turn towards Aberdeen. He turned right.

Interpreting the driver's change of turn signals as another indicator of suspicious activity, Deputy Young continued following the Cadillac from "a couple hundred yards" back, until the driver parked the car in front of a residence on Pinefield Court. He described the car's route in the following manner:

The vehicle made several right turns, one was off Route 40 onto Edgewood Road, continued on Edgewood Road to Route 24, where the vehicle made another right-hand turn, which would have been southbound on Route 24, traveled to the intersection of Route 24 and Hanson Road, where the vehicle made a right-hand turn on Hanson Road going west toward Baltimore, to orient it. I stayed behind the vehicle at a distance just kind of observing the activity. The vehicle made a signal for a right-hand turn onto Woodbridge Center Way, which is generally back towards the direction where I first observed the vehicle. The vehicle did not make that right-hand turn, it continued through the intersection, made the next right-hand turn, which was on Pinefield Way, and it made a left-hand turn onto Pinefield Court and stopped in front of a house ... and sat there.

Deputy Young stopped his vehicle about twenty feet behind the Cadillac and called for back-up. According to him, an additional patrol car arrived "a few seconds" later. At that time, he exited his unmarked cruiser and approached the Cadillac.⁵ He informed the driver that he was "concerned about his [the driver's] activities," and asked the driver for his license and registration. According to the deputy, the driver appeared "a little shook up, seemed a little agitated." Deputy Young requested identification from the sole passenger in the car. Both complied with the requests and told the deputy that they came to the Pinefield Court address to pick up a music CD from a friend.⁶ Deputy Young returned to his vehicle with the licenses and registration.

While he was running warrant and license checks, which revealed the driver to be Garry Dennis Crosby and the passenger to be D'Andre Antonio Feaster, a K9 unit arrived at the scene. Deputy Young asked the K9 handler to have his dog conduct a scan of the Cadillac for controlled dangerous substances. Crosby and Feaster were ordered out of the car before the scan. One of the officers at the scene informed them that he intended to pat them down. Crosby refused, demanding to know what he and Feaster were suspected of doing wrong. An officer then directed Crosby to lift up his shirt so that the officer could inspect Crosby's waistband. Crosby complied, revealing nothing of interest to the officer, and sat back down on the ground to await the completion of the K9 scan.

At some point, a dispatcher informed Deputy Young that there were no active warrants on Crosby or Feaster and that both had valid licenses. The deputy, however, held the licenses and registration while the dog continued its scan of the Cadillac.⁷ The dog eventually gave a positive alert for the presence of narcotics in the car, prompting Deputy Young and other officers to conduct a search of the vehicle.⁸ Their search did not yield any contraband. Young then asked Crosby whether there was any contraband in the car, to which Crosby replied that there was. The officers searched the car a second time, again to no avail.

After the second fruitless search of the car, Deputy Young began searching Crosby's person.⁹ Crosby stated that he had a gun in his pocket. The deputy recovered from Crosby's pocket a loaded handgun, as well as loose ammunition. Crosby was placed under arrest and subsequently charged in the District Court of Maryland with wearing, carrying, and transporting a handgun on his person and wearing, carrying and knowingly transporting a handgun in a vehicle.¹⁰

In the District Court, sitting in Harford County, Crosby moved to suppress the handgun and ammunition. The court denied the motion, and Crosby pleaded guilty to wearing, carrying, and transporting a handgun on his person. The charge of wearing, carrying, and knowingly transporting a handgun in a vehicle was placed on the stet docket. The District Court sentenced Crosby to three years imprisonment, with all but six months suspended.

Crosby noted a timely appeal to the Circuit Court for Harford County.¹¹ There, he again moved to suppress the handgun and ammunition recovered by Deputy Young, claiming that his detention by Deputy Young was not premised on a reasonable suspicion, as required by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

At the suppression hearing in the Circuit Court, Deputy Young articulated in the following manner why he decided to make contact with the occupants of the Cadillac:

The fact that it being a high-crime area, the pulling in and out of the parking pads, that we'd had just recently [received reports of] shots being fired into a residence, I wasn't sure what was taking place.

. . . .

After I originally lost sight of the vehicle and put the broadcast out and a description, I was informed by Sergeant Shrader that the vehicle had been driving on Brookside Drive and the streets off of Brookside Drive where the recent homicide had just occurred. That kind of spiked my suspicion a little bit more as to why this vehicle was driving through the streets seemingly without a purpose.

. . . .

Adding that information to what I had observed, and then going to the gas station, which was not suspicious in itself going to the gas station, but unsure of making the left turn and then making a right turn onto Pulaski Highway, and then they had made a big loop, almost a big loop, where they could have made a left-hand turn and been just as quick to where they ended up, to where the vehicle ended up, so putting that all together I kind of felt that was a little suspicious and that's why I made contact with the vehicle.

Crosby and Feaster both testified at the suppression hearing. Feaster asserted that Crosby did not duck down in his seat when the vehicles passed, as characterized by Deputy Young. According to Feaster, "that's how people drive, people drive with they seat back. That's not slumping down when you already slumped down."¹² Feaster acknowledged that, although Young's cruiser was unmarked, he immediately recognized it as a law enforcement vehicle when the deputy drove past them on Windstream Way. When asked by the prosecutor on cross-examination whether he and Crosby "both would have recognized [Deputy Young] to be a police officer," Feaster replied affirmatively.

Crosby testified that, by the time Deputy Young took his license and registration, there were seven police vehicles at the scene. He averred that one of the officer's ordered him and Feaster out of the vehicle at almost the same time that they gave their...