Feaster v. State
| Decision Date | 29 June 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 408,Sept. Term, 2011.,408 |
| Citation | 206 Md.App. 202,47 A.3d 1051 |
| Parties | Princeton FEASTER v. STATE of Maryland. |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Juan P. Reyes (Paul B. DeWolfe, Public Defender, on the brief) Baltimore, MD, for appellant.
Sarah Page Pritzlaff (Douglas F. Gansler, Atty. Gen., on the brief) Baltimore, MD, for appellee.
Panel: KRAUSER, C.J., HOTTEN, CHARLES E. MOYLAN, JR. (Retired, Specially Assigned), JJ.
In 1945 in Animal Farm, George Orwell told us, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” A similar relativism prevails with respect to the protections of the Fourth Amendment. The people are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, but probationers and parolees are less protected than other people. More precisely, searches that would be unreasonable with respect to other people would not be unreasonable with respect to them. The key to the puzzle now before us is that the appellant, when searched, was a parolee.
In United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 119, 122 S.Ct. 587, 151 L.Ed.2d 497 (2001), Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court in describing the austerely reduced constitutional status under which one labors while on probation:
Knights's status as a probationer subject to a search condition informs both sides of that balance. “ Probation, like incarceration, is ‘a form of criminal sanction imposed by a court upon an offender after verdict, finding, or plea of guilty.’ ” ... Probation is “one point ... on a continuum of possible punishments ranging from solitary confinement in a maximum-security facility to a few hours of mandatory community service.”... Inherent in the very nature of probation is that probationers “do not enjoy ‘the absolute liberty to which every citizen is entitled.’ ”
(Emphasis supplied).
Five years later, Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 850, 126 S.Ct. 2193, 165 L.Ed.2d 250 (2006), confirmed that a convict placed on parole is situated even lower on the constitutional totem pole 1 than is a convict placed on probation:
As we noted in Knights, parolees are on the “continuum” of state-imposed punishments .... On this continuum, parolees have fewer expectations of privacy than probationers, because parole is more akin to imprisonment than probation is to imprisonment.... ... “In most cases, the State is willing to extend parole only because it is able to condition it upon compliance with certain requirements.” ... (“ [O]n the Court's continuum of possible punishments, parole is the stronger medicine; ergo, parolees enjoy even less of the average citizen's absolute liberty than do probationers.)”
(Emphasis supplied). As we analyze the search of a parolee in this case, we must not lose sight of the very different starting point for such analysis.
The appellant, Princeton “Ditty” Feaster, was convicted in the Circuit Court for Wicomico Count by a jury, presided over by Judge D. William Simpson, of a variety of narcotics-related offenses. On this appeal, he raises the single contention that Judge W. Newton Jackson, III erroneously denied his pre-trial motion to suppress physical evidence seized in alleged violation of the Fourth Amendment. The testimony from the suppression hearing tells the whole story.
On November 19, 2008, the Wicomico County Narcotics Task Force, a force comprised of members of the Maryland State Police and the Sheriff's Office of Wicomico County, was conducting a surveillance of the Days Inn, located at 2525 North Salisbury Boulevard in Salisbury. The task force had received numerous tips that drugs were being sold on the premises. In the course of that surveillance, Corporal Carlisle Widdowson spotted a suspected drug purchaser sitting in a vehicle on the Days Inn parking lot and attempting to inject heroin into his veins. Corporal Widdowson accosted the subject and questioned him about his source. The suspect stated that he had just purchased the drugs at the Days Inn from an individual he knew as “Ditty.”
Corporal Widdowson was familiar with “Ditty” from previous encounters with him. A quick records check confirmed that “Ditty” was the nickname of the appellant, Princeton Gene Feaster. The records check also revealed that there was an outstanding arrest warrant for the appellant on a “parole retake.” Corporal Widdowson obtained a photograph of the appellant from the police file and showed it to the management officials on duty at the Days Inn. Those officials confirmed that the appellant had been regularly around the Days Inn and was in and out of Room 133 specifically.
The motel officials produced for the police the actual rental agreement for Room 133, which showed that the room was rented to a white male by the name of Gary Dopowsky and was, moreover, rented by him through November 20, 2008. Surveillance was then maintained on Room 133 for approximately another hour. At that time, the surveillance team called in the assistance of the State Apprehension Team, informally known as “the warrant squad.”
Sergeant John Maiello, along with other members of the Apprehension Team, approached Room 133. Through a window, they could see that the appellant was inside the room as its sole occupant. Sergeant Maiello announced his identity and stated that he was there to serve an arrest warrant on the appellant. The appellant adamantly refused to open the door. One of the officers went to obtain a room key from management as the other officers continued to knock on the door and the appellant continued to refuse to open it.
When the room key arrived, there ensued what Corporal Widdowson characterized as a “standoff.” It was a routine worthy of a Marx Brothers comedy. With the key, one of the officers would unlock the door by turning the bolt. From the inside, the appellant would immediately relock the door. This back-and-forth thrust and counterthrust continued, according to the suppression hearing testimony, for no less than ten minutes. At last, the appellant submitted to the inevitable and the officers entered Room 133. The appellant, who had retreated to the back of the room, was immediately arrested and placed in handcuffs.
We can conveniently interrupt the factual narrative at this point for an interim legal analysis. In terms of Fourth Amendment reasonableness, there are in this case two distinct intrusions calling for assessment. There was first the entry into Room 133. There was subsequently the warrantless search of Room 133. We now know all we need to know to assess the entry. With respect to the entry itself, moreover, it is easy and convenient to proceed immediately to the Fourth Amendment merits without pausing at the threshold to consider any questions about Fourth Amendment applicability.
The permissibility of entering even a presumptively protected place to serve an arrest warrant is clear, provided only that the police have reason to believe the person to be arrested is, indeed, within that place. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 602–03, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980) has been for 32 years the unchallenged touchstone:
It is true that an arrest warrant requirement may afford less protection than a search warrant requirement, but it will suffice to interpose the magistrate's determination of probable cause between the zealous officer and the citizen. If there is sufficient evidence of a citizen's participation in a felony to persuade a judicial officer that his arrest is justified, it is constitutionally reasonable to require him to open his doors to the officers of the law. Thus, for Fourth Amendment purposes, an arrest warrant founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is within.
(Emphasis supplied).
In this case, the police were executing a warrant for the appellant's arrest for a parole violation.2 We have not, to be sure, been treated to much informative detail about the warrant, but neither have we been presented with any challenge to the warrant, with respect either to its existence or to its contents. All parties have been content simply to take this Fourth Amendment factor for granted. With respect to the other Payton v. New York requirement, moreover, there is no question but that the police had reason to believe that the appellant was in Room 133. Both the entry into Room 133 and the arrest of the appellant were reasonable within the contemplation of the Fourth Amendment.
Once the drawbridge was down, three officers rushed immediately into the breach. As Sergeant Maiello placed the appellant under arrest, the other two officers scanned the immediate area surrounding the appellant, to ensure that he could not grab a weapon that may have been accessible to him. In the course of “securing” the room, the officers looked into the two black bags on which the suppression hearing focused.
The first bag was sitting on top of the desk that was located right next to the entrance door to Room 133. That bag was approximately 16 feet away from where the appellant stood as he was being placed under arrest. It was a duffle-type bag. The second bag was on top of a bed and was approximately 7 feet away from where the appellant was being arrested. It was described as a laptop-type bag with a fold-over top. The testimony was that in that immediate scan for weapons, the police observed drugs within both bags.
The more thorough evidentiary search of the bags took place only after the appellant had been removed from the room. The bag on the bed contained a...
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...the backpack itself was clearly within the reach, lunge or grasp, to wit, the Chimel perimeter, of the arrestee. Feaster v. State, 206 Md.App. 202, 230–31, 47 A.3d 1051 (2012). The very purpose of the Terry frisk and one of the two purposes of the search incident to arrest, of course, are o......
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...to raise a challenge to a defendant's standing at the suppression hearing operates as a waiver of the challenge.” Feaster v. State, 206 Md.App. 202, 215, 47 A.3d 1051 (2012). See also State v. Bell, 334 Md. 178, 187–90, 638 A.2d 107 (1994) (noting that criminal defendants could suffer preju......
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