In re Patrick Y.

• Decision Date: 18 February 2000
• Docket Number: No. 27,27
• Citation: 746 A.2d 405,358 Md. 50
• Parties: In re PATRICK Y.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

746 A.2d 405

358 Md. 50

In re PATRICK Y.

No. 27, Sept. Term, 1999.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

February 18, 2000.

Bradford C. Peabody, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, on brief), Baltimore, for petitioner.

Gary E. Bair, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., of Maryland, on brief), Baltimore, for respondent.

Argued before BELL, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY, RAKER, WILNER, CATHELL and HARELL, JJ.

WILNER, Judge.

The District Court of Maryland, sitting as the juvenile court in Montgomery County, found petitioner to be a delinquent child by reason of his having had a deadly weapon and a pager in his possession while on public school property. He admitted possession of the two items and complains only that they were unlawfully obtained by the State and, for that reason, should have been suppressed. The trial court rejected his contention that the seizure of the items violated his Fourth Amendment rights, and the Court of Special Appeals affirmed. In Re Patrick Y., 124 Md.App. 604, 723 A.2d 523 (1999). We agree and shall affirm the judgment of the appellate court.

BACKGROUND

Petitioner was an eighth grade student at the Mark Twain School in Montgomery County. The school is a public middle and senior high school that, at its Rockville campus, serves approximately 245 children with significant social, emotional, learning, and behavioral difficulties. The school publishes a set of "Policies Regarding Student Behavior," a copy of which was given to petitioner and his parent and was signed by them. The document states that the school is "committed to maintain a safe environment for students and staff," and advises:

"Mark Twain subscribes to Montgomery County Public Schools' Search and Seizure policy, which provides that the principal or the administration's designee may conduct a search of a student or of the student's locker if there is probable cause to believe that the student has in his/her possession an item, the possession of which constitutes a criminal offense under the laws of the State of Maryland. These items include weapons, drugs or drug paraphernalia, alcohol, beepers and electronic signalling devices."

At approximately 10:40 on the morning of May 23, 1997, the school security officer, Patrick Rooney, received information from a source he could not recall that "there were drugs and or weapons in the middle school area of the school." Mr. Rooney alerted the principal, who authorized a search of all lockers in the middle school area. The record indicates that the search was conducted by Mr. Rooney and one other person but does not reveal how the search was conducted. We do not know how many lockers were searched, other than that the search did not extend beyond the middle school area, or how the search was conducted. No evidence was produced of whether the lockers were even locked or, if locked, whether the school had a master key or a list of the combinations that would open combination locks, although a fair inference can be drawn from the apparent ease with which the search was conducted that the school had ready access to the lockers. As petitioner was not informed in advance of the intent to search his locker and was not present when his locker was opened, it is clear that the locker was opened without his assistance or permission.

Inside petitioner's locker, Mr. Rooney found a bookbag, which he also searched. Inside the bookbag were the two contraband items—a folding knife with a 2½ inch blade and a pager—both of which, as noted, are expressly forbidden on school property. Petitioner, it appears, was in some other, unrelated difficulty at the time of the search. He had threatened to leave the school building without permission and was being restrained on that account when he was confronted with the knife and the pager, which he admitted were his. The issue raised by petitioner is whether the Fourth Amendment was violated "by a search of Petitioner's locker, based solely upon a vague and unsubstantiated rumor, `that there were drugs and or weapons in the middle school area.'"

Petitioner asserts that (1) he had a legitimate expectation of privacy in his locker, (2) whatever may be the Constitutional standard for conducting locker searches, the published school policy required probable cause, which was lacking, (3) the school officials did not have even a "reasonable suspicion," that there was any contraband in his locker, and (4) by opening his bookbag, the search exceeded any permissible scope that might have justified opening the locker. Relying principally on Vernonia School District v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995), the State contends that general reasonableness, not probable cause, is the appropriate standard to apply and that, under that standard, the search of petitioner's locker and bookbag was justified. It urges that petitioner had, at best, only a limited privacy interest in his school locker, that the search of the locker was a minimal intrusion, that school safety constitutes a compelling governmental interest, that the locker search was an "efficacious" means of satisfying that interest, and that, on balance, the minimal intrusion of the locker search was outweighed by the compelling interest in school safety.

As noted, the issue raised in the petition for certiorari was limited to whether the search of petitioner's locker violated the Fourth Amendment. That statement of the issue does not include any complaint about the search of the bookbag or, indeed, whether petitioner was entitled to relief solely because the locker search violated the published Montgomery County School Policy. Because it was not raised in the petition, we shall not consider the search of the bookbag. The published school policy needs to be addressed, not as an independent basis for suppression, but in the Fourth Amendment context of its effect on petitioner's reasonable expectation of privacy in the locker.

DISCUSSION

Two Supreme Court cases have come to dominate the current debate over locker searches in the public schools—Acton, supra, 515 U.S. 646, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564, and New Jersey v. T.L.O, 469 U.S. 325, 105 S.Ct. 733, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985)—although neither of them dealt with a locker search. T.L.O., the earlier of the two cases, involved the search of a student's purse. A teacher found T.L.O. and another student smoking in a school lavatory, which constituted a violation of school rules, and took the students to the vice-principal's office. When T.L.O. not only denied smoking in the lavatory but of even being a smoker, the vice-principal opened her purse, found and removed a pack of cigarettes, noticed cigarette rolling papers, and, knowing the connection of such papers to the use of marijuana, searched the purse further. The extended search revealed a small amount of marijuana, certain paraphernalia, and other evidence implicating T.L.O. in drug dealing. The evidence was turned over to the police. After questioning, the student admitted that she had been selling marijuana at the school, and, based on that confession, she was charged with delinquency. The trial court denied her motion to suppress the evidence taken from her purse, a decision set aside by the New Jersey Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court initially granted certiorari to determine whether the exclusionary rule enunciated in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961) should apply in juvenile court proceedings, but it ordered reargument to consider the broader question "of what limits, if any, the Fourth Amendment places on the activities of school authorities." T.L.O., supra, 469 U.S. at 332, 105 S.Ct. at 737, 83 L.Ed.2d at 728. The ultimate resolution in that case was that the search did not violate T.L.O.'s rights under that Amendment, but the Court warned that its disposition of the case on that basis was not to be taken as an implicit determination "that the exclusionary rule applies to the fruits of unlawful searches conducted by school authorities." Id., 469 U.S. at 333 n. 3, 105 S.Ct. at 738, 83 L.Ed.2d at 729. The Court also made clear that its focus was on the right to search the person or personal items carried by the student, which was the circumstance before it, and that it was not addressing the question now before us of "whether a schoolchild has a legitimate expectation of privacy in lockers, desks, or other school property provided for the storage of school supplies." Id., 469 U.S. at 337 n. 5, 105 S.Ct. at 740, 83 L.Ed.2d at 732. In that regard, it noted the conflict between Zamora v. Pomeroy, 639 F.2d 662 (10th Cir.1981) and People v. Overton, 24 N.Y.2d 522, 301 N.Y.S.2d 479, 249 N.E.2d 366 (1969), holding that school administrators had the right to search or consent to the search of student lockers, and State v. Engerud, 94 N.J. 331, 463 A.2d 934 (1983), holding that students have an expectation of privacy in their lockers.

On the merits, the Court first determined, as a threshold matter, that the Fourth Amendment does apply to searches conducted by public school officials. Largely because of the compulsory school attendance laws, public school officials, unlike their counterparts in private school, do not stand in loco parentis in their dealings with students and therefore do not have the exemption from Fourth Amendment requirements enjoyed by the parents. They do not merely exercise authority delegated to them by the students' parents, but act in furtherance of mandated educational and disciplinary policies.

Proceeding from that premise, the Court then recognized that students were entitled to bring to school "a variety of legitimate, noncontraband items," that there was "no reason to conclude that they have necessarily waived all rights to privacy in such items merely by bringing them onto school grounds," and that, as a result, the search of a child's person or of a closed purse or bag carried...