In re Special Investigation Misc. 1064
| Decision Date | 10 June 2021 |
| Docket Number | 20, Sept. Term, 2020 |
| Citation | 478 Md. 528,275 A.3d 354 |
| Parties | IN RE: SPECIAL INVESTIGATION MISC. 1064 |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Argued by Michael Redmond, Co-Director, Appellate Practice Group (James L. Shea, City Solicitor, Baltimore City Department of Law, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for Petitioner.
Argued by Carrie J. Williams, Assistant Attorney General (Brian E. Frosh, Attorney General of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for Respondent.
In this case,1 we address numerous challenges to a grand jury subpoena requesting medical data collected by first responders at opioid overdose incidents. We first consider whether a statute enacted in 2018 at the recommendation of the Governor's Heroin and Opioid Emergency Task Force created an absolute bar to the grand jury subpoena. After considering the plain language and legislative history of the statute, we hold that the statute does not preclude a subpoena issued by a grand jury. We next turn to whether the subpoena is akin to a general warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights and hold that the subpoena requested overdose information with particularity and is therefore dissimilar to a general warrant. We finally analyze whether the subpoena satisfies two separate tests for reasonableness articulated in Maryland caselaw and hold that the subpoena is reasonable under both the general test for all grand jury subpoenas and the specialized balancing test for subpoenas seeking private medical records at the request of a government actor. Accordingly, we affirm the Court of Special Appeals on each of these issues.
On June 27, 2018, at the request of the State's Attorney for Baltimore City, a Baltimore City grand jury issued a subpoena duces tecum to the Baltimore City Fire Department ("Fire Department"). The subpoena requested production of records "captured, maintained, or in the possession of" the Fire Department pertaining to opioid related overdose incidents from January 1, 2017 to June 1, 2018. Specifically, the subpoena sought nine pieces of information relating to each overdose incident: the date of the incident; the location of the incident, represented in address and/or latitude and longitude coordinates; the patient's date of birth; the patient's gender; the patient's name; whether naloxone or any other opioid antagonist was administered and, if so, the number of units administered; the phone number associated with the patient and/or caller requesting service; the responding unit identifier; and the report number.
In response, the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore (collectively "the City") filed a motion to quash the subpoena and for a protective order in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. The City argued that the Fire Department, acting as a medical provider through its licensed paramedics and emergency technicians, was bound to maintain confidentiality of its medical records pursuant to § 4-302(a)(1) of the Health-General Article ("HG") of the Maryland Code which provides "a health care provider shall ... [k]eep the medical record of a patient or recipient confidential[.]"2 Recognizing the general power of the grand jury to subpoena otherwise confidential medical records under a separate statutory provision, HG § 4-306(b)(7),3 the City nonetheless argued the subpoena was not reasonable or relevant to an investigation of any specific person or crime, and therefore the blanket request for records spanning over an eighteen-month period amounted to nothing more than an arbitrary fishing expedition. Moreover, the City argued that the subpoena was contrary to both the City's interest and the State's overarching public policy to combat the opioid epidemic. The City reasoned that once individuals became aware that medical records were being used to investigate and track drug users, then those individuals would avoid medical treatment in order to avoid contact with law enforcement.
In any case, the City noted that a recently enacted statute, HG § 13-3602(e)4 —which provides "[o]verdose information reported by an emergency medical services provider ... or by the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems ... may not be used for a criminal investigation or prosecution"—explicitly prohibits the use of overdose information reported by an emergency medical services provider for criminal investigation or prosecution. Thus, the City argued the subpoena was merely "operating as a back door to obtain information that is otherwise shielded from ... the Grand Jury ... as a matter of statute."
The State filed a written opposition to the City's motion to quash the grand jury subpoena. The State refuted the City's argument that the subpoena amounted to a fishing expedition, contending that the subpoena was reasonable. In supporting its claim of reasonableness, the State argued that the information requested was relevant to a criminal investigation into the distribution of heroin and fentanyl; was identified with specificity such that the City was made aware of what documents to produce; and spanned a reasonable length of time in light of the extensive scope of the City's public health epidemic and the "unwavering carnage" left in its wake.
In response to the City's public policy arguments, the State pointed out that the City, as a grand jury witness, was not entitled to set limits on the grand jury investigation on the basis of its own policy interests. Moreover, the State maintained that the public policy interests articulated by the City were consistent with the grand jury investigation and subpoena because Maryland's Good Samaritan law codified at § 1-210 of the Criminal Procedure Article ("CP") of the Maryland Code does not provide immunity for the crimes under grand jury investigation, namely drug distribution crimes. Thus, overdose victims and individuals that seek help on their behalf ("Good Samaritans") would not face criminal prosecution as a result of the grand jury investigation.
Lastly, the State contended that HG § 13-3602, when read in its entirety, provides a mechanism for medics to report overdose information to mapping application programs without eliminating the well-established power of a grand jury to obtain that same information by subpoena. Instead, the State maintained that subsection (e) of HG § 13-3602 merely prevents law enforcement officers from circumventing normal protocol in the course of investigation, which would be to seek a subpoena, by access to the compiled product of the mapping application program.
On November 1, 2018, the Circuit Court for Baltimore City held a hearing on the City's motion to quash the subpoena. At the hearing, the State defended the reasonableness of the subpoena, noting the City had previously complied with two nearly identical subpoenas.5 The State asserted that each individual involved in an overdose incident was likely a witness to a crime, specifically to the crime of illegal opioid distribution, and thus the requested names of individuals were relevant to the grand jury's "multiple investigations into large scale distribution networks throughout the city" and the "multiple criminal organization syndicates that continue to poison these neighborhoods." The State argued it had knowledge of where the organizations operated—that is where they sold drugs—and what drugs they sold. The State acknowledged its primary challenge was successfully linking smaller drug networks together to expose a larger distribution scheme and argued that because the subpoena sought information to assist in this aim, it was reasonable.
For its part, during the course of the hearing, the City largely reiterated the arguments presented in its motion to quash the subpoena, maintaining that the subpoena was a "fishing expedition ... of the most profound type" and "shocking in its breadth." The City emphasized that the State did not have any knowledge of the overdose victims’ identities. Thus, the notion that the State would discover witnesses to drug sales that occurred eighteen months prior simply by learning the identity of overdose victims or Good Samaritans was implausible.
Furthermore, in light of the lack of investigative specificity and the lengthy time period covered, the City argued that "[t]he unreasonableness of the request crie[d] out from the very [s]ubpoena itself." The City again focused the court's attention on the public policy impact of the subpoena, noting the practical implication of complying with the subpoena would be "to scare off people from calling for help[.]" Lastly, recognizing that HG § 13-3602 related to the disclosure of medical records to an overdose mapping application program, the City nevertheless reasserted its position that subsection (e) prohibits the use of the information sought by the subpoena in a criminal investigation or prosecution.
In response, the State distinguished the subpoena from a fishing expedition, pointing out that the present case was unlike a situation in which the State had "no idea" what records would be disclosed under the subpoena. Instead, the State maintained that it was certain the subpoena would produce records containing witnesses to the drug distribution crimes under investigation even if the State did not know the identities of the witnesses yet. The State further refuted the policy concerns expressed by the City by arguing that victims of violent crimes, such as stabbings and shootings, still called for emergency medical help despite the routine issuing of subpoenas for medical records in connection to those crimes. Addressing any conflict between the subpoena and the Good Samaritan law, the State again emphasized its intent to prosecute the the overdose...
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