Pyon v. State, 0897 Sept. Term, 2014.
Citation | 112 A.3d 1130,222 Md.App. 412 |
Decision Date | 06 April 2015 |
Docket Number | No. 0897 Sept. Term, 2014.,0897 Sept. Term, 2014. |
Parties | Andrew J. PYON v. STATE of Maryland. |
Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Brian M. Saccenti (Paul B. DeWolfe, Public Defender, on the brief), Baltimore, MD, for appellant.
Christopher Mason (Brian E. Frosh, Atty. Gen., on the brief), Baltimore, MD, for appellee.
Panel: KEHOE, FRIEDMAN, CHARLES E. MOYLAN, JR. (Retired, Specially Assigned), JJ.
Should the Fourth Amendment be implicated in this case, it was not satisfied. The dispositive threshold question before us, therefore, is whether the Fourth Amendment was even implicated. An encounter between a law enforcement official and a private citizen is a phenomenon that is, like Caesar's Gaul, divided into three parts. Such encounters, of course, actually cover a wide spectrum embracing infinite factual variations. For purposes of Fourth Amendment analysis, however, that wide spectrum has been conveniently sectioned off into three constitutional categories, two of which involve the Fourth Amendment and one of which does not. Before we presume to examine the specimen at hand, we must be sure we are using the proper microscope. It behooves us briefly to survey the respective microscopes.
As a teaching aid, the 24–karat opinion is Swift v. State, 393 Md. 139, 899 A.2d 867 (2006). Judge Raker, 393 Md. at 149–51, 899 A.2d 867, there set out the three levels on which a police-citizen encounter may occur.
(Citations omitted).
The most coercive of the police-citizen encounters is that involved when the officer actually places the citizen under arrest. Self-evidently the Fourth Amendment applies and self-evidently the Fourth Amendment must be satisfied. The Fourth Amendment justification required for such a severe Fourth Amendment seizure of the person has always been nothing less than probable cause. Swift v. State, 393 Md. at 150, 899 A.2d 867. The Supreme Court spoke of the standard in Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 208, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979) :
“The standard of probable cause thus represented the accumulated wisdom of precedent and experience as to the minimum justification necessary to make the kind of intrusion involved in an arrest ‘reasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment.”
See also Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 499, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983).
The present case does not remotely involve this highest level of police-citizen encounter. During that phase of the encounter pertinent to our present analysis, the appellant was clearly not under arrest and the issue of probable cause as a justification is utterly immaterial. Our exclusive concern is with the lower two levels of police-citizen encounter.
The intermediate level of police-citizen encounter is generally referred to as a Terry stop (from the seminal “stop and frisk” case of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) ), although frequently it is described as an “investigative stop.” It is a lesser Fourth Amendment intrusion than a full-scale arrest. Because it is a Fourth Amendment intrusion upon a citizen's otherwise unfettered freedom, however, it accordingly requires a Fourth Amendment justification, albeit a lesser justification than is required for an arrest. Swift, 393 Md. at 150, 899 A.2d 867, described both its coercive attributes and its required justification:
”
(Emphasis supplied) (citations omitted).
The above two levels of police-citizen encounter involve, respectively, greater and lesser Fourth Amendment seizures of the person. Both levels, therefore, require Fourth Amendment justification in order to qualify as reasonable, probable cause in the one case and Terry -level reasonable articulable suspicion in the other.
A mere accosting, by dramatic contrast, falls below the Plimsoll line of Fourth Amendment applicability. It is simply the police-citizen subset of the voluntary and consensual social intercourse that occurs regularly between citizen and citizen. It is beneath the Fourth Amendment radar. If one citizen may approach another and engage in conversation, a police officer is self-evidently free to do no less. Lest he attract the scrutiny of the Fourth Amendment, however, he must be careful to do no more.
Swift, 393 Md. at 151, 899 A.2d 867, described this sub-constitutional level of police-citizen encounter:
”
(Emphasis supplied) (citation omitted).
In Ferris v. State, 355 Md. 356, 373 n. 4, 735 A.2d 491 (1999), the Court of Appeals had similarly described the consensual encounter as:
”
(Emphasis supplied) (citations omitted).
In Graham v. State, 146 Md.App. 327, 366, 807 A.2d 75 (2002), this Court spoke in a similar vein:
”
(Emphasis supplied).
It is, moreover, clear that a mere accosting or consensual encounter, should it stay scrupulously within its limits, does not implicate the Fourth Amendment and does not, therefore, require any Fourth Amendment justification. See, Swift, 393 Md. at 151, 899 A.2d 867.
The present case lies perplexingly close to the line between the Terry -stop and the mere accosting. That line is in this case the dispositive boundary between Fourth Amendment applicability and Fourth Amendment inapplicability. It is frequently, as it is in this case, a line that can be factually ambiguous. Nonetheless, it is a line and not a zone. The Fourth Amendment is either applicable or inapplicable. There is no halfway. The State will not, therefore, be heard to say, In a decision that must, of doctrinal necessity, be binary, the Fourth Amendment applies either in full measure or not at all. Except in horseshoes, close does not count.
The threshold of Fourth Amendment applicability, moreover, is a legal question calling for a de novo determination. As to it, we are not deferential.
As we straddle this elusive border between a mere accosting and an investigative stop, we encounter a not uncommon instance of police behavior that seeks to exploit the benefits of being on both sides of the border at the same time. We spoke of this creative shape-shifting in Graham v. State, 146 Md.App. 327, 337, 807 A.2d 75 (2002) :
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