Salzman v. State
| Decision Date | 04 June 1981 |
| Docket Number | 900,Nos. 857,936 and 1013,909,s. 857 |
| Citation | 49 Md.App. 25,430 A.2d 847 |
| Parties | Bruce Neal SALZMAN, Paul Blinken, Jeffrey Blinken and Marcia Blinken v. STATE of Maryland. |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Joseph F. Murphy, Jr., Towson, with whom was Carmina Szunyog, Baltimore, on the brief for appellant, Salzman.
H. Russell Smouse, Baltimore, with whom was Kathleen M. Sweeney, Baltimore, on the brief for appellants, Paul Blinken and Marcia Blinken.
Harold Buchman, Baltimore, for appellant Jeffrey Blinken.
Thomas P. Barbera, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom were Stephen H. Sachs, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Thomas E. Hickman, State's Atty. for Carroll County, Frank D. Coleman, Asst. State's Atty. for Carroll County, Charles A. Ruppersberger, III, and David F. Mister, Sp. Asst. State's Attys. for Carroll County, Robert S. Rothenhoefer, State's Atty. for Frederick County and Mary Ann Stepler, Asst. State's Atty., for Frederick County on the brief, for appellee.
Argued before LOWE, LISS and WILNER, JJ.
In January of 1978 Baltimore County Police began an investigation into what was believed to have been the largest illegal drug operation ever investigated by State law enforcement officials. The investigation concluded in the indictments of some twenty individuals, spread throughout four different counties, who were involved on various levels in an operation which dealt with literally tons of marijuana, a quantity of cocaine and methaqualone, and so much United States currency that cash exchanges by members of the group were calibrated by the suitcase full. Appellants in this consolidated appeal are four members three of them principals of the drug operation. As their nomenclature is reminiscent of a nursery rhyme, their relationships correspond to a trite western saga. All are closely related by blood and marriage.
Police were first alerted to the operation on January 6, 1978, when one Victor Tomich went to the Baltimore County Police Headquarters and confessed to a larceny he had committed some nine days previously. Tomich related that he had removed approximately $100,000 in cash and a bag of marijuana from a safe in the home of appellants Paul and Marcia Blinken. After explaining that he and his wife, Mindy Tomich (the sister of Marcia Blinken), lived in a house trailer on the Baltimore County property of Paul and Marcia Blinken, Victor divulged to the police that Paul and Marcia Blinken, along with Paul Blinken's brothers Neal and Jeffrey and one of their cousins (later identified as appellant Bruce Salzman), were operating a large-scale illegal drug conspiracy.
From this initial meeting and two subsequent interviews with Victor and Mindy Tomich, it was learned that the Blinkens ran what was described as a "corporation" dealing in illegal drugs, with members of the corporation residing and operating throughout the State. The Tomichs had personally observed bales of marijuana, suitcases full of methaqualone, and quantities of cocaine stored at the home of Paul and Marcia Blinken. They had further seen these drugs delivered to and used and distributed at the Blinkens' residence. Among other personal observations by the Tomichs were (1) the sale of cocaine by Paul Blinken, (2) firearms carried by Paul Blinken, (3) frequent drug deliveries and traffic in and out of Paul and Marcia Blinken's home, and (4) drug use at the residence of Jeffrey Blinken. Mindy Tomich further informed the police that on one occasion in 1974 Paul Blinken had arranged for her to pick up two suitcases full of marijuana at his father's house in Florida. Upon her return with the drugs, she was paid $500 by Paul Blinken for her efforts.
A five-week investigation by Baltimore County Police detectives ensued, and on February 24, 1978 Victor and Mindy Tomich along with three Baltimore County Police detectives personally appeared before Judge Frank E. Cicone in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County and submitted a detailed affidavit which served as the basis for an application by the State's Attorney for Baltimore County for an order authorizing a wiretap on the telephone of appellants Paul and Marcia Blinken. Judge Cicone issued the order. Thereafter, on March 23, 1978, the Tomichs accompanied members of the Baltimore County Police Department and the Maryland State Police (who had been working with Baltimore County on the Blinken investigation) to Carroll County where they joined Corporal Fred A. Settle of the State Police to submit an affidavit in support of an ex parte wiretap authorization on the phone of Jeffrey Blinken in Carroll County. Judge Edward O. Weant granted the order. The Baltimore County wiretap was subsequently extended on March 28, 1978 and April 21, 1978, and the Carroll County surveillance was once extended by Judge Weant on April 20, 1978.
Based on the information obtained from the Tomichs and on a number of intercepted telephone conversations couched in carefully coded language and interpreted by experts as being drug related, search warrants were ultimately obtained and executed on April 28, 1978 and May 1, 1978 for the premises and vehicles of Bruce Salzman, Jeffrey Blinken, and Paul and Marcia Blinken. The police seized 229 pounds of marijuana with an approximate street value of $145,920, 2 grams, 700 milligrams of cocaine with a significant purity of 95%-100%, and assorted drug paraphernalia from Paul and Marcia Blinken's; 400 pounds of marijuana with an estimated street value of $180,000, one ounce of cocaine with an approximate street value of $2,000, and 500 quaalude tablets with an approximate street value of $1,000 from the truck and residence of Bruce Salzman, plus $598,000 in cash found in the trunk of an unlicensed Mercedes Benz parked within the Salzman curtilage; five and one-half pounds of marijuana having an estimated street value of $2,475, two ounces of cocaine with an approximate street value of $4,000, 123 quaalude tablets with a street value of $246 and $101,595 in cash packets of $1,000 per wrapper from the residence of Jeffrey Blinken; and approximately two tons of marijuana plus three vehicles fictitiously registered, from the group's warehouse in Anne Arundel County.
A three-count indictment was filed against appellants Bruce Salzman, Marcia Blinken, and Paul Blinken in the Circuit Court for Carroll County 1, a thirteen-count indictment was filed in the Circuit Court for Carroll County against appellant Jeffrey Blinken and two separate criminal informations charging Bruce Salzman with ten and three counts respectively were filed in the Circuit Court for Frederick County.
Numerous and extensive pre-trial motions to suppress evidence derived from the wiretaps and from the search and seizures which had relied thereon for probable cause were filed by the multitude of defendants originally charged in connection with the uncovered drug operation. 2 On November 3, 1978, in a unique order, Chief Judge Robert C. Murphy of the Court of Appeals consolidated the cases below to allow all motions and arguments which could possibly be made before the various trials to be heard by one circuit court judge sitting as a judge for all four jurisdictions then involved. All pre-trial motions were then heard over five days in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County by Judge Paul E. Alpert, sitting as a judge for the circuit courts for Carroll, Queen Anne's, Frederick and Baltimore Counties. On June 8, 1979 Judge Alpert filed an extensively researched and meticulously reasoned 121-page opinion denying all motions pertinent to this appeal.
Appellants were then tried in the Circuit Courts for Carroll and Frederick Counties where they unsuccessfully sought rehearings on their motions to suppress and specifically repeated their objections to the means by which the incriminating evidence had been acquired. None offered any defense on the merits of the cases before them. All were convicted on various violations of the laws relating to controlled dangerous substances.
The present appeals were consolidated for briefing and argument, primarily because all four appellants raise the common issue of Judge Alpert's denial of the motions to suppress the wiretap evidence and subsequent evidence derived therefrom. Additionally, appellants Salzman and Jeffrey Blinken assert violations of their constitutional right to be free from double jeopardy, appellants Paul Blinken and Jeffrey Blinken raise sufficiency of the evidence arguments, and appellants Paul Blinken, Jeffrey Blinken, and Bruce Salzman contend that their waivers of the right to trial by jury were defective. 3 After reviewing the voluminous records on this appeal and the applicable law, we will affirm appellants' convictions. I. The Wiretaps
All four appellants contend that the police failed to exhaust normal investigative procedures before seeking wiretap authorizations and that therefore the wiretaps were obtained in violation of applicable federal and state statutes. Section 10-408(a)(3) of Maryland's wiretap and electronic surveillance statute, Md.Cts. & Jud.Proc.Code Ann. §§ 10-401 10-412, and its federal counterpart § 2518(1)(c) of Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control & Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2520, (hereinafter Title III), set forth the identical requirement that every application for an ex parte order authorizing wiretap interception must demonstrate:
"... whether or not other investigative procedures have been tried and failed or why they reasonably appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried or to be too dangerous."
The Title III preconditions for obtaining wiretap authority, and particularly the exhaustion requirement (18 U.S.C. § 2518(1)(c)) after which Maryland's § 10-408(a)(3) is modeled, were established by Congress "to make doubly sure that the statutory authority (to wiretap) be used with restraint and only where the circumstances warrant the surreptitious interception of wire and oral...
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