Smith v. State
| Docket Number | 573-2022 |
| Decision Date | 26 July 2023 |
| Parties | LAMONT SMITH v. STATE OF MARYLAND |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF MARYLAND [*]
Corrected Date 02-11-2023 Circuit Court for Wicomico County Case No. C-22-CR-19-000554
OPINION
Leahy J. Police found large quantities of CDS and some ammunition inside a house they raided on August 9, 2019, in Salisbury, Maryland. They arrested the residents, Mr. Tony Blake and Mr. Dwight Woods. They also arrested Mr. Lamont Smith ("Appellant"), who claimed he was an overnight guest.
The State brought 42 charges against Appellant: 41 related to his alleged possession, conspiracy to possess, intention to distribute, and conspiracy to distribute the CDS; and one count of illegal possession of ammunition. The State also brought charges against Mr. Woods, but not against Mr. Blake, who was terminally ill and required medical care and supervision.[1] The police returned to the house to interview Mr. Blake and recorded that interview on a Bodycam (the "Blake Interview"). Appellant's primary contentions on appeal surround the admission of the Blake Interview, over his objection, at his trial before a jury in the Circuit Court for Wicomico County in April 2022.
We do not reach the merits of Appellant's first question concerning whether admission of the Blake Interview violated his right to confront adverse witnesses under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 21 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights because the issue was not preserved for our review. See Md. Rule 8-131(a). Furthermore, consistent with "'the established principle that a court will not decide a constitutional issue when a case can properly be disposed of on a nonconstitutional ground,'" Dorsey v. State, 356 Md. 324, 342 (1999) (quoting Telnikoff v. Matusevitch, 347 Md. 561, 579 n.15 (1997)), we need not reach the question of whether admission of the Blake Interview violated Appellant's rights under the United States and Maryland Constitutions because we are vacating Appellant's convictions under Maryland Rule 5-804(b)(3). We hold that the trial court erred by admitting the entire version of the Blake Interview offered by the State under the statement against penal interest exception to the hearsay rule set forth in Maryland Rule 5-804(b)(3) without parsing the narrative and redacting those portions not genuinely self-inculpatory as to Mr. Blake. The court needed to inquire whether each of the statements in the Blake Interview was truly self-inculpatory. State v. Matusky, 343 Md. 467, 485 (1996). Although some statements, especially those which described the workings of the enterprise prior to Mr. Woods entering the picture, could be deemed equally inculpatory of both Mr. Blake and Appellant, other statements could not be considered genuinely inculpatory of Mr. Blake because they merely served to shift blame for the present workings of the enterprise.
Correspondingly, because we are vacating the convictions, we do not reach the uncontested question of whether the trial court erred by imposing separate sentences for multiple conspiracy charges. However, we observe that the State's suggestion is correct that if this matter is re-prosecuted on remand, then the State may only pursue a single conspiracy charge against Appellant because the State concedes that it failed to prove the existence of more than one conspiracy.
The following factual account is drawn from the evidence presented at Appellant's jury trial conducted on April 11 and 12, 2022.
Sergeant Tyler Bennett and Detective Andrew Riggin of the Wicomico County Sherriff's Office testified that in July 2019 their office put a house in Salisbury under surveillance after receiving information that it was being used for heroin sales. Detective Michael Kirkland, working undercover, made four purchases of controlled substances from Mr. Blake and Mr. Woods in July and early August 2019.
Det. Riggin obtained a search and seizure warrant for the house. Then, on August 9, 2019, at 5:00 a.m., a Sherriff's Office Emergency Response Team lead by Sergeant Jordan Banks[4] raided the house and found large quantities of CDS, some ammunition, and over $8,000 in cash. Sgt. Banks testified that "[e]verybody appeared to have been asleep[,]" although the evidence suggested that upon the officers' arrival, Mr. Woods woke up and threw CDS out a broken window in the living room where he had been sleeping on a mattress. The officers discovered Appellant on a second mattress in the same room, and Mr. Blake in a back bedroom.
All three men were arrested. The State ultimately brought charges against Mr. Woods and Appellant, but not against Mr. Blake because he was terminally ill and required medical care and supervision. Mr. Woods was convicted prior to Appellant's trial. See Woods v. State, No. 1878, Sept. Term 2021, slip op. at 6-7 (filed Nov. 1, 2022).
At trial, a redacted version of the Blake Interview was played and published to the jury over the objection of defense counsel. The State explained that the recording was not "the full continuous interview[,]" because the State had excised the portions that it believed "wouldn't have been relevant[.]" Defense counsel agreed that "[t]he stuff [the State] redacted was stuff that really legitimately, it just shouldn't come in because it just had nothing to do with this[,]" but maintained that he did not think "any of it is relevant[.]"[5]
As reflected in the redacted recording, on August 27 2019-eighteen days after the raid-Sgt. Banks and Sgt. Bennett interviewed Mr. Blake at the house. They began the conversation by telling Mr. Blake that they wanted to talk to him about "the case that you are involved in as a co-defendant[.]" Mr. Blake was seated, wearing nothing except a blanket. After his Miranda rights were read to him, Mr. Blake gave the officers his consent to speak verbally because he was unable to sign a statement. Sgt. Bennett recorded the Blake Interview on his Bodycam.
At the very outset of the interview, Sgt. Bennett asked Mr. Blake, "So what's going on with Mont," referring to Appellant.[6] Throughout the interview, the officers kept returning to questions about Appellant, and in total, the officers and Mr. Blake made approximately 88 references to "Mont" or "Lamont" on the redacted version of the Blake Interview offered by the State.
Mr. Blake asserted repeatedly that the drugs seized on the day of the raid belonged to Mr. Woods, aka "Shamir," and that Mr. Woods "leaves late at night" and "[b]rings it down"; whereas Appellant's "involvement" is that "[h]e just knows about it." Mr. Blake stated that "[a]t first" he worked for Appellant, but that Appellant "fell back because he's ready to start a family with his wife and get married."
The officers asked Mr. Blake about the operational details of the drug enterprise when he first got involved. Mr. Blake explained that during a period of "close to a year," Appellant supplied him with a cell phone and that his duties were to answer the phone, arrange deliveries, and drive to meetings where he exchanged the drugs for money. Appellant, who lived near Baltimore City, would visit Salisbury a few times each week, at which time Mr. Blake would give Appellant the proceeds from the drug sales, less expenses and his salary, and Appellant supplied Mr. Blake with new drugs, prepackaged for sale.
In recent months, however, Mr. Blake turned over the money to, and accepted new drugs from, Mr. Woods, rather than from Appellant. Then Mr. Woods "demoted" Mr. Blake to having almost no role in the enterprise because his health had deteriorated, and he was "too slow." Mr. Blake related that, during the last two months before the raid, Appellant would visit to "take care of [him]" and take him to the hospital for treatment, and that that was his only interaction with Appellant.
Although Mr. Blake was cooperative throughout the interview, at some points his answers were unintelligible, and his narrative confused, prompting the interviewing officers to say, "it doesn't make any sense[,]" or "your story makes no sense":
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