State v. Johnson
| Decision Date | 20 April 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 22, Sept. Term, 2017,22, Sept. Term, 2017 |
| Citation | 183 A.3d 119,458 Md. 519 |
| Parties | STATE of Maryland v. Casey O. JOHNSON |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Argued by Sarah Page Pritzlaff, Assistant Attorney General (Brian E. Frosh, Attorney General of Maryland of Baltimore, MD) on brief, for Petitioner
Argued by Sam Cowin, Assigned Public Defender (Eric S. Parnes and James H. Boykin, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP of Washington, DC; Paul B. DeWolfe, Public Defender of Maryland of Baltimore, MD) on brief, for Respondent
Argued before: Barbera, C.J., Greene, Adkins, McDonald, Watts, Hotten, Getty, JJ.
We issued a writ of certiorari in this case to consider whether the police had probable cause to search the trunk of a car owned and driven by Ms. Casey O. Johnson, Respondent, based in part on drug evidence found on the person of her front-seat passenger. We hold, based on the facts found at the suppression hearing viewed in their totality, that there was probable cause to conduct the search. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals, which came to the opposite conclusion.
Respondent and Anthony Haqq, her front-seat passenger, were charged with conspiracy to possess marijuana with intent to distribute and possession with intent to distribute. Both filed motions to suppress the evidence found by the police during an extended detention that had begun as a traffic stop. A joint hearing was conducted before the Circuit Court for Montgomery County on the co-defendants' respective motions to suppress. The following facts, either undisputed or expressly found by the suppression court, were drawn from witness testimony and the audio and video feed from a police vehicle's dashboard camera—colloquially referred to as a "dashcam"—which was played and admitted into evidence at the hearing. Montgomery County Police Officers Robert Sheehan and Michael Mancuso testified for the State, and Mr. Haqq testified for the defense. Respondent did not testify. The suppression court accepted the State's version of the events, as described by the two officers and supported by the dashcam recording.
At the time of the stop, Officer Sheehan was assigned to the Germantown District Community Action Team ("Community Action Team"), a unit assigned to high-crime areas for crime suppression. He had served as a police officer for twelve years, including one year on the Special Investigations Criminal Street Gang Unit and one year on the Special Investigations Narcotics Enforcement Team. Officer Sheehan had taken several classes concentrating on drug interdiction, completing 417 hours of training on the subject.
Officer Sheehan testified that one evening in January 2015 he was patrolling a high-crime area of Germantown, Maryland. As he approached a red traffic light, Officer Sheehan pulled directly behind what later was determined to be a four-door Mitsubishi sedan owned and driven on that evening by Respondent. Officer Sheehan noticed that the car had a defective brake light. He activated his vehicle's emergency equipment, which triggered the video and audio recording via his vehicle's dashcam. The recording captured much of what ensued.
Officer Sheehan testified that he turned on the vehicle's spotlight and shined it through the rear window of Respondent's car. When the traffic light turned to green, Respondent drove through the intersection. Officer Sheehan followed and was able to see Respondent and a front-seat passenger, later identified as Mr. Haqq, through the rear window. Officer Sheehan was unable to discern at that time the presence of a third occupant of the car, Kevin Helms, who was seated in the backseat.1
Respondent continued to drive for twenty-five seconds before turning into a commercial parking lot, where she stopped. As he followed, Officer Sheehan could see with the aid of the spotlight that Respondent and Mr. Haqq were making "furtive movements." Officer Sheehan saw Respondent's left hand on the steering wheel as she reached over the center console with her right arm, "reaching in that area and reaching over towards Mr. Haqq's seat." Officer Sheehan testified that "[i]t looked like she may have been manipulating something in the center console area." He observed Mr. Haqq moving in his seat at the same time. On three or four occasions, Mr. Haqq "occasionally would lift his rear end up off the seat and then bring it back down, as if he was either trying to reach underneath where he was sitting, or the seat or the floorboard." Based on the above, together with his training and experience, Officer Sheehan's first thought was that Mr. Haqq and Respondent may be trying to conceal drugs or weapons.
Respondent pulled to a stop in a commercial parking lot. Officer Sheehan parked his vehicle behind Respondent's car and approached the driver's side window on foot. As he approached, he shined his flashlight into the car and observed Mr. Haqq leaning over his legs with his hands between them, but he could not see what Mr. Haqq was doing with his hands. When Officer Sheehan identified himself by name, Mr. Haqq "immediately jumped back in his seat ... and pulled his shirt down over his crotch area." Respondent similarly "bounce[d] back like she was in the center console area" and said that she was "looking for [her] registration right now."
Respondent appeared "extremely nervous" despite the routine nature of the stop: her voice was shaking; her hands were trembling; and "the carotid pulse on her neck [was] beating quickly." She fumbled with her wallet for her license, flipping past it several times and having difficulty grasping her license because her hands were trembling. Her nervousness never subsided and was, in Officer Sheehan's estimation, beyond the "normal baseline" level of nervousness that he had observed over his twelve years of law enforcement and "thousands of traffic stops." Throughout, Mr. Haqq sat "like a statue," staring out the window with his sweatshirt "pulled down over his crotch." He remained motionless in that position, even when Respondent asked him to help her retrieve the registration from the glove compartment.
Officer Sheehan testified that, based on those observations, he suspected that something "illegal" was "going on." He returned to his patrol vehicle with Respondent's license and registration and called in a request for assistance from his fellow members of the Community Action Team and a canine unit.
Then, while continuing to observe Respondent's car, Officer Sheehan "start[ed] processing the traffic stop." He accessed an electronic ticketing system, "eTix," and began to input Respondent's information. As part of his typical procedure during traffic stops, he also accessed several systems to conduct a "warrant check" on Respondent. While doing that, Officer Sheehan noticed that Mr. Haqq was no longer sitting "statue-esque" but, rather, was "moving back and forth," "lifting up off his seat and leaning back," and appearing to "reach[ ] around" the inside of the car.
Officer Dos Santos arrived on the scene while Officer Sheehan was processing Respondent's background checks. Officer Sheehan informed Officer Dos Santos of his observations, and it was agreed that they would await the arrival of a third member of the Community Action Team before retrieving further information from Respondent and the two passengers. Officer Mancuso arrived shortly thereafter.
Officer Sheehan informed Officer Mancuso of what he had discerned from his observations of Respondent and Mr. Haqq. The three officers then approached Respondent's car. Officer Sheehan went to the driver's side window to speak with Respondent, Officer Dos Santos went to the rear seat on the driver's side of the car to speak with Mr. Helms, and Officer Mancuso went to the front passenger side to speak with Mr. Haqq.
Officers Dos Santos and Mancuso obtained identifying information from Messrs. Helms and Haqq as they remained seated in the car. While questioning Mr. Helms, Officer Dos Santos noticed that Mr. Helms was acting "kind of weird," "nervous, or just odd." Officer Mancuso asked Mr. Haqq general questions, but Mr. Haqq "didn't seem too eager to talk" and gave "one-word answers" to some of the questions. During questioning, Mr. Haqq also sat "extremely still in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead through the windshield."
As the other officers were questioning Messrs. Haqq and Helms, Officer Sheehan asked Respondent to step outside so he could show her the defective brake light and "ask her some qualifying questions." As he questioned her, Respondent began each answer with "uh or um," as if she was "trying to think up an answer." When asked who the passengers were, Respondent answered, "[m]y friends" who lived in the area. Officer Sheehan asked her how long she had known them, to which she responded, When asked from where they were coming, she answered only "from right over here."
Officer Sheehan then told Respondent that he had seen "a lot of movement in the car" and asked, "What were you guys doing?" Respondent replied, 2 Respondent denied that there were drugs or weapons in the car. Officer Sheehan asked Respondent for her consent to search the car, which she declined. He then asked for consent to search her pockets, and she agreed. The search conducted at that time did not reveal any contraband. Then or shortly thereafter, Officer Dos Santos reported to Officer Sheehan that he heard Respondent say—though it is unclear to whom—that she was "picking up a friend" from a store. The record does not reflect precisely when that exchange occurred, but it appears from the dashcam audio that it likely occurred soon after Officer Dos Santos began questioning Mr. Helms and before Respondent stepped out of the car.
Officer Sheehan returned to his patrol car to check whether...
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