Stokes v. State

• Decision Date: 12 January 2001
• Docket Number: No. 107,107
• Parties: Glen Keith STOKES v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

765 A.2d 612

362 Md. 407

Glen Keith STOKES v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 107, Sept. Term, 1998.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

January 12, 2001.

Julia Doyle Barnhardt, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, and Julia Doyle Barnhardt, on brief), Baltimore, for petitioner. Gary E. Bair, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen. of Maryland, on brief), Baltimore, for respondent.

Argued before BELL, C.J., ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY,¹ CHASANOW,² RAKER, WILNER, and CATHELL, JJ.

BELL, Chief Judge.

Glen Keith Stokes, the petitioner, was stopped by a Montgomery County police officer within thirty minutes of, and around the corner from where, a robbery had occurred.³ The pat down search that followed resulted in the recovery of controlled dangerous substances, for the possession of which the petitioner was subsequently tried, convicted and sentenced.⁴ Prior to trial, the petitioner moved to suppress the fruits of the search. The Circuit Court for Montgomery County denied the motion. The propriety of that ruling was the only issue presented on appeal to the Court of Special Appeals, which, in an unreported opinion, affirmed the petitioner's conviction and sentence. This Court granted the petitioner's Petition for Writ of Certiorari to consider "whether a police officer's observation of a black man rapidly parking a car and exiting it, around the corner from the location of a robbery thirty minutes earlier, gave him reasonable articulable suspicion that the man was the robber sufficient to detain him and search him, thereby uncovering controlled dangerous substances...."⁵ Answering that question in the negative, we shall reverse.

I.

On February 27, 1997, while parked in a marked police cruiser in a "town house community, residential" parking lot, Officer Mark Hayden heard a lookout for a robbery that had just occurred around the corner from where he was then located. The lookout, which was broadcast at 9:30 p.m., contained neither a height and weight description nor a description of a get-away vehicle. It was for a black male wearing a black tee shirt,⁶ but Officer Hayden testified that the look-out was for a "black man wearing a dark top ." Within thirty minutes, the petitioner, who is black, drove into the parking lot, at what the officer described as "a high rate of speed," and parked diagonally across several parking spaces near the officer. Once parked, he immediately shut off the engine and got out of his car. The petitioner was wearing dark clothing, a black leather jacket, dark pants and a skull cap. The officer testified that he believed the petitioner to be a "close match" to the lookout and, so, detained him and patted him down. Upon feeling a bulge consistent with a bag of "vegetable matter," the officer inquired as to its contents. When the petitioner replied that it was "weed," the officer removed the bag, observed what he suspected to be marijuana, and arrested the petitioner. A subsequent "search incident to the arrest"⁷ uncovered marijuana-laced PCP in the petitioner's pocket and in his car.

The petitioner moved to suppress the evidence recovered in the search. Finding that "the stop was justified, the intrusion was justified, [and] the brief inquiry as to the nature of the substance that the officer felt that he believed to be marijuana were all appropriate," the Circuit Court denied the motion. Affirming, the Court of Special Appeals reasoned:

"Viewing the court's factual findings in the light most favorable to the State, we are persuaded that the officer had a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the appellant was involved in the robbery that was relayed by the police dispatch. The trial court found that the stop was made relatively shortly after the robbery occurred, in the same neighborhood as the crime scene. Appellant matched in a general way the description of the perpetrator in that he was a black male in dark clothing. We are satisfied that the officer was justified in making the investigatory stop. With regard to the frisk of appellant's clothing, the court determined that robbery was a type of felony that presents potential for danger. Specifically, the court reasoned that a `robbery means there was a possible weapon,' and that the exact wording of the dispatch did not exclude the possibility that the perpetrator may have been armed. We agree with the court's observation, and we conclude that the circumstances of the stop warranted a reasonable frisk for weapons."

The Court of Special Appeals then upheld the search under the "plain feel" doctrine.⁸

II.

The petitioner argues that the arresting officer lacked reasonable articulable suspicion to support that the petitioner was the perpetrator of the robbery for which the officer received the look-out. He notes that the robbery had occurred thirty minutes before he was stopped, but only moments away. And, he points out, the robber was reported to have been on foot, wearing a black tee shirt. By contrast, the petitioner observes, he was in a car and wearing a leather jacket. He thus asserts that "even a robber proceeding at snail's pace would have been long gone and [the petitioner] was in a hurry." More telling, he believes, is the unlikelihood that a fleeing robber would select a parking space near a marked police cruiser right around the corner from the crime scene. The petitioner concludes, therefore, that "[t]here was no basis for believing that [he] was [the robber] under any standard, even that of the `inchoate hunch.'" For this Court to uphold his conviction, he maintains, "would mean that any time there is a lookout for a black male involved in a robbery, for at least thirty minutes afterwards, police officers may stop any black man in the vicinity who is in a hurry and subject him to a forcible detention and frisk."

The State disagrees. As it sees it, the brief detention and pat down of the petitioner is fully consistent with the Terry doctrine.⁹ It argues that, given that the petitioner "was the only person in the immediate vicinity of a recently reported robbery who matched the description given by the victim, and who acted suspiciously," it would have been irresponsible police behavior not to have stopped the petitioner and undertaken "the minimal investigatory action permitted under Terry." While conceding that the description of the robber could have been more specific, the State asserts that the description was "sufficient to narrow the class of persons who could be legitimately stopped."

We agree with the petitioner. Viewing the totality of the circumstances, the stop in this case was based on nothing more substantial than a hunch and, thus, the police action exceeded the exception to the probable cause requirement allowed in street confrontations between a citizen and the police investigating observed suspicious behavior. Accordingly, we hold that the petitioner's motion to suppress should have been granted and the fruits of that search excluded from the evidence at his trial.

III.

On a motion to suppress, while reviewing findings of fact under the "clearly erroneous standard," Jones v. State, 343 Md. 448, 458, 682 A.2d 248, 254 (1996); see also Ferris v. State, 355 Md. 356, 368, 735 A.2d 491, 497 (1999),

this Court will review de novo the question whether, under those facts, there was reasonable suspicion to make a warrantless search. See Riddick v. State, 319 Md. 180, 183, 571 A.2d 1239, 1240 (1990). In so doing, we consider the facts, as they exist on the record, and the reasonable inferences from those facts, in the light most favorable to the State. See Cartnail v. State, 359 Md. 272, 282, 753 A.2d 519, 525 (2000); Ferris, 355 Md. at 368,

735 A.2d at 497; In re Tariq A-R-Y, 347 Md. 484 at 488, 701 A.2d 691 at 693; Riddick v. State, 319 Md. 180, 183, 571 A.2d 1239, 1240 (1990); Simpler v. State, 318 Md. 311, 312, 568 A.2d 22, 22 (1990). "When the question is whether a constitutional right, such as, as here, a defendant's right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, has been violated, the reviewing court makes its own independent constitutional appraisal, by reviewing the law and applying it to the peculiar facts of the particular case." Jones v. State, 343 Md. at 457, 682 A.2d at 253. See also Riddick, 319 Md. at 183,

571 A.2d at 1240; State v. Gee, 298 Md. 565, 571, 471 A.2d 712, 715,

cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1244, 104 S.Ct. 3519, 82 L.Ed.2d 827 (1984).

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution¹⁰ protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, including seizures that involve only a brief detention. See supra at n. 7, n. 8, citing U.S. Const. amend. IV. See also Ferris, 355 Md. at 368,

735 A.2d at 497.

A police officer may direct an inquiry to a citizen, even when he or she has no cause for doing so and it may be entirely appropriate for that citizen to decline "to stop or respond to such inquiries." Anderson v. State, 282 Md. 701, 708, 387 A.2d 281, 285 (1978). If the officer does nothing more, takes no further action, then no seizure will have occurred. Under the Fourth Amendment, an officer may make a forcible stop of a citizen, however, if the officer has reasonable grounds for doing so. See Cartnail, 359 Md. at 285,

753 A.2d at 526; Jones v. State, 319 Md. 279, 287-88, 572 A.2d 169, 173 (1990); Anderson, 282 Md. at 706,

387 A.2d at 284. In Anderson, we were emphatic:

"The police officer is not entitled to seize and search every person whom he sees on the street or of whom he makes inquiries. Before he places a hand on the person of a citizen in search of anything, he must have constitutionally adequate, reasonable grounds for doing so."

282 Md. at 707, 387 A.2d at 285, citing Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 64, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 1903, 20 L.Ed.2d 917, 947 (1968)

.

This Court has consistently held that mere hunches are insufficient to justify an investigatory stop; for such an intrusion, an officer must have "reasonable articulable suspicion." Ferris...