Carter v. State

788 A.2d 646, 367 Md. 447, 2002 Md. LEXIS 6
CourtCourt of Appeals of Maryland
DecidedJanuary 11, 2002
Docket35, Sept. Term, 2001
StatusPublished
Cited by51 cases

This text of 788 A.2d 646 (Carter v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Carter v. State, 788 A.2d 646, 367 Md. 447, 2002 Md. LEXIS 6 (Md. 2002).

Opinions

BATTAGLIA, Judge.

In the matter now before us, the petitioner, Lisa Cheere Carter, asks us to consider whether a Frederick police officer’s search of individual cigarettes in a pack contained in petitioner’s lunch bag subsequent to her arrest on an out[450]*450standing warrant issued by a Montgomery County court was a valid search incident to arrest under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. In so doing, petitioner also challenges the legality of her arrest by arguing that the State improperly failed to produce the arrest warrant at trial.

I. Facts

In the summer of 1999, the petitioner, Lisa Cheere Carter (hereinafter “Carter”), took a job with Macro Janitorial Services, Inc., which had contracted with Frederick County to clean the Frederick County Courthouse and the facilities of the Frederick Police Department. As an employee of Macro, Carter had to undergo a preliminary background check for security purposes, which was undertaken by the Frederick Police Department at the behest of Bea Trout, the building manager for the Courthouse. As a result of this background check, the Frederick police found that there was an outstanding arrest warrant for Carter in Montgomery County.

On July 1, 1999, Carter reported for work at the Frederick Police Headquarters at which time Officer Steven Cirko of the Frederick Police Department, who had been notified by the police department dispatcher that Carter was wanted on the outstanding arrest warrant in .Montgomery County, approached Carter, inquired as to her name, and took her into custody by bringing her into the processing area of the police station. At that time, he informed Carter that there was an outstanding warrant for her arrest in Montgomery County and that she was being placed under arrest based on the outstanding warrant. Within moments, Officers Cirko and Dawn Moore, also of the Frederick Police Department, searched Carter’s belongings, which included a purple lunch sack that Carter had been carrying with her to work within which there was an open pack of cigarettes in which Officer Cirko discovered what he believed to be a marijuana cigarette. He field-tested the suspected marijuana cigarette, which tested positive for the substance. Officer Moore then transported Carter to the Frederick County Detention Center, served the [451]*451outstanding warrant from Montgomery County and charged her with possession of marijuana in violation of Maryland Code, Art. 27, § 287 based on discovering the marijuana cigarette in the cigarette pack found in Carter’s lunch bag.1

On September 17, 1999, Carter filed a Request for Discovery and Motion to Produce Documents pursuant to Maryland Rule 4-263. In her discovery request, Carter asked the State to produce any relevant material concerning “[a]ny search or seizure of any kind of the Defendant ... together with a copy of all arrest warrants, search warrants, applications and affidavits in support thereof, inventories, and all reports regarding any such searches and seizures whether or not the State intends to use any so seized at any hearing in the above-captioned case or at the trial of this matter.”

Contemporaneous with her motion for production of documents, Carter filed a motion to suppress the evidence of the marijuana cigarette seized by Officer Cirko following her arrest.2 Specifically, the motion stated, “[t]hat articles of evidence taken from [Carter] by police authorities were ob[452]*452tained as the result of an illegal search and seizure in violation of [Carter’s] constitutional rights.”

A hearing was held on the motion to suppress on November 19,1999, at which time the State called Bea Trout and Officers Cirko and Moore to testify about Carter’s arrest and the seizure of the marijuana cigarette. In the midst of the State’s questioning of Bea Trout concerning her role in identifying Carter as the subject of the outstanding warrant defense counsel objected:

Your Honor, the State has an additional problem in, the case is Duggins v. State, it’s 7 Md.App. 486, 256 A.2d 354, it’s a 1969 case. And the blurb is where defendant’s counsel challenged the legality of a federal arrest warrant on [the] theory ... that ... the warrant was not properly completed and, therefore, legally defective, the State could not overcome the challenge by producing only testimony of those who procured warrants to the effect that it did exist and it was a lawful warrant. Now assuming the State is going to introduce a warrant somewhere in the evidence they produce, or testimony they produce before this Court, they need the warrant here in court. Hearsay testimony, what people say about the warrant is not sufficient under Maryland Law. It’s, it’s based in the. best evidence rule, but it goes further than that actually.

The trial court overruled the objection on both hearsay and Duggins grounds.

Officer Cirko thereafter gave the following account of the arrest, search and seizure of the marijuana cigarette during direct examination:

State: Did you make efforts to confirm, that warrant through Montgomery County?
Cirko: Our dispatch did, they notified us that the warrant was confirmed, and they were just waiting to find out whether it was going to be faxed to us, or whether Montgomery County wanted to come up and pick up Ms. Carter. State: And did you ever receive a copy of that warrant from Montgomery County?
[453]*453Cirko: Yes sir, it was faxed up to us.
State: And did you ever obtain possession of that warrant?
Cirko: Yes, Officer Moore would have, sir.
State: Following your taking Ms. Carter into custody was a search done of her?
Cirko: Yes sir, it was.
State: Who did that search?
Cirko: I searched her bag that she was carrying with her, and Officer Moore did the body search, the strip search of Ms. Carter.
State: When you searched her bag what did you do with the contents of that bag?
Cirko: I took the contents out of the bag individually, inspected all of it, inside the bag were some food items, and numerous personal items, along with a pack of cigarettes, when I took the cigarettes out of the pack I found a marijuana cigarette within the pack.
State: Were there other cigarettes in the pack?
Cirko: I do believe so, sir.
State: What did you do with the marijuana cigarette?
Cirko: It was confiscated, I field tested it, received a positive result for marijuana and it was sent to the lab and placed on property.

Thereafter, defense counsel cross-examined Officer Cirko:

Defense: ... Did you make an inventory of the contents of this bag?
Cirko: No sir.
Defense: Did you get a warrant for the bag?
Cirko: No sir.
Defense: Was the bag closed when you had it?

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Bluebook (online)
788 A.2d 646, 367 Md. 447, 2002 Md. LEXIS 6, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/carter-v-state-md-2002.