Harrod v. State

993 A.2d 1113, 192 Md. App. 85, 2010 Md. App. LEXIS 63
CourtCourt of Special Appeals of Maryland
DecidedApril 30, 2010
Docket1177 September Term, 2008
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 993 A.2d 1113 (Harrod v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Special Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Harrod v. State, 993 A.2d 1113, 192 Md. App. 85, 2010 Md. App. LEXIS 63 (Md. Ct. App. 2010).

Opinion

DEBORAH S. EYLER, Judge.

On the evening of January 27, 2007, two Montgomery County police officers, working off-duty as private security for the Majestic Movie Theater in Silver Spring, but dressed in their standard police uniforms, were approached by a male patron who told them that a man in the concession line who appeared to be intoxicated had threatened him with a knife. *94 He pointed out a man, later identified as Darryl K. Harrod, the appellant, as the person who had threatened him. The officers responded by escorting the appellant from the line and placing him against a nearby pillar, where they frisked him for weapons. When one of the officers reached into the appellant’s pocket to retrieve what he believed was a folding knife, he discovered a large plastic baggie containing crack-cocaine. The item the officer thought was a knife in fact was a cigarette lighter.

The appellant was first tried in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County on August 28 and 29, 2007, on charges of second-degree assault and possession with intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance. He was acquitted of the assault charge, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the possession with intent to distribute charge, resulting in a mistrial as to that count. In a retrial on March 4 and 5, 2008, the appellant was convicted of the possession with intent to distribute charge.

The appellant presents the following questions on appeal, which we have reordered as:

I. Did the trial court err in failing to grant [his] suppression motion because the search violated the Fourth Amendment?
II. Did the trial court err in admitting the prior testimony of Officer [Pete] Duggan and the chemist Susan Cohen from the first trial?
III. Did the trial court err in admitting the chemist report [on the narcotics recovered from his person]?

For the reasons stated below, we shall affirm the judgment. For ease of discussion, we shall summarize the pertinent facts and proceedings issue by issue.

DISCUSSION

I.

The Suppression Hearing

Prior to trial, the appellant moved to suppress the narcotics discovered in his possession as the product of an illegal search *95 and seizure. The suppression hearing took place on August 27, 2007, the day before the start of the first trial. The two Montgomery County police officers who performed the search, Sergeant Detective Paul Liquorie and Patrol Officer Omar Tortolero, testified on behalf of the State. Joan Burriss, a friend of the appellant who had accompanied him to the theater on the evening in question, appeared on behalf of the defense.

The officers testified that they were standing in the general patron area of the theater, when they were approached by a “Mr. Felice Arias,” 1 who claimed he had bumped into someone in the concession line, and that the person had “pulled out a knife” and “tr[ied] to pick ... a fight.” According to the officers, Arias told them the person smelled of alcohol and that he had threatened to “put [Arias] to sleep.” The officers did not witness anything that corroborated Arias’s story, but Sergeant Liquorie found it “very unusual for someone just to come up out of the blue and tell you that someone ... got into a fight with them.” Arias did not specify when the incident had occurred, but Sergeant Liquorie’s impression was that it “had just happened.” Sergeant Liquorie requested that Arias identify the person who had threatened him, and Arias pointed to the appellant. Arias then left the scene. He did not describe the knife, and none of his statements were recorded by the officers. 2

The officers approached the appellant and asked him to walk to a large pillar approximately ten steps from the concession line. Sergeant Liquorie directed the appellant to the pillar by placing his hand on the appellant’s arm. Both officers noticed that the appellant’s eyes were bloodshot, and that his breath and body smelled of alcohol. The appellant was ordered by Sergeant Liquorie to place his hands on the *96 pillar and stand in a frisk position. 3 Sergeant Liquorie then patted down the appellant while Officer Tortolero stood in a back-up role, watching the appellant’s hands to ensure he did not reach for a weapon.

When Sergeant Liquorie reached the appellant’s left front pants pocket, he “felt an object at the bottom of the pocket that [he] believed could possibly be a folded knife.” When he put his hand in the pocket to retrieve the object he thought was a knife, he discovered on top of the suspected knife “a large baggie holding several other smaller red baggies which [he] immediately identified as crack cocaine.” The sergeant also discovered that the suspected knife was actually a “Bic like style cigarette lighter.” He explained that he mistook the lighter as a folding-style pocket knife because the appellant was wearing heavy sweat pants that made it “hard to manipulate anything through the exterior.”

After the lighter and baggie of narcotics were seized, the officers handcuffed the appellant and escorted him outside the movie theater. There, Officer Pete Duggan, an on-duty Montgomery County Police Officer, took the appellant and the items of evidence into custody. As noted, Joan Burriss testified for the defense. She stated that, before the encounter with the police officers, she was standing next to the appellant in the concession line and that a “fair-skinned” African-American male who was also standing in line was blocking them from moving forward. Both Burriss and the appellant said “excuse me” to prompt the individual to move. The individual “just stood there.” Eventually, the man told them to “go ahead” and walked out of the line. At that point, she and the appellant were approached by the officers.

The officers did not speak with Burriss before or after escorting the appellant to the pillar. According to Burriss, the officers took a fighter, a pack of cigarettes, and a cell phone from the appellant’s pockets. She claimed she had not *97 seen the appellant drink any alcohol that evening, nor could she smell alcohol on his breath or person.

At the conclusion of the hearing, the motion court denied the appellant’s motion. The court found that the officers had conducted a Terry 4 stop and frisk for a weapon and “nothing more.” Although the court was “disturb[ed]” by the level of force used by the officers to remove the appellant from the line and place him against the pillar, it found that the officers had stayed within “the scope and purpose of a Terry stop” in their conduct, and that the narcotics were discovered by mere inadvertence when Sergeant Liquorie retrieved what he thought was a weapon from the appellant’s pants pocket. The circumstances recounted by the court as justifying the Terry

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
993 A.2d 1113, 192 Md. App. 85, 2010 Md. App. LEXIS 63, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/harrod-v-state-mdctspecapp-2010.