White v. State

781 A.2d 902, 140 Md. App. 520, 2001 Md. App. LEXIS 155
CourtCourt of Special Appeals of Maryland
DecidedSeptember 19, 2001
Docket1969, Sept. Term, 2000
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 781 A.2d 902 (White 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
White v. State, 781 A.2d 902, 140 Md. App. 520, 2001 Md. App. LEXIS 155 (Md. Ct. App. 2001).

Opinion

MURPHY, Chief Judge.

In the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, a jury (the Honorable John Grayson Turnbull, II, presiding) convicted Troy White, appellant, of first degree felony murder and related offenses, including use of a handgun in the commission of a felony. The State’s evidence was sufficient to establish that he committed each of those offenses. This appeal involves appellant’s challenges to the admissibility of that evidence and to Judge Turnbull’s felony murder instruction. Appellant presents us with three questions:

I. Did the trial court err in declining to suppress evidence derived from conversations regarding the crime of robbery which were intercepted during a narcotics wiretap?
II. Did the trial court err in declining to suppress appellant’s statements to homicide detectives which were made after he had invoked his right to counsel?
III. Did the trial court err in refusing to grant appellant’s requested instruction on felony murder?

For the reasons that follow, we shall affirm the judgments of the circuit court.

Factual Background

About 11:00 a.m. on February 7, 2000, appellant and three other men participated in a robbery at J. Brown Jewelers, a store located on Reisterstown Road. 1 Bruce Prothero, an off-duty Baltimore County police sergeant, working as a security guard at the store, was fatally shot by one of the robbers. *525 Approximately 30 watches, worth about $400,000, were stolen in the robbery.

On the day after the robbery, appellant was arrested by Baltimore County detectives who were able to identify him as a result of telephone calls that he made to a telephone number that was the subject of a wiretap order issued by a judge of the Circuit Court for Baltimore County. On January 14, 2000, the monitoring officers had intercepted an incoming telephone call from an individual identified as “Fats” (later identified as appellant) to Marcel Walton, one of the wiretap targets. During this call, “Fats” discussed his participation in a “smash and grab” jewelry store robbery in Tysons Comer, Virginia, during which expensive watches had been stolen. On February 7, 2000, while “working” the Walton wiretap, Detective Izaac Hester learned about the J.Brown “smash and grab” robbery and the murder of Sergeant Prothero.

Suspecting that “Fats” might be involved in that robbery, Detective Hester immediately notified the supervising judge that the detectives monitoring Walton’s telephone calls might overhear a discussion about the robbery. The supervising judge directed the officers to continue “spot monitoring” of incoming calls, in conformity with the “minimization” requirement of the wiretap order. The monitoring officers proceeded to intercept a series of calls between Walton and appellant. In one of the intercepted conversations, appellant informed Walton “that he had some Cartiers and Rolexes.”

Through the use of the court ordered surveillance equipment, the detectives were able to determine that “Fats” made one of the calls from a phone located at 1013 North Ellamont Street in Baltimore City, and a surveillance was set up outside that address. At about 1:15 p.m. on February 8, 2000, appellant emerged from 1013 North Ellamont Street, walked in one direction, then in the other direction, crossed the street, looked into the surveillance van, and began running. After appellant was captured, the police searched the residence with the consent of its occupant, Rachel Potts (“Potts”). A search of the living room turned up a plastic bag containing watches. *526 The bag had been stuffed into a couch. 2

On the day of his arrest, appellant initially invoked his right to counsel, but when Detective Phillip Marll advised him that he was being charged with first degree murder, he responded, “How can you charge me with murder? I didn’t kill nobody.” Appellant was presented with a statement of charges, and at this point stated that he “went in, broke a few display cases, stole some watches, but ... did not kill anyone.” Appellant thereafter executed a written acknowledgment of his Miranda rights and waiver of his right to counsel. Eventually, he made a full statement, admitting that he “played a part in it,” but emphasizing that he did not have a gun and stated several times that “[n]o one was supposed to get hurt.” Appellant claimed that, at the time Sergeant Prothero was shot, he and Donald White had already “pulled off the lot going to the rear of the store,” and that he did not even know who fired the fatal shot until later that day, when he “saw it on the news about the police officer,” at which point “Tony (Richard Moore) told [appellant] that [Moore] had to shoot the man.” Appellant also told the detectives where they could find the cars used in the robbery, where they could find the clothes he wore during the robbery, and where he purchased the mauls used to break the display cases.

Discussion

I.

Appellant argues that, even though his conversations were intercepted during the execution of a wiretap order that had been issued in strict compliance with all of the applicable Maryland and federal statutory requirements, 3 we must apply *527 the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine to the discovery of his identity and whereabouts because that information was derived from the interception of the telephone calls he placed on February 7, 2000. 4 There is no merit in that argument.

According to appellant, because the wiretap order authorized only the interception of conversations involving violations of the Maryland Controlled Dangerous Substances Act — and had not been amended at anytime thereafter — surveillance of appellant’s conversations about the February 7th robbery violated his Fourth Amendment and statutory rights. This argument is based on the proposition that, because the monitoring officers intercepted prior conversations about robberies, there was nothing “unanticipated” about the phone calls he placed on February 7, 2000, and the information derived from the interception of those phone calls must be suppressed because the monitoring officers had failed to “apply” as soon as practicable after January 14th for judicial authorization to intercept the now “expected” conversations regarding the crime of robbery. Appellant argues in his brief that the police were required to

apply “as soon as practicable” for judicial authorization to continue to listen to the now expected conversations regarding the crime of robbery. See Maryland Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article (1998 Repl.Vol.) Section 10-407(e); ...
... What would be “reasonable under the circumstances,” then, would be for the police to follow both their strict *528

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
781 A.2d 902, 140 Md. App. 520, 2001 Md. App. LEXIS 155, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/white-v-state-mdctspecapp-2001.