Articles Posted in Criminal justice news

by

The Supreme Court today granted certiorari in three cases Birchfield v. North Dakota (14-1468); Bernard v. Minnesota (14-1470); and Beylund v. North Dakota (14-1506).  These cases raise the question left open after the Court’s decision in Missouri v. McNeely, 133 S.Ct. 1552 (2013): can a state make the refusal to submit to a breath or blood test for alcohol a crime, punishable by imprisonment?

Police are presumptively required to obtain a warrant before obtaining a blood test for alcohol.  Missouri v. McNeely, 133 S.Ct. 1552 (2013).  The Supreme Court will now decide whether a warrant is required for a breath test, whether the refusal to consent to a breath or blood test can be made a crime, and whether advice that refusal is a crime carrying a possible jail sentence renders any consent to submit to a breath or blood test coerced and involuntary.  However, relevant authority and review of Supreme Court cases compels an answer of yes – a warrant is required for a breath test, no – a refusal to consent to a breath test cannot be made illegal without violating the Fourth Amendment, and yes, advising a suspect that refusal is a crime punishable by imprisonment renders any consent given coerced and involuntary.

Warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable.  Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967).  Where there is a warrantless search, the government has the burden of proving the legality of the search, that it was conducted pursuant to a recognized exception to the warrant requirement, such as exigent circumstances, consent, and search incident to an arrest.  In United States v. Reid, 929 F.2d 990 (4th Cir. 1991), the Fourth Circuit held that a warrant was not required to conduct a breath test during a DUI investigation because a breath test was a permissible search incident to an arrest and was conducted under exigent circumstances.  However, Reid was overruled by McNeely, to the extent that it relied on exigent circumstances. United States v. Brooks, No. CRIM. PWG-14-0053, 2014 WL 2042028, at *5 (D. Md. May 16, 2014).  The search incident rationale of Reid is also no longer valid due to the Supreme Court decisions in Arizona v. Gant, 129 S.Ct. 1710 (2009) and Riley v. California, 134 S.Ct. 2473 (2014).  The final possible applicable exception to the warrant requirement is consent.  However, where, the “consent” is obtained by a threat of incarceration, the consent is coerced and is not voluntary.  State v. Won, 2015 WL 7574360, — P.3d — (Haw. 2015).

Continue reading

by

This week Donald Trump, the leading Republican contender for President, proposed banning all Muslims from entering the country, as one of his solutions to deal with ISIS inspired terrorism in the homeland.  This bigoted and anti-American proposal, on top of his anti-Mexican, misogynistic, and crude comments have only enhanced his standing in the polls, to the shame of us all.  His reliance on demonstrably false information to support his claims is no hindrance to him or his followers.  In response, I commend to you a piece by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Time Magazine.  His article, What Donald Trump and ISIS Have in Common, explains how Trump’s proposal is against everything we stand for, and is unconstitutional to boot.

We have seen this before.  History has taught us that what starts out as harmful speech targeting a race, religion, or ethnic group, frequently evolves into discriminatory behavior with real consequences to members of the targeted group.  This type of damage has occurred too many times to recount, at its extremes leading to the worst kinds of violence and genocide.  The appeal to emotions, rather than reason, can entice the best of us to do bad things.  That is why we are so fortunate to live in a country governed by the rule of law with constitutionally protected freedoms and rights.

When a sizeable portion of the electorate is impelled by fear or demagoguery to act lawlessly or even to change the laws to target a race, religion or ethnic group, the Constitution provides a brake.  Similarly, when the public’s reaction to crimes impels the State to target an individual who everyone “knows” is the perpetrator or has committed a crime, the law requires evidence, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and honor to our rules requiring adherence to First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment protections that minimize the risk that an innocent person would be convicted.  Freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, against unreasonable searches and seizures, against compelled self-incrimination, the right to counsel, notice, jury trials, due process and equal protection of the laws protects us all.  Our Constitution minimizes the risk that a lynch mob led by the likes of Donald Trump would ever subvert the fairness and even handedness of our laws or our criminal justice system.  We can only hope that the Constitution continues to protect us as we face new challenges posed by cynical or mindless opponents.

Continue reading

by

The Hawaii Supreme Court announced its decision today in State v. Won.  The court held that where a suspect in a DUI case is told that it is a crime to refuse to submit to an alcohol test, that consent to submit to the test is coerced and invalid because it is not voluntary.   The Fourth Amendment requires that searches be conducted pursuant to a search warrant or the government must rely on an exception to the warrant requirement.  In most DUI cases, the government relies on consent to justify warrantless breath and blood tests.  However, some jurisdictions have criminalized refusal to submit to a test, providing that refusal can result in a jail sentence.

The Hawaii court said:

Where arrest, conviction, and imprisonment are threatened if consent to search is not given, the threat infringes upon and oppresses the unfettered will and free choice of the person to whom it is made, whether by calculation or effect.30 See id. at 261-63, 925 P.2d at 829-31 (finding that a permissive response to a request to search the defendant resulted only from “inherently coercive” circumstances that were “calculated to overbear [the defendant’s] will”); Pauʻu, 72 Haw. at 508, 824 P.2d at 835 (same). Thus, the threat of the criminal sanction communicated by the Implied Consent Form for refusal to submit to a BAC test is inherently coercive.  [Footnotes omitted].

Continue reading

by

Today the New York Times featured on its front page a story about a Baltimore woman who had to endure a $25,000 bond, numerous court appearances, a suspended drivers’ license, and 34 days in the Baltimore City Jail for a first offense DUI with a 0.09 BAC reading: On Probation Lives Can Run Far Off Track – A Maze of Fines, Court Dates and Penalties by Shaila Dewan.  The judge assumed the defendant was a problem drinker without first getting an evaluation and ordered three AA meetings a week as well as required permission for her to move.  Failure to request permission before attempting to move was the first alleged violation of probation.  The failure to provide proof of all of the required AA meetings landed her in jail for 34 days with a $5000 bond she couldn’t afford, before she saw a judge.  The judge gave her a conviction which led to a six month driver license suspension.

The article quoted Leonard R. Stamm.

For a woman of Mrs. Hall’s weight, assuming drinks were consumed over a four-hour period, the difference between 0.06, considered “neutral,” and 0.09 would have been about one glass of wine, according to Leonard R. Stamm, a Maryland defense lawyer who specializes in drunken-driving cases.

Continue reading

by

The Court of Appeals announced its decision in Norton v. State today.  I was privileged to have been local counsel on the amicus brief filed by the Innocence Network in this case.  The case was a win for Norton, but more importantly, it was a win for all defendants who wish to confront scientific evidence offered against them in court.

The rules governing application of the Confrontation Clause have been changing over the past few years.  A series of cases had helped to expand the ability of defendants to confront scientific evidence: Crawford v. Washington, Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, and Bullcoming v. New Mexico.  These cases required the State to produce in court a chemist who actually tested a defendant’s blood in a DUI case.  I was also privileged to have helped to write the amicus brief filed in Bullcoming by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National College for DUI Defense.

Unfortunately, in Williams v. Illinois, the Supreme Court backtracked and ruled that in a DNA case, the State did not have to produce the analyst.  However, there was no majority for what became a plurality opinion of four justices.  There were also four justices in dissent.  The deciding vote was cast by Justice Thomas, who agreed with the dissenting justices with respect to their reasoning but voted to not require confrontation because the document stating what the DNA results were was not sufficiently formal.  This confusing alignment of justices brought into question what rule should be applied by the lower courts.

Continue reading

by

In this blog, I want to weave a couple of strands of thought together here on the Fourth and Fifth of July, as I complete the 2015 update for the 8th edition of my Maryland DUI Law.

As defense lawyers, we are trained to look for the good facts in our cases, and the good traits of our clients, so that we may use the good to persuade judges and juries at trial, and judges at sentencing. What we find is that there are very few people that are all good or all bad. At the same time many of us, through one path or another, end up advocating on particular issues. The issues we may end up being most involved with are not necessarily the most noble, but with so many issues and so little time, we must pick and choose.

Two issues that I am particularly proud of having had the opportunity to argue for are Fourth Amendment issues, the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable and/or illegal searches and seizures, and the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation, guaranteeing that witnesses testifying against our clients be present in the courtroom to be cross-examined. I helped to write amicus briefs in both the Fourth Amendment case of Missouri v. McNeely, and the Sixth Amendment case of Bullcoming v. New Mexico. In McNeely, the Supreme Court held that dispensing with a warrant to obtain a blood sample in a DUI case should never be the norm. In Bullcoming, the Supreme Court held that the actual chemist who tested the defendant’s blood must be present in court for cross-examination. These are important cases, and the government and many lower court judges are doing everything they can to work around them.

Continue reading

by

Governor Hogan vetoed a bill that would have removed criminal penalties from possession of paraphernalia used to smoke marijuana. This legislation is needed to eliminate an inconsistency in the law because it is no longer criminal to possess under 10 grams of marijuana in Maryland. However, according to a Washington Post article, “The governor said he vetoed the marijuana legislation because it would have created uncertainty about whether individuals can smoke pot while driving.” This makes no sense at all. In Maryland it is illegal to drive while impaired by a drug if it makes the driver unable to drive safely and while under the influence of a controlled dangerous substance, including marijuana. While a glance at the legislation shows that a provision specifically making it illegal to smoke marijuana while driving was deleted from the bill, the omission of that provision does not change the law on driving while impaired by drugs or while under the influence of controlled dangerous substances.
Continue reading

by

Today, the Supreme Court released its decision and opinion in Rodriguez v. United States. This was not just a defense win. It was a win for anyone who travels in a car and may be stopped by the police for a traffic violation. The six justices in the majority were Ginsburg (who wrote the opinion), Roberts, Scalia, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer.

Rodriguez had been stopped for driving on the shoulder. After the officer had checked his license and registration, found no warrants, and wrote a warning and handed it to Rodriguez, he required Rodriguez to stay at the location for a dog sniff of his car. The dog signaled that the car had drugs and police recovered the drugs.

The problem was that the officer had no further basis to suspect Rodriguez had done anything wrong at the time he continued to detain Rodriguez for a dog sniff. The purpose of the traffic stop had been completed. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the extended detention was de minimus and not sufficient to require suppression of the evidence found.

The Supreme Court reversed. It said:

We hold that a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures. A seizure justified only by a police-observed traffic violation, therefore, “become[s] unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete th[e] mission” of issuing a ticket for the violation.

What this means is that police can investigate other crimes during the time that it would take to write a ticket, but cannot use a search for which the police do not have articulable reasonable suspicion to extend that time. They cannot dilly dally or delay writing the ticket in order to conduct an illegal search.
Continue reading

by

On March 4, 2015, Leonard Stamm testified in opposition to House Bill 532 which would require officers to tell suspected drunk drivers in a fatal or life threatening injury crash that they are required to submit to an alcohol test. Here is the written version of his testimony:

My name is Leonard Stamm. I have been in private practice defending persons accused of drunk driving and other crimes for over 30 years. I am currently Assistant Dean of The National College for DUI Defense, a nationwide organization with over 1300 lawyer members. I am a former president of the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Association. In 2014, I had the privilege of co-authoring an amicus brief filed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and The National College for DUI Defense in the Supreme Court case of Missouri v. McNeely, 133 S. Ct. 1552, 185 L. Ed. 2d 696 (2013) . The Supreme Court held that a drunk driving arrest does not automatically create exigent circumstances that would relieve the police of their obligation to first seek a search warrant based on probable cause before compelling a driver to submit to a blood test.

For cases where the arrest occurred before April 17, 2014, the day that McNeely was decided, many courts have upheld admission of tests on the ground that where police objectively reasonably relied on a statue not yet held to be unconstitutional, that it would be on it inappropriate to apply the exclusionary rule and suppress the blood test. However, for cases where the arrest occurs after April 17, 2014, that claim of objectively reasonable reliance on an unconstitutional statute is less likely to prevail. The end result of passing the proposed amendment to § 16-205.1 could ironically be that tests showing the driver to be impaired by alcohol and/or drugs would likely be suppressed and withheld from the fact-finder.
Continue reading

by

1. Change “reasonable grounds” in § 16-205.1 to “probable cause”

The Fourth Amendment requires articulable reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle, Whren v. U.S., 517 U.S. 806, 116 S. Ct. 1769, 135 L. Ed. 2d 89 (1996) and probable cause to effect an arrest. Hayes v. Florida, 470 U.S. 811, 105 S. Ct. 1643, 84 L. Ed. 2d 705 (1985). However, the Court of Appeals has made it clear that the Fourth Amendment does not apply in MVA hearings. Motor Vehicle Admin. v. Richards, 356 Md. 356, 739 A.2d 58 (1999).

The officer is not required to recite the basis for the stop on the sworn statement submitted to the MVA in support of a suspension. Motor Vehicle Admin. v. Lipella, 427 Md. 455, 48 A.3d 803 (2012). The driver may only prevail on the ground of a bad stop if the driver shows the officer acted in bad faith in effecting the stop. Id.; COMAR 11.11.02.10(H).

Transp. § 16-205.1 requires an officer to detain the driver and request a test if the officer has “reasonable grounds” to believe the driver is driving while impaired. In Motor Vehicle Admin. v. Shepard, 399 Md. 241, 923 A.2d 100 (2007) the Court of Appeals construed “reasonable grounds” to be the equivalent of articulable reasonable suspicion to believe the driver is impaired. Thus while the Fourth Amendment requires the officer to have probable cause before making an arrest, § 16-205.1 requires the officer to “detain,” i.e., effectively arrest the driver, with articulable reasonable suspicion. Thus the officer is given conflicting instructions, to not make and to make an arrest at the same time, if there is only articulable reasonable suspicion.

Cases after Shepard have considered various factual scenarios, each sustaining suspensions with less evidence than the previous case, lowering the evidence required to sustain a finding of “reasonable grounds” and weakening the protection against unreasonable detention encompassed within the Fourth Amendment. E.g., Motor Vehicle Admin. v. Shea, 415 Md. 1, 997 A.2d 768 (2010)(seatbelt stop, moderate odor, performed standardized field sobriety tests, but no results given); Motor Vehicle Admin. v. Sanner, 434 Md. 20, 73 A.3d 214 (2013)(strong odor of alcohol coupled with having been involved in an accident). The most recent case from the Court of Appeals on this issue, Motor Vehicle Admin. v. Spies, 436 Md. 363, 82 A.3d 179 (2013), held that if the officer claims to detect a moderate odor of an alcohol beverage, reasonable grounds exist.

The holding in Spies is contrary to holdings from other states. For example, see Saucier v. State, 869 P.2d 483 (Alaska Ct. App. 1994) (slight weaving across line, “normal” odor of alcohol beverage, admission of couple drinks, and refusal of field tests); Keehn v. Town of Torrington, 834 P.2d 112 (Wyo. 1992) (summary judgment affirmed in suit against officer for releasing defendant who subsequently killed two people); State v. Kliphouse, 771 So.2d 16 (Fla. App. 2000) (unconscious motorcyclist who did not cause accident had odor of alcohol beverage); State v. Taylor, 444 N.E.2d 481 (Oh. App. 1981) (speeding and odor of alcohol beverage); People v. Royball, 655 P.2d 410 (Colo. 1982) (odor of alcohol alone, accident without fault established); but see, State v. Gillenwater, 980 P.2d 318 (Wash. App. 1999) (fatal accident, driver not at fault, odor of alcoholic beverage on both motorist and deceased passenger, three opened beer cans).

The Ohio Court of Appeals, in State v. Taylor, 444 N.E.2d 481 (Ohio Ct. App. 1981) stated:

The mere odor of alcohol about a driver’s person, not even characterized by such customary adjectives as “pervasive” or “strong,” may be indicia of alcohol ingestion, but is no more a probable indication of intoxication than eating a meal is of gluttony. For better or worse, the law prohibits drunken driving, not driving after a drink.

Id. at 482.

In City of Hutchinson v. Davenport, 54 P.3d 532 (Kan. App. 2002), the Kansas Court of Appeals held that the odor of an alcoholic beverage on the defendant’s breath, without any other evidence was insufficient to support the stop of the defendant’s vehicle. In that case the defendant drove to a local jail to secure bond for a friend who had been arrested. When he left a police officer, who detected the odor of an alcohol beverage on the defendant’s breath, advised him not to drive and the defendant agreed. Not long afterward, the same officer saw the defendant driving his vehicle and stopped him.

The court stated:

Even with the lesser requirements of the reasonable suspicion standard, the trial court properly determined that there were no articulable facts which create a suspicion that Davenport was driving while under the influence or was involved in any other criminal activity. Even if we combine the knowledge of Henderson and Miller, the only facts suggestive of unusual conduct are that Davenport had alcohol on his breath and that he stated he was walking. Neither of these facts by themselves or together create a reasonable suspicion that justified Miller stopping Davenport in the absence of some indication that he was intoxicated and too impaired to drive.
The City cites many cases to bolster its argument that the stop was proper. In each situation where the court found the stop to be proper, however, there were some facts which indicated that the defendant had engaged in some illegal activity prior to being stopped. Here, no such facts exist. Alcohol on one’s breath alone does not provide a reasonable suspicion to support a stop, nor does the statement by Davenport that he was walking.

Davenport, 54 P.3d at 535.

A chief danger of the lower standard and eased application of that standard is that a number of drivers who are not impaired will be stopped and detained, and as a result of reasons that may be consistent with innocence will refuse to submit to a breath test and will face license suspension and/or ignition interlock. In counsel’s experience, people refuse for a myriad of reasons, including, but not limited to, misunderstanding the advice of sanctions provided by the police or being improperly induced by the officer to refuse the test. This was recognized by the Maryland State Bar Association Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction Committee in the jury instruction for refusal which states:

MPJI-Cr 4:10.5
Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol and Driving While Impaired by Alcohol — Effect of Refusal to Submit to Blood or Breath Test

You have heard evidence that the defendant refused to submit to a test to determine [his] [her] [alcohol level] [the presence of drugs or a controlled dangerous substance]. You must first decide whether the defendant refused to submit to a test. If you find that the defendant refused to submit to a test, you must then decide whether this refusal is evidence of guilt. Refusal to submit to a test may be based on reasons that are consistent with innocence or other reasons that are consistent with guilt. In order to decide whether the defendant refused to submit to a test and what, if any, weight to give the refusal, you should consider all of the evidence in the case.

If § 16-205.1 were amended to replace the phrase “reasonable grounds” with “probable cause” in every location where it appears, the obligations imposed on police officers and protections available to drivers would be the same as is provided by the Fourth Amendment. Additionally, the danger that innocent drivers will be swept up in the broad drunk driving dragnet would be reduced.
Continue reading

Contact Information
Capital Office Park
6301 Ivy Lane # 504
Greenbelt, Maryland 20770
Phone: 301-345-0122
Toll Free: 800-256-8172
Fax: 301-441-4652

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2026, Goldstein & Stamm, P.A.
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design