Johnson v. State

ERON JOHNSON v. STATE OF MARYLAND

No. 2383

COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND

September Term, 2018

September 18, 2019

Circuit Court for Baltimore City

Case No. 117142004

UNREPORTED

Wright, Kehoe, Alpert, Paul E. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.

Opinion by Alpert, J.

*This is an unreported opinion, and it may not be cited in any paper, brief, motion, or other document filed in this Court or any other Maryland Court as either precedent within the rule of stare decisis or as persuasive authority. Md. Rule 1-104.

Appellant, Eron Johnson, was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City of multiple sex offenses, second-degree assault, and reckless endangerment.¹ On appeal from his convictions, appellant presents the following questions for our review:

1. Did the [circuit] court err in concluding that police had reasonable suspicion to stop Mr. Johnson?

2. Did the [circuit] court err in concluding that Mr. Johnson's custodial statement to police, and waiver of Miranda rights, were voluntary?

3. Did the [circuit] court err in admitting a 911 call made by an unknown declarant?

Finding no error, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

The evidence produced at the suppression hearing showed that on April 27, 2017 at 2:40 a.m., Lieutenant Troy Walton of the Baltimore Police Department responded to a 911 report of "a woman screaming in the area of Old Town Mall." Lieutenant Walton arrived at the 400 block of Old Town Mall and assisted two other officers "stop an individual in reference to a woman screaming and an individual running from the scene." Lieutenant Walton identified appellant as the individual he stopped, approximately five hundred feet from the Old Town Mall.

When appellant was stopped, he stated, "I didn't do anything, I didn't do anything, I was just taking a piss." Lieutenant Walton observed that appellant "wasn't naked, he was clothed[,]" and "his pants were unzipped."

Appellant was handcuffed and the lieutenant performed a quick pat-down of appellant's clothes. Appellant was detained briefly while police spoke with P.M.-R.² P.M.-R. identified appellant as "as the person who had raped her," and he was arrested. P.M.-R. also informed police that appellant had a knife. Lieutenant Walton then searched appellant and found a knife in his front pants pocket.

Lieutenant Walton testified that, at the time he stopped appellant, he was investigating a report of a woman screaming in the area. He did not have any information concerning a rape at that time. Lieutenant Walton stated that the investigation became a sex offense investigation only after officers spoke with P.M.-R. and she reported to them that she had been raped.

The suppression court determined that police had reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity to stop appellant:

What the information at the time imparted to the officers was that they were responding to calls for a screaming woman in a -- what used to be a commercial area but largely a vacant area now of an area just outside of downtown and therefore people don't scream unless they're apprehending some sort of harm, it's reasonable for the officers to sense that there was some sort of violence happening or about to happen.

One officer arrives on the scene, and this is all information that's obtained by the lieutenant through police communications, indicates that he sees from the area of the alleged victim a person fleeing, that person is stopped pursuant to that officer's information, that person turns out to be [appellant]. They stop and they hold him sort of in a neutral position, i.e, but they do in fact detain him in the [Terry]³ sense of the word. They cuff him and do a brief pat down, and inasmuch as they're investigating at this pointwhat reasonably can be construed as a potentially violent crime they do a pat down and that is justified under the various progeny of [Terry]. And although they don't actually do a thorough [] search they are allowed for police safety to do that pat down, frisk.

As noted, the sole issue in this appeal is whether the police had reasonable suspicion to conduct a Terry stop of appellant.⁴

DISCUSSION

I. The Terry Stop

Appellant contends that the suppression court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence of the knife found in his pocket after he was unlawfully stopped by police. Appellant argues that police lacked reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed and particularized suspicion that he was engaged in wrongdoing to justify stopping and detaining him.

The State counters that the police had reasonable suspicion to stop appellant, given that the police were responding to a 911 report of criminal activity after 2:00 a.m., in a largely abandoned area, and they observed appellant fleeing from the area when they arrived. The State contends that because the stop of appellant was lawful, the motions court properly denied appellant's motion to suppress the knife that was subsequently seized from him.

The Court of Appeals recently reaffirmed the standard of review for a motion to suppress:

Our review of a circuit court's denial of a motion to suppress evidence is limited to the record developed at the suppression hearing. We assess the record in the light most favorable to the party who prevails on the issue that the defendant raises in the motion to suppress. We accept the trial court's factual findings unless they are clearly erroneous, but we review de novo the court's application of the law to its findings of fact. When a party raises a constitutional challenge to a search or seizure, this Court renders an independent constitutional evaluation by reviewing the relevant law and applying it to the unique facts and circumstances of the case.

Pacheco v. State, ___ Md. ___, No. 17, Sept. Term 2018, slip. op. at 4 (filed August 12, 2019) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 8 (1968). For Fourth Amendment purposes, there are three categories of encounters between citizens and police: (1) the arrest; (2) the investigatory stop or Terry stop; and (3) the consensual encounter. Swift v. State, 393 Md. 139, 149-50 (2006); Mack v. State, 237 Md. App. 488, 493-94 (2018). The second type of encounter, the Terry stop, constitutes "a Fourth Amendment intrusion upon a citizen's otherwise unfettered freedom," and because it is less intrusive than an arrest, it does not require probable cause, but rather, a "reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity" and "can only last as long as it takes a police officer to confirm or to dispel his [or her] suspicions." Pyon v. State, 222 Md. App. 412, 420-21 (2015) (quoting Swift, 393 Md. at 150) (internal quotation marks omitted).

There is no uniform test for determining what circumstances constitute reasonable suspicion. Crosby v. State, 408 Md. 490, 507 (2009). While reasonable suspicion is a less demanding standard than probable cause, it nevertheless embraces something more than an "inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or 'hunch.'" Id. (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at27). A court's determination of whether a law enforcement officer acted with reasonable suspicion must be based on the totality of the circumstances. Id. (citation omitted); United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 (2002). "We have described the standard as a common sense, nontechnical conception that considers factual and practical aspects of daily life and how reasonable and prudent people act." Holt v. State, 435 Md. 443, 460 (2013) (citations and quotation marks omitted). We "assess the evidence through the prism of an experienced law enforcement officer, and 'give due deference to the training and experience of the . . . officer who engaged the stop at issue.'" Id. at 461 (quoting Crosby, 408 Md. at 508).

In this case, police were responding to a radio call of a woman heard screaming in an area of vacant commercial buildings at 2:40 a.m. Upon arrival, police observed appellant running from the immediate area of the buildings. These facts, viewed together, were sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion that appellant was engaged in criminal activity and warranted further investigation. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 124 (2000) ("Headlong flight - wherever it occurs - is the consummate act of evasion: It is not necessarily indicative of wrongdoing, but it is certainly suggestive of such"); Grant v. State, 55 Md. App. 1, 21 (1983) (noting that "special credence" should be given to an officer's assessment of the "characteristics of the area and the behavior of a suspect who appears to be evading police contact") (citation and quotation marks omitted); Watkins v. State, 288 Md. 597, 603-04 (1980) (recognizing that flight, when "corroborated by other suspicious circumstances," may provide reasonable grounds for a stop).

Appellant argues that police had nothing more than an inchoate and unparticularized "hunch" of criminal activity, because they were not yet investigating a sexual assault, nor did they have any reason to suspect that he was involved in criminal activity when they stopped him. We are aware of no cases requiring police to identify a specific category of criminal activity to establish reasonable suspicion. Rather, police must have a "particularized and objective basis' for suspecting legal wrongdoing." Collins v. State, 376 Md. 359, 368 (2003) (quoting Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 273) (further citations omitted). Certainly a person running, alone, from an area of vacant buildings in the middle of the night, immediately following a radio call for police to respond to a report of someone screaming at that location, was sufficiently suspicious of criminal activity to warrant an investigatory stop of appellant. See Sizer v. State, 456 Md. 350, 372-73 (2017) (noting significance of defendant's flight in course of police investigation, such that "officers were not required to simply...