The Baltimore Police Department routinely violates the constitutional rights of violent crime victims by searching, seizing and retaining their personal property without a warrant or consent, a civil rights group has alleged in a lawsuit filed last week in federal ...

Tagged with: Baltimore Police Department fourth amendment Lawyers' Committee Search and seizure victims' rights

Maryland’s top court ended its 2019-2020 session last week having issued landmark rulings permitting the admission of evidence based on emerging sciences, creating a cause of action for breach of fiduciary duty and ruling that police may not arrest and ...

Tagged with: Daubert fiduciary duty fourth amendment marijuana rules of evidence Search and seizure

Police officers lack probable cause to arrest and search someone for marijuana possession simply for smelling of the drug, because possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana is not a crime in Maryland, the state’s top court unanimously ruled ...

Tagged with: fourth amendment Marijuana Decriminalization marijuana smell probable cause Search and seizure

ANNAPOLIS — Police have probable cause to arrest someone for marijuana possession and to search him or her if they clearly smell the drug on the person – even though possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana is not ...

Tagged with: 4th Amendment marijuana marijuana odor probable cause Search and seizure

Police responding to an anonymous 911 call regarding potentially illegal activity are best advised to keep a recording of that call, lest a subsequent stop, arrest and conviction be overturned on appeal. And if a recording does not exist, the ...

Tagged with: 9/11 reasonable articulable suspicion Search and seizure

In a decision addressing when police can constitutionally give chase, Maryland’s top court held Tuesday that officers were justified in seizing a person who ran from them while they were investigating who among a group drinking alcohol had thrown a ...

Tagged with: fourth amendment gun possession Illinois v. Wardlow Search and seizure

ANNAPOLIS – Prosecutors heavily criticized Thursday a bill they said would “attempt to change hundreds of years of Supreme Court case law” but advocates said ensures police would not be rewarded for conducting searches without probable cause. Del. Curt Anderson, ...

Tagged with: fourth amendment General Assembly house judiciary committee Search and seizure

Day contests the motions court’s ruling that he lacked standing to challenge the seizure of the handgun from the motel room he paid for. The State agrees.

Tagged with: criminal procedure evidence Prince George's County Search and seizure Sept. Term 2013 Thieme

Appellant argues that a reasonable person would not feel free to leave when the officers approached him and activated their emergency lights on their patrol cars. The officer’s show of authority did not ripen into a seizure because the officers had not restrained appellant physically nor had appellant submitted to the officers’ show of authority.

Tagged with: criminal procedure dorchester county evidence Raker Search and seizure Sept. Term 2013 sufficiency of the evidence

Appellant argues that he was seized at the moment he was first confronted by Officer Burns and that he remained under an alleged Terry detention for between 20 and 30 minutes without any reasonable suspicion that he was then engaging or had engaged in any unlawful activity.

Tagged with: Baltimore County evidence Search and seizure Sept. Term 2014