Maryland Appellate Court: Search & seizure

Listen to this article

Search & seizure; collective knowledge

BOTTOM LINE: Where the police seized an identification card and bloodied clothing while the defendant was being treated for a gunshot injury at a hospital, the circuit court erred when it held that officers’ collective knowledge justified the seizures.

CASE: Martin v. State, No. 101, Sept. Term 2024 (filed Nov. 21, 2025) (Judges Friedman, TANG, Wright).

FACTS: After a multi-day jury trial, the circuit court convicted Kimery Darren Martin of attempted voluntary manslaughter, second-degree assault and related firearms offenses in connection with the shooting of William Mason. On appeal, the appellant challenges the denial of his motion to suppress the seizure of his identification card and bloodied clothing while being treated for a gunshot injury at the hospital.

LAW: Under the Fourth Amendment, a defendant must have standing to challenge the search and/or seizure in question in order to litigate the possible suppression of evidence. Here, however, the state did not assert at the suppression hearing that the appellant lacked a legitimate expectation of privacy in the items seized, as the state now does for the first time on appeal. By not raising the standing issue at the suppression hearing “by even the most informal of oral pleadings,” the state failed to preserve it for appeal.

Turning to the merits, in denying the motion to suppress, the circuit court determined that the collective knowledge of the Prince George’s County Police Department and Metropolitan Police Department, or MPD, officers justified the seizure of the items. However, the court erred in relying on the collective knowledge doctrine for two reasons.

There was no evidence that an officer who possessed sufficient information to support probable cause instructed an officer who lacked that information to make an arrest or, as in this case, to seize items. Nor did the evidence present a situation where an officer without independent knowledge of facts sufficient to establish probable cause made an arrest or, as in this case, seized items, based on communication from or with a team of officers who collectively knew facts sufficient to establish probable cause.

Based on the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing, the collective knowledge of the officers did not establish probable cause or justify the seizure of the items under an exception to the warrant requirement. For the reasons stated, the court erred in finding that the warrantless seizure of the items was justified under the collective knowledge doctrine.

The state argues that the warrantless seizure of the items was nevertheless justifiable because the warrantless seizure fell under the plain view exception to the warrant requirement. The plain view exception permits law enforcement to seize an item if (1) the item is in plain view; (2) the officer’s initial intrusion is lawful; (3) the incriminating character of the evidence is immediately apparent and (4) the officer has a lawful right of access to the object itself.

There is no merit to this argument. Regarding the identification card, the evidence presented at the suppression hearing was that the MPD officer handed it to Detective Marks. The state does not attempt to justify Detective Marks’s seizure of the identification card under the plain view doctrine, nor could it. It was evident that Detective Marks did not have “first-hand perception” of the card when he entered the hallway outside the operating room.

Regarding the bloodied clothing in the biohazard bag, the state did not present any evidence regarding how the bag of clothing ended up in the hallway; i.e., whether hospital personnel placed it there or if the MPD officer seized it unlawfully from the medical staff and then left it in the hallway. If the latter occurred and, as a result, Detective Marks was able to view the bag of clothing, then Detective Marks did not have a lawful right of access to it when he seized it.

Alternatively, the state contends the evidence about the appellant’s belongings was admissible based on the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule. However the theory of inevitable discovery was not raised by the state below. In addition (and perhaps as a result), there is not enough evidence in the record to show that the discovery of the appellant’s identification card and the bag of bloodied clothing was inevitable. Given the factual void presented by the suppression record in the instant case, making that determination in the first instance would necessarily involve speculation on this court’s part. Accordingly it declines to apply the doctrine to this case.

Order of the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County denying the motion to suppress reversed.