MD: Continuing stop without RS required suppression

Defendant’s continued stop lacked any reasonable suspicion, and the search was suppressed. Nervousness alone is not enough. King v. State, 193 Md. App. 582, 998 A.2d 397 (2010)*:

Lacking here, however, is any reasonable articulable suspicion that the occupants of the car were engaged in any criminal activity. Thus, the seizure was not reasonable. After conducting illuminated visual sweeps of the vehicle by search light and flashlight, Officer Chindblom observed no indication of criminal activity. Conversations with the four occupants revealed nothing constituting articulable suspicion of criminal activity. Neither McBride’s nor King’s perspiration or nervous appearance, alone, was enough to suggest criminal wrongdoing. [citation omitted] The officer did not smell any odor of illicit drugs. He did not observe any drug paraphernalia or, prior to the seizures of the sedan’s occupants, any weapons. A license check did not return anything unusual. Continued questioning merely produced multiple assertions that the occupants were not engaged in illegal activity.

This police-citizen interaction morphed from a legal encounter that was properly concluded into a second “stop” that was not justified by reasonable articulable suspicion. The Fourth Amendment violation occurred prior to McBride’s exiting the vehicle and the discovery of the gun. The State does not argue that the later voluntary consent to a search of the car cured the prior violation. The suppression motion was improperly denied.

Applying Rochin’s shocking the conscience test, the arrest of the plaintiff wasn’t. Fourth Amendment reasonableness discussed but not applied on these facts. Smith v. Bortner, 193 Md. App. 534, 998 A.2d 369 (2010).*