D.Md.: Asking a person to be frisked what’s on him can’t be used to justify the frisk

Asking a person about whether he has anything on him about sharp objects is reasonable and related to the frisk. Any admission cannot, however, be used to justify the frisk. United States v. Freeman, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 123297 (D. Md. July 11, 2024):

Notably, the purpose of Corporal Green’s question at the outset of the pat frisk was to provide a safer means to accomplish the goal of the frisk—to identify and secure weapons or dangerous objects—by providing the officer with information that reduces the risk that, while conducting the frisk, the officer will be inadvertently injured when touching or grasping a knife, syringe, or another dangerous object. To hold that the response to such a question occurred before the frisk began, and thus may be considered in evaluating whether the frisk was justified, would be entirely unreasonable because it would both penalize a defendant for cooperating in protecting officer safety and increase the risk to officers by severely disincentivizing candid responses. Where such a question is clearly part of the police procedure for a pat frisk designed to ascertain the location of any weapons and thus to protect officers conducting such frisks, it is not merely a “prelude to a frisk.” Weaver, 9 F.4th at 146. Rather, it is “logically and practically inseparable from the pat-down itself.” Wetmore, 560 F. Supp. 3d at 610. Therefore, under these facts, the Court deems the pat frisk to have begun when Corporal Green asked Freeman whether he had any sharp objects that could harm him and thus will not consider Freeman’s alleged admission that he had a knife in determining whether the officers had a reasonable suspicion that Freeman was armed and dangerous as required to justify a Terry frisk.