MD: Knock-and-talk, entry, and seizure of premises while SW sought was not suppressed under inevitable discovery

Undercover officers used a man who didn’t know they were police to go to defendant’s house to buy drugs, which he did. When he got back to the car, he was arrested, and the officers went to the house to do a knock-and-talk, ultimately entering and doing a protective sweep and seizing the house pending investigation. In the meantime, another had gone to get a search warrant for the house. They had probable cause to get a search warrant before the protective sweep, and suppression was not ordered because of the inevitable discovery doctrine even though the view of drugs during the protective sweep made it into the search warrant application. Kamara v. State, 205 Md. App. 607, 45 A.3d 948 (2012):

Thus, the issue here is whether the later search pursuant to the warrant was genuinely independent of the earlier observation of the marijuana in the house. The Court in Murray gave guidance on how to assess this issue. It noted two situations in which the evidence would not be deemed to be obtained by independent lawful means: (1) where the officer’s “decision to seek the warrant was prompted by what they had seen during the initial entry”; and (2) where “information obtained during that entry was presented to the [judge] and affected his decision to issue the warrant.” Id.

In the present case, neither of these situations are present. The evidence here established that the police planned to get a warrant prior to the protective sweep or the discovery of any contraband. Detective Oaks testified that, when Sergeant Carafano arrived at the house, he announced that the police were going to detain appellant while they sought a search warrant. Appellant was then handcuffed and detained, and two officers conducted the protective sweep. The uncontradicted evidence shows that the decision to seek the search warrant was not prompted by what the officers saw during the initial protective sweep.