In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Terry v. Ohio, which declared that police officers can stop and frisk targets without violating that person’s Fourth /amendment rights if the officer has reasonable suspicion for making the stop and conducting the frisk. Today, police officers frequently obtain incriminating evidence from these stop-and-frisk interactions… but they sometimes do so without the necessary probable cause. As a criminal suspect or a person accused of a crime, getting justice via dismissal or an acquittal can mean disproving the presence of reasonable suspicion and obtaining a court order excluding the illegally obtained evidence from your case. Doing so successfully can be nuanced and complicated, so it pays to have an experienced Maryland criminal defense lawyer representing you.
Law enforcement officers sometimes use relatively broad bases for conducting a “Terry stop” (a/k/a stopping and frisking a person.) These foundations include vague things like a “suspicious bulge,” “furtive movements,” an “uncooperative demeanor,” or presence in a “high crime area.”
Courts in Maryland have noticed that allegedly suspicious bulges often aren’t… and that the law often requires more than just an officer’s observation that a suspect had a bulge the officer considered questionable. A recent gun case originating in Prince George’s County underscores this.
The suspect was a passenger in a car that officers in Prince George’s County stopped for a suspected window tinting violation. The officers ordered the car’s occupants out of the vehicle so they could test the windows with a tint meter. As the passenger exited, an officer noticed that he had “a crossbody satchel that was ‘heavily weighted.’” Another officer spotted a bulge in the bag, so the first officer grabbed the satchel. The officers found a gun and the state charged the passenger with multiple weapons charges.
The appeals court noted that this was not enough to justify the frisk and search of the satchel. In reaching that outcome, the appeals court found this case to be highly similar to an important drug case from two decades ago.
In that 2003 case, officers stopped a man in a high-crime area of Baltimore. One officer spied a “large bulge” in the man’s left front pants pocket and conducted a stop and frisk. The search revealed that the problematic protrusion was actually… a roll of cash. During the search, the officer also found marijuana and cocaine.
Innocent Explanations for Bulges in Pockets… or Satchels
The trial court allowed the evidence in, but the Supreme Court deemed the frisk a Fourth Amendment violation, deciding that the officer needed more than just a bulge to establish reasonable suspicion. The court pointed out that a “noticeable bulge in a man’s waist area may well reasonably indicate that the man is armed,” the bulge may also have an innocuous explanation. Because “most men do not carry purses, they, of necessity, carry innocent personal objects in their pants pockets – wallets, money clips, keys, change, credit cards, cell phones, cigarettes, and the like – objects that, given the immutable law of physics that matter occupies space, will create some sort of bulge.”
Just as the Supreme Court declared in 2003 that “the mere presence of ‘any large bulge in any man’s pocket,’” was not enough by itself to constitute reasonable suspicion, “as otherwise, police could lawfully ‘stop and frisk virtually every man they encounter,’” the appeals court in 2024 determined that much the same was true about a man’s satchel. “Just as in someone’s pants pockets, there are any number of innocent objects that can be kept in a satchel other than a firearm that would cause it to bulge or appear weighted down.”
Perhaps the man brought an energy drink or can of soda from home or had stopped by a Royal Farms location and purchased a chicken wrap. Maybe he was frugal and had just purchased his new PlayStation 5 controller secondhand from a Facebook Marketplace seller. Without specific testimony indicating why the bulge the officer spotted was indicative of a gun, as opposed to an innocent possession, reasonable suspicion was not present.
Are you facing criminal charges based on evidence found in a warrantless search? It is possible law enforcement officers violated your constitutional rights and the evidence they seized is inadmissible in the case against you. Of course, inadmissible evidence does not just suppress itself. Getting a fair outcome requires proactive steps like a well-worded and properly timed objection or motion to suppress. When you are a suspect in a crime, you need legal representation that is equal parts zealous, detail-oriented, and deeply knowledgeable of the law. You can count on the experienced Maryland criminal defense attorneys at Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC to be that sort of advocate for you. Contact us today at 301-519-2801 or via our online form to set up your consultation to learn more about how we can help you.