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Motor Vehicle Administration v. Richards10/14/1999
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW-EVIDENCE-EXCLUSIONARY RULE-The exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment is not applicable in civil administrative driver's license suspension proceedings conducted pursuant to § 16-205.1(f) of the Transportation Article of the Maryland Code. Circuit Court for Carroll County
No. 2
Bell, C.J. Eldridge Rodowsky Raker Wilner Cathell Karwacki, Robert L. (Retired, Specially Assigned), JJ.
Opinion by Raker, J. Rodowsky, J., concurs in the result only.
Following a hearing before the Motor Vehicle Administration on January 15, 1998, an Administrative Law Judge suspended the driver's license of Respondent, David Walter Richards, Jr., for a period of 120 days. Respondent's license suspension was based upon his refusal to take a chemical breath test as requested by an officer of the Maryland State Police after the officer had stopped Respondent while driving his pickup truck in Carroll County during the early morning hours of October 24, 1997. Respondent seeks to challenge the validity of his driver's license suspension through constitutional scrutiny of the officer's initial stop. Our task is to determine whether such a challenge is legally viable. More specifically, we must decide in this appeal whether the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment applies in a civil administrative driver's license suspension proceeding conducted pursuant to § 16-205.1(f) of the Transportation Article of the Maryland Code. We shall hold that the rule does not apply and shall therefore reverse the judgment rendered by the Circuit Court for Carroll County in the present case.
I.
Shortly after midnight on October 24, 1997, Trooper F. W. Quisay, Jr. of the Maryland State Police was driving through Carroll County on the northern edge of the town of Westminster. As he was patrolling the area and traveling north, the trooper "looked up on Naugahyde Drive and . . . observed a vehicle's tail lights either stopped or close to stopping in the middle of the road right there towards the end of the road." Aware that "Carroll County ha been experiencing a rash of vehicle thefts and night time burglaries . . . in the area of Westminster and north of Westminster," and noting that there were no houses in the vicinity where the vehicle had slowed or stopped, Trooper Quisay "decided to turn around and check the vehicle to see where [the driver] might be going and see if he was going into one of the houses [on the street]." Trooper Quisay followed the vehicle, a dark green pickup truck with a "dealer tag," onto Naugahyde Drive. Knowing this road to be a dead end street, the officer surmised that the driver "either lived there or he had no real business there." The pickup truck "went all the way to the dead end of Naugahyde Drive, turned around and came back out . . . without stopping at any of the houses." Thereupon Trooper Quisay stopped the vehicle: because it was "12:30 in the morning I just felt that was a little odd so I decided to stop the car and check on the driver and see what business he may have had in the neighborhood."
When Trooper Quisay spoke to the driver, later identified as Respondent, he immediately "detected a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage." Trooper Quisay asked Respondent to step out of the pickup truck and proceeded to administer field sobriety tests. Based on Respondent's performance on the tests, Trooper Quisay arrested him and took him to the police barracks. At the barracks, Respondent refused Trooper Quisay's request to take a chemical breath test for blood-alcohol content. Upon Respondent's refusal, the trooper issued an order suspending Richards's driver's license pursuant to this State's "administrative per se" s
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