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Motor Vehicle Administration v. Richards10/14/1999
nd ruling exclusionary rule of Fourth Amendment applicable in civil in rem forfeiture proceedings, in part because of their "quasi-criminal" nature). In all other relevant cases we have rejected any extension of the rule to civil proceedings. See Sheetz v. City of Baltimore, 315 Md. 208, 553 A.2d 1281 (1989) (holding exclusionary rule generally inapplicable in context of administrative employment discharge proceedings); Chase v. State, 309 Md. 224, 522 A.2d 1348 (1987) (holding as general rule that in revocation of probation proceedings, exclusionary rule does not apply to bar evidence illegally seized by police from probationer); Chu v. Anne Arundel County, 311 Md. 673, 537 A.2d 250 (1988) (in construing Maryland Code Article 27, § 551, concluding that federal exclusionary rule not applicable to civil proceedings for return of seized property); Whitaker v. Prince George's County, 307 Md. 368, 514 A.2d 4 (1986) (generally rejecting application of exclusionary rule in public nuisance actions).
We emphasized in Whitaker that although the Supreme Court's ruling in Janis "cannot be said to stand for the proposition that evidence may never be excluded in a civil proceeding, it nonetheless severely undermined those cases in lower courts which applied the exclusionary rule to civil proceedings." Id. at 382, 514 A.2d at 11 (citation and footnote omitted). Furthermore, the Supreme Court has unequivocally "established that the `prime purpose' of the rule, if not the sole one, `is to deter future unlawful police conduct.'" Janis, 428 U.S. at 446, 96 S. Ct. at 3028 (quoting Calandra, 414 U.S. at 347, 94 S. Ct. at 619); Whitaker, 307 Md. at 381, 514 A.2d at 11.
We have noted the marginal deterrent effect and the substantial costs of applying the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment beyond the context of criminal or quasi-criminal proceedings. For example, in rejecting the application of the rule in public nuisance proceedings, we noted that " detective who might be tempted to obtain evidence illegally for use in a criminal case may not even consider the effect of such illegality upon a proceeding to abate a public nuisance." Id. at 383, 514 A.2d at 12. We have also expressed concern with the effect of applying the exclusionary rule in streamlined administrative proceedings. See Sheetz, 315 Md. at 215 n. 8, 553 A.2d at 1284 n. 8 ("`On the cost side there is the loss of often probative evidence and all of the secondary costs that flow from the less accurate or more cumbersome adjudication that therefore occurs.'" (quoting Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. at 1041, 104 S. Ct. at 3485)).
IV.
Given the general background of the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment and the substantial body of precedent under both the Supreme Court and this Court generally refusing to extend its operation beyond the context of a criminal trial, we shall now proceed to determine whether the rule should be applied as a matter of principle to hearings conducted pursuant to § 16-205.1(f). In light of that precedent, we shall focus on whether the benefits of applying the exclusionary rule to administrative license suspension hearings outweigh the costs of such.
At the outset, we reject the notion that an administrative license suspension proceeding under § 16-205.1(f) requires the application of the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment because such a proceeding is "quasi-criminal" in nature. Respondent has taken great pains to distinguish the administrative proceeding in the present case, a "refusal" hearing, from a hearing under the same statute with respect to a person who took the chemical breath test and "failed" (by registering a blood-alcohol content of .10 percent or higher) as well a
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