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Motor Vehicle Administration v. Richards10/14/1999
s from other purely civil proceedings. Along these lines, Respondent asserts the refusal hearing to be "purely punitive" and "quasi-criminal" in nature, therefore analogizing it to the civil in rem forfeiture proceeding, to which we recently held the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment applicable. See One 1995 Corvette v. Baltimore, 353 Md. 114, 724 A.2d 680 (1999).
Writing for the Court in 1995 Corvette, Judge Cathell stated that "the Fourth Amendment applies to all `unreasonable searches and seizures' by the government, regardless of context." Id. at 129, 724 A.2d at 688 (citation omitted) (first emphasis added). On the other hand, as Judge Cathell prefaced, the exclusionary rule of that Amendment "is a judicially-created remedy intended to apply primarily to criminal and `quasi-criminal' proceedings." Id., 724 A.2d at 688. Moreover, in labeling the forfeiture proceeding in One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania, 380 U.S. 693, 85 S. Ct. 1246, 14 L. Ed. 2d 170 (1965), "quasi-criminal," the Supreme Court explained that the object of a forfeiture proceeding, "like a criminal proceeding, is to penalize for the commission of an offense against the law." Id. at 700, 85 S. Ct. at 1250 (quoted in 1995 Corvette, 353 Md. at 121, 724 A.2d at 683).
We disagree with Respondent's characterization of § 16-205.1 as "quasi-criminal." This Court has on several occasions addressed the purposes behind this State's legislation against "drunken driving." It is true that " he General Assembly's goal in enacting the drunk driving laws . . . is `to meet the considerable challenge created by this problem by enacting a series of measures to rid our highways of the drunk driver menace. These measures . . . are primarily designed to enhance the ability of prosecutors to deal effectively with the drunk driver problem.'" Motor Vehicle Admin. v. Shrader, 324 Md. 454, 464, 597 A.2d 939, 944 (1991) (quoting Willis v. State, 302 Md. 363, 369-70, 488 A.2d 171, 175 (1985)). Nevertheless, as we emphasized in Shrader, § 16-205.1 and related statutory provisions "were enacted for the protection of the public and not primarily for the protection of the accused." Id. at 464, 597 A.2d at 943 (citations omitted).
This Court has also previously found "that license suspensions generally serve remedial purposes," a Conclusion "drawn from the purposes served by licensing systems themselves, i.e. to protect the public from unscrupulous or unskilled operators who would otherwise engage in the licensed activity." State v. Jones, 340 Md. 235, 251, 666 A.2d 128, 136 (1995) (holding that separate subjugation of motorist to criminal prosecution and administrative sanctions under § 16-205.1 does not run afoul of double jeopardy prohibition). Moreover, as we went on in Jones to elaborate,
From the licensee's perspective, it is certainly true that suspension or revocation of a license may feel like `punishment.' A licensing system's ultimate goal, however, is to prevent unscrupulous or incompetent persons from engaging in the licensed activity. To this end, revocation or suspension of a license clearly prevents a wrongdoer from further engaging in the licensed activity, at least temporarily.
Id. at 252, 666 A.2d at 136 (footnote omitted) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court made similar observations while reviewing Massachusetts's implied consent, administrative per se statute in 1979. Albeit expressed in the context of reviewing that statute for comportment with the requirements of due process, those observations are nonetheless appropriate here:
The Commonwealth's interest in public safety is substantially served by the summary suspension of those who refuse in several ways to take a breat
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