FRANK THEODORE WILLIAMS v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court of Special Appeals, Moylan, Filed Feb. 26, 2014,
Search & Seizure- Independent Source Doctrine- Where phone was illegally seized search incident to arrest, exclusion of phone-call evidence was unnecessary as the defendant’s admission and phone records provided independent sources of the information

Shooting in the Towson Town Center. The defendant was found running up and down a stairwell in the parking garage (having lost the getaway car), arrested, and his cell phone confiscated. There was later a negative identification by an eye-witness, at which point the defendant was un-handcuffed, but still detained and transported to the station. At the station, an officer wrote down the numbers of all incoming calls to the phone.

While this would have been an amazing case to see Moylan work through in determining when the defendant was arrested/un-arrested, the defendant told detectives his phone number… at which point there was an independent basis for the information written down by the officer, since phone records were obtained anyway.

Notes from the case:

– Cell phone- A cellphone may be seized and searched as a valid search incident to lawful arrest.
– Search Incident to Arrest- If an arrest is terminated, property seized incident to arrest should be returned and is not vulnerable to further examination.
– Independent Source- Evidence is allowed if there was a valid, independent source that puts the police in the same situation they would have been in had they not committed the violation

No comment was made regarding the State’s closing argument which consisted, in part, of what I can only assume was a transcription error:
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, Kool-Aid.”