DELFORD MITCHELL BARNES v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court of Appeals, Barbera, Filed March 5, 2014,
Search Warrant- Continued detention of a suspect beyond that necessary to execute a search and seizure warrant for DNA or fingerprints constitutes a second stop that must be justified to be valid.

In homicide case, warrant was obtained for the defendant’s DNA/prints. Defendant was taken to the station at apx. 1840 hours while a search warrant was conducted at the residence that he just left. At 2247 hours, the warrant on defendant was executed. The defendant was taken to wash his hands and returned to an interview room at 2253 hours. Once returned to the room, he was “immediately” questioned about a storage locker he owned. The defendant gave written permission to search the storage locker at 2300 hours.

Inside the locker was a candle inscribed with variations on the victim’s name and address and the ambiguous statement “I just want you to die die die die die die die die die.”

The CoA held that the 3 hour delay in executing the DNA/print warrant was reasonable due to the lack of available personnel (they were executing the SSW on the residence and interviewing another witness) and did not amount to a de facto arrest.

Notes from the case:
Seizure- Any non-consensual detention is a “seizure” of the person within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment
Arrest- Not every entry onto police “turf,” such as a police station, transforms a seizure into an arrest
4th Amendment- Courts are not to assess the lawfulness of police conduct by resort to whether the task was completed in the “least intrusive” manner. Rather, the test is whether the conduct itself was reasonable.
Arrest- Not every seizure of a person is “elevated automatically into an arrest” simply because the police handcuffed a suspect or placed the suspect in a police cruiser.
Reasonable Suspicion- The brevity of the invasion of the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests, although not dispositive, is an important factor in determining whether the seizure is so minimally intrusive as to be justifiable on reasonable suspicion.
Reasonable Suspicion- Transporting Suspect- Whereas probable cause would normally be necessary to detain a suspect and transport him to the station, where police have an independent basis for transporting the suspect the continued detention beyond that point may be founded on reasonable suspicion