Maryland court: Police officers can stop and question someone who smells of marijuana

Officials in Maryland can stop and question a person who smells of cannabis, a court ruled last week.

In a split decision, the state Court of Appeals said, “The aroma of the drug gives police ‘reasonable suspicion’ that the person may have 10 grams or more, allowing officers to conduct a brief ‘investigation stop,'” the reported DailyRecord.

But the verdict does not give law enforcement carte blanche in these circumstances. According to the outlet, those officers “must end the stop unless they quickly receive information that gives them probable reason to believe the person weighs at least 10 grams or has committed another crime.”

And the Daily Record noted that despite the verdict, “possession of less than 10 grams of the drug does not constitute a felony in the state.”

The verdict stems from a case involving a 15-year-old boy who found a pistol in his possession. Officers found the gun on the youth’s waist after performing a frisk triggered by the smell of cannabis.

Last year, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals — an interim appeals court — took up the case and ruled that the smell of weed does not warrant a police officer to conduct a search, citing Maryland’s decriminalization of possession of 10 grams or less of cannabis.

“Since possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana is no longer a felony, the suspicion required to terminate the felony of possession of marijuana therefore requires that the person be in possession of more than 10 grams of marijuana,” said Judge Kathryn Grill Graeff wrote in its statement, as quoted by local news outlet WTOP. “And because the ‘smell of marijuana alone does not indicate the amount of marijuana in a person’s possession,’ [citing a previous case]it cannot by itself give rise to reasonable suspicion that the person is in possession of a criminal quantity of marijuana or otherwise engaged in criminal activity.”

But last week’s state appeals court ruling refutes that view.

In a 4-3 decision, the majority “public interest in investigating and prosecuting crime, balanced against freedom of movement and a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy, leads us to conclude that the smell of marijuana merits a brief investigation in itself.” detention,” according to the Daily Record.

“Given the important state interest in detecting, preventing and prosecuting crime, the Fourth Amendment permits a brief seizure based on reasonable suspicion to determine whether criminal activity is ongoing,” Judge Jonathan Biran wrote in the Majority Opinion cited by the daily record. “An officer who has no probable cause for an arrest doesn’t have to just shrug and allow a crime to happen or a criminal to escape.”

Judge Michele D. Hotten, writing for the minority, said that “the smell of odors on a person alone makes it impossible for law enforcement to determine whether the person was engaged in an entirely innocent activity, a civil offense or a felony.” “

“While reasonable suspicion presents a relatively low barrier, law enforcement cannot rely on the presumption that an individual possesses 10 grams of (marijuana) odor in a non-medical capacity to form a basis for reasonable suspicion,” Hotten wrote in dissenting opinion according to the Daily Record.

Another judge in the majority went into the details of the stop involving the 15-year-old, saying the “official had the authority to stop in this case [the juvenile] because the police responded to a call from a man [sic] smoked a controlled dangerous substance in the basement of an apartment complex, suggesting at least 10 grams of marijuana,” according to the Daily Record.