Maryland’s highest court was asked Friday to determine how much a driver has to be handling a phone before police have sufficient reason to pull the driver over for using a cell phone while driving.
The case stems from Michael Eugene Stone’s 2023 stop and subsequent arrest on drug charges in Hagerstown, after police saw him “touch” or tap the screen of his dash-mounted phone in a way they said looked like he might be texting or making a call.
After stopping Stone for “using the phone while driving,” the officers discovered that he was driving on a suspended license, and in a subsequent search of him and his car they found drugs, drug paraphernalia and brass knuckles.
At trial, Stone tried to get the search evidence suppressed, arguing that police did not have the reasonable suspicion needed to stop him in the first place. The trial judge disagreed and let the evidence be submitted, but the Appellate Court of Maryland reversed that ruling in January, saying the officers had not shown they had reason to make a stop.
Stone’s attorney argued Friday that the appellate court’s standard is the right one.
“There is something qualitatively different about having a phone on your dashboard and expecting a person to reach over and type out a text — very different from a situation where a person is maybe driving with one hand on the wheel and the phone is up to their face,” said Douglas Nivens II, a public defender representing Stone.
But an attorney for the state said the stop was justified so police could determine if Stone had been texting behind the wheel.
“The purpose of those kinds of stops are to dispel ambiguity about whether somebody is acting in a way that is lawful or unlawful. And so that’s exactly what the officers did,” Assistant Attorney General Jillian Chieppor told the justices.
“In this case, they were presented with an ambiguity that Mr. Stone was manipulating his phone in a manner that was consistent with, as one possibility, illegal conduct, and when they conducted that traffic stop, they took steps to dispel the ambiguity,” she said.
Justices seemed focused on where to draw a line between the illegal use of a cell phone in a car and unfairly subjecting large numbers of drivers to search and seizure by police.
“I assume the state would acknowledge that people initiate phone calls all day, every day, by pressing a cell phone in their car,” Chief Justice Matthew J. Fader said to Chieppor.
“So doesn’t the state’s position in this case risk taking something that describes completely innocent activity engaged in by a large number of Maryland citizens every single day and make that a justification for a search or a seizure, Fader asked.
Chieppor said the state’s position would not apply to anybody “who’s not touching a phone at all while they’re driving. And we, on the record of this case, are left with what is essentially a 50-50 proposition.”
She said Stone “was touching the phone in a manner consistent with either text messaging or initiating a phone call. Of course, we don’t like to put, you know, numbers or percentages on things in the law, but you know, a 50-50 chance that somebody is breaking the law is far beyond what the reasonable suspicion standard requires.”
But a three-judge panel of the Appellate Court of Maryland disagreed in its 2-1 January ruling.
Judge Melanie Marva Shaw wrote for the majority that “neither officer distinguished how Appellant [Stone] appeared to be texting as opposed to initiating or terminating a call.” Shaw’s opinion said there were few other details provided at Stone’s trial, and no one testified as to how long Stone was manipulating his cell phone or if he appeared distracted while driving.
“In sum, here, there is insufficient evidence in the record from which the trial court could properly conclude that the officers had reasonable suspicion to conduct a traffic stop,” Shaw wrote in the 19-page ruling.
In a three-page dissent, Judge Glenn Harrell wrote that the majority “is accurate in framing the legal standards by which the officers’ suppression hearing testimony should be evaluated.” But Harrell wrote that the majority “chooses … the incorrect outcome.”
“The majority opinion engages in a brief ‘woulda, shoulda, coulda’ exposition” of how the officers would have better justified the reason for the stop.
“I submit such speculation is unwarranted and invites burdening unduly law enforcement in carrying out its primary functions,” Harrell wrote. “The trial court judge got it exactly right. I would affirm the judgment.”