Sizer v. State
Maryland Court of Appeals
174 A.3d 326 (2017)
- Written by Paul Neel, JD
Facts
Several officers were patrolling a footpath on bicycles and noticed a group of people play fighting and passing around a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag in a nearby parking lot about 25-35 yards away. One person in the group threw the bottle, which the officers heard hit the ground. The officers approached the group to investigate. One person in the group, Jamal Sizer (defendant), fled the officers on foot. One of the officers, Andrew Schlossnagle, pursued Sizer on foot and tackled him. Sizer stated that he carried a handgun. The officers arrested Sizer, searched him incident to the arrest, and found the handgun in Sizer’s backpack and 27 oxycodone pills in Sizer’s sock. Before trial, Sizer moved to suppress the gun and pills as fruit of an unlawful seizure. At the suppression hearing, Schlossnagle testified that the officers came upon Sizer in a high-crime area where there had been a series of robberies, and local business owners had often complained of drugs, drinking, and loitering. Schlossnagle also testified that the day before, someone had displayed a handgun on the footpath. The trial court excluded the evidence, finding that the officers had not connected anyone in Sizer’s group to the robberies or display of the gun. The state (plaintiff) appealed.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Greene, J.)
Concurrence/Dissent (Adkins, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 814,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.