Green v. State

Murphy, G. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Appellant was convicted at a court trial of possessing and controlling heroin and cocaine and sentenced to four years imprisonment. He contends on this appeal that as he was illegally arrested, the search of his person and seizure therefrom of narcotics was likewise illegal; and that the admission of such narcotics in evidence at his trial, over his objection, constituted reversible error. To prove the legality of the arrest, the State showed through the testimony of a qualified narcotics investigator, Detective John Sewell, that on October 16, 1968 he received information from a known, police-paid informer that appellant was selling cocaine and heroin in the area of Gilmor Street and Edmondson Avenue in Baltimore City.

Sewell stated that he had known the informer for approximately seven months prior to the day of appellant’s arrest on October 16, 1968; that the informer came to police headquarters daily to supply information about narcotics violations; that over the seven-month period, the informer had given him consistently reliable information which enabled police to initiate investigations in over one hundred cases and to obtain, to date, convictions in thirty or forty such cases involving the most flagrant narcotics violators; and that the informer had also given information which led to the issuance of approximately twenty search warrants and the seizure thereunder of narcotics in approximately eighteen such ³⁵⁴ cases. Sewell testified that his informer was a narcotics user; that he was on a “first name and nickname basis with narcotic peddlers and users throughout the Baltimore City area;” and that prior to the day of appellant’s arrest, the informer told him that appellant had been selling narcotics. Upon receiving information from the informer on October 16, 1968 that appellant was at that time selling narcotics, Sewell and other officers went with the informer to the area of Edmondson