Williams v. State

Per Curiam. The appellant, James E. Williams, was tried and convicted by the Criminal Court of Baltimore, sitting without a jury, of violation of the lottery laws. He contends that evidence gotten as a result of an unreasonable search and seizure was improperly admitted against him. At about 10:30 a.m. on November 24, 1961, in “the vicinity of Whitelock and McCulloh Streets,” three Baltimore policemen served on Williams a warrant for the search of ³³¹ his person.

A warrant for the search of the person was not known to the common law but the federal government, by statute and by rule, and various States, by statute, have provided for the issuance of such warrants. See 79 C.J.S. “Searches and Seizures” Sec. 64, p. 828; 18 U. S. C. A. “Rules of Criminal Procedure,” Rule 41; and Annotation, 49 A.L.R. 2d 1209 . In Maryland the Legislature, by Ch. 749 of the Laws of 1939 (now codified as Sec. 551 of Art. 27 of the 1961 Supplement to the Annotated Code), authorized the issuance of a warrant to search an individual identified or described with reasonable particularity. The statute has been held effective and applicable in a number of cases in this Court.

See Dow v. State, 207 Md. 80 , and cases therein cited. Williams concedes that the warrant, which stated that there was probable cause to believe he was committing a misdemeanor by violating the lottery laws, validly authorized a search of his person. His claim of reversible error is that to take him to the police station to search him was unreasonable and vitiated the warrant and the search. The policemen, after serving the warrant, called the cruising patrol wagon, which came