## Facts

- A motel guest in Glen Burnie, Maryland was robbed at gunpoint in his room after an intruder entered through a broken window; the guest described the intruder as holding a short gun barrel.
- The victim selected James L. Stackhouse, Jr. from a photo array; a police tracking dog traced the scent from the motel to Stackhouse’s address.
- Police initially encountered Stackhouse at the house; he gave a false name and claimed Stackhouse had just left. After an equivocal show-up identification, police released him.
- Police later confirmed Stackhouse’s identity and learned of two outstanding arrest warrants for unrelated armed robberies; officers returned with those warrants and entered the residence.
- Officers found Stackhouse hiding in a dark attic accessed by a ceiling panel; he complied with commands, was removed to the second-floor hallway, and was handcuffed.
- After Stackhouse was secured outside the attic, an officer reentered the attic and recovered a shotgun barrel located about two feet from where Stackhouse had been hiding, allegedly buried in insulation.
- At a bench trial, the court admitted the shotgun barrel into evidence, and Stackhouse was convicted of robbery with a deadly weapon and burglary; the intermediate appellate court affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether police may, incident to arrest, conduct a warrantless search of an area beyond the arrestee’s immediate control after the arrestee has been removed and secured.
2. Whether generalized concern that another person might conceal or destroy evidence supplies exigent circumstances justifying such a warrantless search.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Maryland reversed.
- The attic area searched after Stackhouse’s removal and handcuffing was beyond the permissible scope of a search incident to arrest.
- The State failed to establish exigent circumstances supporting the warrantless attic search.
- The shotgun-barrel evidence was improperly admitted.

## Legal Principles

- A search incident to arrest is limited to the arrestee’s person and the area within the arrestee’s immediate control, defined by realistic access to weapons or destructible evidence at the time of the search.
- Warrantless searches beyond that area are presumptively unreasonable; the State bears the burden to prove a recognized exception.
- Exigent circumstances require specific, immediate facts showing a real risk of evidence destruction or removal; the mere presence of another person, or that person’s earlier untruthfulness, is insufficient without more.
- Automobile-specific expansions of the search-incident rule do not authorize post-arrest searches of non-vehicle areas clearly out of the arrestee’s reach once secured.

## Conclusion

Because Stackhouse had been removed from the attic and handcuffed when police searched the area where he had been hiding, the search exceeded the search-incident-to-arrest doctrine, and the State did not prove exigent circumstances; the convictions were reversed due to erroneous admission of the shotgun barrel.


Stackhouse v. State, 468 A.2d 333 (Md. 1983)