Background
Late one night, Officers Marcus Harmon, Matthew Zumbrun, and Evan Zelesnick were patrolling near the 100 block of Ivanhoe Street Southwest in Washington, D.C., after receiving a radio call that a gunshot victim had reported being shot in that area. Approximately twenty to thirty minutes after the call, the officers spotted James Doby walking on the sidewalk. Officer Harmon noticed what appeared to be a heavy object weighing down the right side of Doby’s jacket, and Officer Zumbrun observed an L-shaped bulge in the pocket consistent with a firearm. As the officers activated their scene lights and pulled alongside Doby, he began moving evasively — sidestepping away, turning his right side from the officers, and holding the bottom of his jacket close to his body.
Officer Zumbrun asked through the car window whether Doby had a gun. Doby did not respond and continued walking. As two officers exited the vehicle and approached him, Doby fled on foot. During the approximately forty-five-second chase, officers observed Doby fiddling with his jacket pocket, leading Officer Harmon to believe Doby was attempting to remove or discard a firearm. Harmon shouted at Doby to drop the gun. Doby eventually stopped and surrendered. A pat-down of his right jacket pocket immediately revealed a handgun, and he was arrested.
Before trial in D.C. Superior Court, Doby moved to suppress the firearm, arguing the officers lacked reasonable articulable suspicion either at the initial approach or after his flight. The trial court denied the motion, finding that reasonable suspicion existed based on Doby’s evasive behavior before flight, the flight itself, and his fiddling with the pocket during the chase. After a stipulated trial, Doby was convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm and related offenses. He appealed, conceding on appeal that he was not seized until he surrendered, and arguing solely that officers lacked reasonable articulable suspicion at that point.
The Court’s Holding
The D.C. Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Associate Judge Deahl joined by Associate Judges Howard and Shanker, affirmed the convictions. The court held that, under the totality of the circumstances, officers had reasonable articulable suspicion to conduct a Terry stop and pat-down when Doby surrendered. Four factors combined to justify the seizure: (1) the officers observed an L-shaped bulge in Doby’s jacket pocket consistent with a firearm; (2) Doby exhibited panicked and evasive behavior upon the officers’ initial approach, including turning his armed side away and clutching his jacket; (3) Doby fled without answering the officers’ single question about whether he possessed a gun; and (4) Doby was observed fiddling with his jacket pocket during the chase in a manner suggesting he was trying to remove or discard a weapon. The report of a recent shooting in the immediate area served as the backdrop that gave additional weight to each of these factors viewed collectively.
The court rejected Doby’s argument that the visible bulge could not contribute to reasonable suspicion because the Second Amendment protects the right to carry firearms outside the home under N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). While acknowledging that lawful firearm possession alone does not create reasonable suspicion, the court stressed that the bulge could not be evaluated in isolation — it had to be considered alongside the shooting report, Doby’s nervous and evasive behavior, his flight, and his pocket-fiddling. The court also distinguished its recent en banc decision in Mayo v. United States, 315 A.3d 606 (D.C. 2024), noting that Mayo involved no visible firearm bulge, no recent crime report, no evident panic at the officers’ mere presence, and officers from a unit with a known reputation for aggressive tactics — none of which were present here. Because Doby did not independently contest the lawfulness of the frisk once the stop was upheld, the court treated that issue as conceded and affirmed the denial of the suppression motion in full.
Key Takeaways
- An L-shaped bulge consistent with a firearm, standing alone, does not establish reasonable articulable suspicion after Bruen, but it carries substantial weight when combined with a nearby shooting report, evasive behavior, unprovoked flight, and fiddling with a pocket during a chase.
- The totality-of-the-circumstances standard prohibits courts from isolating and discarding individual factors; a recent report of a shooting in the area can legitimately heighten the incriminating weight of every other factor an officer observes.
- The court distinguished Mayo v. United States on four grounds — absence of a visible firearm bulge, absence of a recent crime report, absence of pre-flight panic, and absence of an aggressive-unit reputation — signaling that Mayo‘s reduced weight for flight is context-specific, not a categorical rule.
- A suspect who fiddling with his pocket in a manner suggesting an attempt to discard or draw a weapon during flight adds a heavily weighted, independent factor favoring reasonable suspicion for both a stop and a frisk.
Why It Matters
This decision provides practitioners and law enforcement in the District of Columbia with detailed guidance on how multiple weak or ambiguous factors can aggregate into constitutionally sufficient reasonable articulable suspicion. It is particularly significant in the post-Bruen landscape: the court confirms that while the mere sight of what appears to be a lawfully carried firearm cannot alone justify a Terry stop, it remains a weighty factor that officers may properly consider alongside other indicators of criminal activity. Defense attorneys should note that the court explicitly flagged the race of the suspect as one contextual element courts must account for when assessing the significance of nervous behavior — citing Dozier v. United States — though that factor did not change the outcome here given the additional indicia of criminal conduct.
The decision also reinforces the boundaries of the court’s en banc Mayo ruling. Mayo did not diminish the role of flight in the reasonable suspicion calculus categorically; it applied a contextual brake in circumstances involving an aggressive police unit and the absence of corroborating indicators. Doby makes clear that where corroborating indicators are present and aggression by police is not a confounding variable, flight retains strong incriminating value and can anchor a lawful Terry stop.