Background
Officer Donald Green saw Trevon Hatcherson-Ross walking on a sidewalk and noticed what appeared to be an upside-down L-shaped object in his waistband. Green asked Hatcherson-Ross to remove his hand from his pocket, and Hatcherson-Ross complied but continued walking. After another officer arrived, the officers issued increasingly forceful commands, including directing Hatcherson-Ross to get on the ground and stop. Hatcherson-Ross did not comply and instead ran, leading officers on a roughly forty-second foot chase before climbing a fence into a stranger’s backyard.
Officers found Hatcherson-Ross hiding beneath a porch, took hold of his arms, and directed him to come out. They then found a firearm inside a storage bin beneath the porch and recovered a round of ammunition from his pocket. The trial court denied his motion to suppress, reasoning that he had abandoned the firearm, and a jury convicted him of offenses arising from his unlawful possession of the firearm and ammunition. On appeal, he argued that the evidence was the fruit of an unlawful seizure that occurred before he entered the backyard.
The Court’s Holding
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that Hatcherson-Ross was not seized when Green asked him to remove his hand from his pocket because the request, under the circumstances, was not a sufficient show of authority to trigger the Fourth Amendment. Although the officers’ later commands to get on the ground and stop were shows of authority, Hatcherson-Ross did not submit to them. Because the officers had not used physical force before he hid beneath the porch, no seizure occurred until officers grabbed him and directed him to come out. Hatcherson-Ross did not argue that officers lacked reasonable suspicion at that point.
The court also held that the search of the backyard and storage bin did not implicate Hatcherson-Ross’s Fourth Amendment rights. He had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a stranger’s private property or storage bin merely because he placed his gun there. Once officers opened the bin, the firearm was in plain view. The court therefore found it unnecessary to decide whether Hatcherson-Ross had abandoned the gun, while expressing serious doubt that he had done so given his proximity to it and apparent effort to keep it hidden.
Key Takeaways
- A police command does not produce a seizure based on a show of authority unless the person submits to it; an individual who ignores commands and flees has not been seized on that basis.
- A noncoercive request to remove a hand from a pocket, followed by compliance, does not necessarily constitute a Fourth Amendment seizure.
- A person does not acquire a reasonable expectation of privacy in a stranger’s property or container simply by hiding an item there, making abandonment irrelevant to whether a search of that property violated the person’s rights.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces the distinction between a police show of authority and a completed Fourth Amendment seizure. Even forceful commands do not amount to a seizure when the person neither submits nor is physically restrained.
It also clarifies that abandonment analysis should not displace the threshold question whether the challenged search invaded the defendant’s own protected privacy interest. Here, any privacy interests in the backyard and storage bin belonged to the homeowner or authorized users, not Hatcherson-Ross.