Hooks v. United States

• Decision Date: 30 May 2019
• Docket Number: No. 17-CF-1382,17-CF-1382
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals
• Parties: Anthony D. HOOKS, Appellant v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.

208 A.3d 741

Anthony D. HOOKS, Appellant

v.UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 17-CF-1382

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued February 14, 2019

Decided May 30, 2019

Christine Pembroke, Washington, for appellant.

Bianca Forde, Assistant United States Attorney, for appellee. Jessie K. Liu, United States Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, John P. Mannarino, Gauri Gopal, Puja Bhatia, and Maryam L. Adeyola, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief for appellee.

Before Thompson, Easterly, and McLeese, Associate Judges.

Easterly, Associate Judge:

Anthony Hooks appeals from his convictions, following a jury trial, for felon in possession of a weapon and related offenses.¹ He argues that the trial court should have granted his motion to suppress the contraband found on his person because the police violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment when they seized and searched him. We agree and reverse.

I. Facts and Procedural History

On a Sunday afternoon in April 2017, Mr. Hooks attended a barbeque outside the home of his friend, Latisha Toney, on Congress Street Southeast. As the setting is relevant to the legal issues presented, we describe it in some detail. Ms. Toney's residence is the end unit of a set of townhouses. From the street, her neighbors' houses are to the left, and a grassy yard surrounded by a metal fence is to the right. Whereas all her neighbors' front doors face Congress Street, Ms. Toney's front door faces the enclosed yard. To reach Ms. Toney's home and the yard from the street, a visitor must climb six steps from the sidewalk and walk down a concrete path. The path is lined on either side by fencing that opens up on the left to give access to another set of steps up to Ms. Toney's front door, and on the right to give access to the yard.²

Having eaten some hot dogs and hamburgers, Mr. Hooks was sitting in a folding lawn chair on this concrete path. The other guests, a handful of adults and at least one child, were in the enclosed yard. Around 5:00 p.m., four police officers in the Narcotics Special Investigation Division drove past in an unmarked police car. According to the undisputed testimony of Ms. Toney, the police car stopped a few houses past her yard and then reversed back towards her home. Officer Dominique Tyson and three other members of his team, Officers Travis Collins, Brock Vigil, and Sean Hodges, all armed and in uniform, exited the vehicle.³ With Officer Tyson in the lead, the four proceeded up the steps from the sidewalk onto the concrete pathway between Ms. Toney's house and the enclosed yard, and headed straight for Mr. Hooks in his lawn chair.

Officer Tyson instructed Mr. Hooks to "get up."⁴ At the suppression hearing, Officer Tyson acknowledged he intended these two words as a command:

Q. [T]here was no question that he was going to get up?

A. Yes, he was going to have to move.

Q. He was going to have to move?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. And, if he hadn't moved, you would have snatched him; right? You would have helped him move?

A. He would have got help, yes.

In response to Officer Tyson's instruction, Mr. Hooks immediately stood up. During this encounter, Officer Tyson observed a bag of marijuana sticking out of Mr. Hooks's coat pocket.⁵ Based on Mr. Hooks's admission that he was carrying a little more than two ounces of marijuana,⁶ the police handcuffed Mr. Hooks, and in a search incident to arrest recovered a handgun.

Prior to trial, Mr. Hooks moved to suppress all tangible items seized by the police as fruits of an illegal seizure and search. After a hearing, the trial court denied the motion. The court agreed that the government had proved that either (1) Mr. Hooks had not been seized when the police commanded him to stand up and he complied, or (2) pursuant to Terry v. Ohio , 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the police had reasonable articulable suspicion to briefly stop Mr. Hooks because, by virtue of where he was sitting in his lawn chair, he was violating D.C. Code § 22-1307 (2013 Supp.) by "obstructing [a] walkway."

II. Standard of Review

The government introduces its discussion of our standard of review with a pair of statements: "[t]his Court's review of a trial court's denial of a motion to suppress is limited," and "[t]his Court's role in reviewing the denial of a suppression motion is to ensure that the motions judge had a substantial basis for concluding that no constitutional violation occurred."⁷ We pause to clarify, lest these statements evince a misunderstanding that our analysis of constitutional questions under the Fourth Amendment is somehow constricted. It is not. Although we accept the trial court's findings of fact unless they are clearly erroneous and we review the facts and reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to the prevailing party, our review of the "trial court's legal conclusions [is] de novo," United States v. Lewis , 147 A.3d 236, 239 (D.C. 2016) (en banc), as we have reaffirmed in countless decisions of this court,⁸ including the cases to which the government cites.⁹

III. Fourth Amendment Analysis

The Fourth Amendment protects individuals against all "unreasonable searches and seizures." U.S. CONST. amend. IV. "This inestimable right of personal security belongs as much to the citizen on the streets of our cities as to the homeowner closeted in his study to dispose of his secret affairs." Terry , 392 U.S. at 8–9, 88 S.Ct. 1868. It extends to individuals attending springtime barbeques in every quadrant of the District of Columbia. "For, as [the Supreme] Court has always recognized, [n]o right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law[ ] than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law." Id. at 9, 88 S.Ct. 1868 (internal quotation marks omitted).

A. Whether Mr. Hooks Was Seized Within the Meaning of the Fourth Amendment

The preliminary question before us is whether the "restraint or interference" by the police in this case amounts to a seizure implicating Fourth Amendment protections. Terry , 392 U.S. at 9, 88 S.Ct. 1868. As the Supreme Court explained in Terry , seizures are not limited to actual arrests, id. at 16–19, 88 S.Ct. 1868,¹⁰ but neither do they extend to "all personal intercourse between policemen and citizens." Id. at 19 n.16, 88 S.Ct. 1868 ; accord Towles v. United States , 115 A.3d 1222, 1228 (D.C. 2015) (acknowledging that "[a] seizure does not occur simply because a law enforcement officer approaches a person on the street and asks him or her questions" (quoting Jackson v. United States , 805 A.2d 979, 984 (D.C. 2002) ). The dispositive question "is whether, taking into account all of the circumstances surrounding the encounter, the police conduct would have communicated to a reasonable person that he was not at liberty to ignore the police presence and go about his business."¹¹ Florida v. Bostick , 501 U.S. 429, 437, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991) (quoting Chesternut , 486 U.S. at 569, 108 S.Ct. 1975 ); id. at 436, 111 S.Ct. 2382 ("[T]he appropriate inquiry is whether a reasonable person would feel free to decline the officers' requests or otherwise terminate the encounter."); Towles , 115 A.3d at 1228 ; Sharp v. United States , 132 A.3d 161, 169 (D.C. 2016) (holding defendant was seized "in the absence of any sign that a reasonable person in these circumstances would believe the officer was giving him a genuine choice to decline the request"). Thus, we ask whether a reasonable person in Mr. Hooks's position would have felt free to ignore the police officers who converged on him in his lawn chair, disregard their command to him to "get up," and go about his business of sitting in his lawn chair.

We conclude a reasonable person would not have felt such freedom after a team of four armed, uniformed officers drove past him and then reversed to get back to his location; all four officers emerged from the car; all four officers crossed the sidewalk and walked up the concrete walkway, bounded by fencing on either side, directly to where he was sitting in his lawn chair; and the lead officer, without any explanation, commanded him to "get up."

We are guided in this determination by United States v. Mendenhall , 446 U.S. 544, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980) (plurality op.), where the Supreme Court provided "[e]xamples of circumstances that might indicate a seizure," among them "the threatening presence of several officers, ... or the use of language or tone of voice indicating that compliance with the officer's request might be compelled." Id. at 554, 100 S.Ct. 1870.¹² As noted above, here we have both.

We are also guided by our precedent, which requires a "realistic" assessment of the totality of the circumstances. Jackson , 805 A.2d at 988. Such realism requires the acknowledgement that "an encounter in which a visibly armed police officer in full uniform ... emerges without warning from a police cruiser to interrupt a person going about his private business is not an encounter between equals.... The officer, however well-intentioned and polite, initiates the meeting with an undeniable air of authority ...." (Albert ) Jones , 154 A.3d at 595–96 (footnote omitted).¹³ "The circumstances are more intimidating ... if more than one officer is present," as was the case here.¹⁴ Id. at 596. In concluding there was a seizure in (Albert ) Jones , we factored in the circumstance that the defendant was confronted by the police in a confined space, thereby "substantially reduc[ing] the ease with which [he] could have walked on or otherwise avoided the encounter." Id. at 597. Here, Mr. Hooks's ability to avoid an encounter with the police was similarly compromised; he had four armed police officers occupying the concrete path in front of him, a lawn chair behind him, and metal fencing to either side. In further comparison with (Albert ) Jones ,...