California v. Hodari D.

Petitioner
State of California
Respondent
Hodari D.
Petitioner's Claim
That police officials' use of materials discarded by a fleeing suspect priorto a warrantless arrest does not violate Fourth Amendment search and seizurestandards.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Kenneth Winston Starr, U.S. Solicitor General
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Paul L. Hoffman
Justices for the Court
Anthony M. Kennedy, William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Harry A. Blackmun, Sandra Day O'Connor, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
15 June 1992
Decision
Upheld California's claim and overturned a lower court's decision prohibitinguse of evidence obtained without a search warrant prior to illegal seizure of the suspect.
Significance
The ruling established that if a person avoids or resists police efforts at apprehension, then seizure of the person has not occurred and Fourth Amendmentprotections do not apply. Police must apply physical force or the suspect must respond to restraint willingly for a seizure to occur and the person to beunder protections of the amendment. The decision gave greater discretion togovernment officials in approaching suspected individuals and collecting evidence incidental to such encounters. Some feared that, with knowledge of veryfew actual facts, police could act much more arbitrarily in their efforts tointerrogate people on the street, particularly by chasing them if they try toavoid contact.
The Fourth Amendment ensures the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizures." Such privacy can not be violated and no warrants can be issued unless "probable cause" is shown, supported by an oath or affirmation. The warrant must specifically describe the place to be searched and things to be seized. The amendment only applies to searches and seizures conducted by the government. The Supreme Court in Katz v. United States (1967) broadened Fourth Amendment protections by asserting if an individual targeted by the search expectsprivacy then protections apply.
Fourth Amendment protections also guard against unreasonable governmental seizures of citizens themselves. However, courts normally applied common law standards in upholding the right of police officers to take people into custodywithout warrants. The police must have probable cause to believe the person seized committed a criminal offense. The probable cause must be satisfied by information discovered prior to the police officer's stop. Information discovered afterward is not sufficient to retroactively establish probable cause. Following the Court's decision in Terry v. Ohio (1968), the standard forstopping individuals for investigative purposes evolved into one of "reasonable suspicion of criminal activity." This test allowed some stops and questioning without probable cause in order for police officers to explore the basisof their suspicions. Fourth Amendment protection did not come into effect until a physical "seizure" occurred. The Terry Court recognized that "not all personal intercourse between policemen and citizens involves `seizures'of persons."It suggested that only when the officer, by "means of physical force or show of authority," has in some way restricted the liberty of a citizen that a "seizure" has occurred. Later, in United States v. Mendenhall (1980), Justice Stewart proposed a standard stating that a person has beenseized "only if, in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave." This standard, adopted by the Court three years later in Florida v. Royer(1983), became the Mendenhall-Royer test.
Late one evening in April of 1988, two city police officers were on patrol inan unmarked police car in a high-crime area of Oakland, California. A groupof black youths, including Hodari D., fled as the police vehicle approached.One officer, wearing a jacket with "Police" written on its front, left the car to give chase on foot.
The officer did not follow Hodari directly, but took a different route bringing the two face to face on the next street. Hodari looking back as he ran, did not turn to see the officer until the officer was almost upon him. At thatmoment, Hodari tossed away a small rock. The officer tackled Hodari and recovered the rock which proved to be crack cocaine. Hodari was subsequently arrested by the officers and charged with possession of illegal narcotics.
Hodari filed a motion to suppress the cocaine evidence prior to juvenile proceedings. He argued the drugs were the result, the "fruit," of an illegal seizure violating the Fourth Amendment's search and seizure clause. The circuit court denied Hodari's motion to suppress the evidence and found him guilty ofthe illegal narcotics possession charge.
Hodari appealed the conviction to the California State Court of Appeals. Theappellate court reversed the circuit court's verdict by finding that Hodari had been "seized" when he saw the police officer running toward him. Such a seizure was considered "unreasonable" under the Fourth Amendment since the state of California conceded the officer did not have the "reasonable suspicion"required to justify stopping Hodari. Therefore, the evidence of cocaine, being the fruit of an illegal seizure, had to be suppressed as Hodari had argued.The state of California next appealed the court's decision to the CaliforniaSupreme Court which denied the application. The U.S. Supreme Court then granted certiorari, a written order commanding a lower court to forward the proceeding of the case for the Court's review.
When Questioning Is Seizure
On a 7-2 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded the state court of appeals decision that the drug evidence was the fruit of an illegal seizure. In reaching this conclusion, the Court looked to the common law definitionof arrest which required bringing the subject within physical control. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia explained that in order for a seizure to have occurred there must have been either "the application of physical force,however slight," or submission to an officers "show of authority" to restrainthe person's liberty. Scalia's two-part analysis focused first on whether any physical force occurred at the moment of the officer's show of authority and, second, on the defendant's failure to comply with that show of authority.If no physical force accompanied the show of authority and an individual thenchooses to ignore the show of authority, no seizure exists until the officerdoes apply physical force. The police had not applied physical force in thiscase before Hodari tossed the drugs. Scalia wrote that the word "seizure" did not remotely apply to a policeman yelling, "Stop, in the name of the law!"at a fleeing person that continued to flee.
The Court was unwilling to accept Hodari's argument that the officer's pursuit qualified as a "show of authority" constituting a seizure even though Hodari did not submit to that expression of authority. As a result, the Court determined that the drugs abandoned during Hodari's flight were not the fruit ofan illegal seizure at all, since no seizure occurred at that time. Thus, hismotion to suppress the evidence was properly denied by the circuit court prior to the juvenile proceedings. In fact, any object discarded by the fleeing individual would be considered abandoned and its retrieval would not involve Fourth Amendment concerns.
An Erosion of Fourth Amendment Rights?
In a dissent joined by Justice Marshall, Justice Stevens experienced strong misgivings about the Court's ruling. It seemingly adopted a new definition of"seizure" inconsistent with a long line of Fourth Amendment cases. The Courttraditionally had adopted a broad view of the Fourth Amendment protection. The decision in this case clearly narrowed the view of those protections, essentially decreasing citizens' rights to protection from seizures by the government. The previous decisions in Katz and Terry rejected the notion that the common law of arrest defined the limits of the term "seizure" inthe Fourth Amendment. Stevens wrote:

In Katz, the Court abandoned the narrow view that would have limited a seizure to a material object, and instead, held that the Fourth Amendment extended to the recording of oral statements. And in Terry, the Court abandoned its traditional viewthat a seizure under the Fourth Amendment required probable cause, and instead, expanded the definition of a seizure to include an investigative stop made on less than probable cause. Thus, the major premise underpinning the majority's entire analysis today--that the common law of arrest should define theterm "seizure" for Fourth Amendment purposes--is seriously flawed. The Courtmistakenly hearkens back to common law, while ignoring the expansive approachthat the Court has taken in the Fourth Amendment analysis since Katzand Terry.

The dissenters continued by arguing that the way a citizen responds should not determine the constitutionality of the officer's conduct. Further, they expressed concern that the majority's decision would encourage unlawful displaysof force that will frighten innocent citizens into surrendering privacy rights to which they are entitled under the Fourth Amendment.
Impact
The Hodari verdict went well beyond the Mendenhall-Royer test.This decision along with others in 1991, such as Florida v. Bostick, consistently overturned lower court rulings applying Fourth Amendment protections and substantially narrowed those protective boundaries. To some, the Court decisions reflected current public opinion in which anyone expressing concerns about constitutional safeguards were labeled "soft" on crime.
The Hodari ruling partially reversed previous findings, such as Terry, by establishing that a restraint must be a successful one to invoke constitutional protections. That is, either the citizen the officer is seekingto restrain must submit to the restraint, or the officer must use physical force in order for a seizure to have occurred. An officer could pursue a citizen even without a reasonable suspicion that the citizen had committed a crime. Despite the absence of any apparent wrongdoing, the government could assumethe citizen had violated the law and take measures to confirm that assumption. Following Hodari, citizens had to trust the government to use its intrusion power wisely rather than the police trusting the citizens as guidedby the Constitution regarding assumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Justice Scalia quoted the biblical proverb, "the wicked flee when no man pursueth" to assert that avoidance of police indicates guilt. This perspective directly conflicted with what the Supreme Court recognized long ago in 1896. InAlberty v. United States (1896), the Court stated it is "a matter ofcommon knowledge that men who are entirely innocent do sometimes fly from thescene of a crime through fear of being apprehended as the guilty parties, orfrom an unwillingness to appear as witnesses." Giving police officials unlimited discretion to initiate chases hardly seemed likely to reduce the occasions on which individuals might seek to elude the police or increase the willingness of members of the public in responding to police commands. The Hodari ruling allowed police officers to assume guilt on the part of the fleeing person, and give chase without the Fourth Amendment coming into play.
Civil rights activists among others were alarmed by the Hodari decision. The Court seemed oblivious to the tensions between police and minority communities, especially regarding street encounters. Scalia's proverb was not considered applicable to young black men who may have many reasons to fear police contact. Studies ignored by the Court had shown that black youths were subjected more frequently to warrantless search and seizures and aggressive police behavior. The case demonstrated clearly that race is not relevant to the Court in considering the circumstances surrounding an incident, which is contrary to reality in dealing with black and white encounters.
Related Cases

• Alberty v. United States, 162 U.S. 499 (1896).
  
• Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).
  
• Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).
  
• Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491 (1983).
  
• United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544 (1988).
  
• Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429 (1991).