Thursday, April 21, 2016

Is that a gun in your pocket, or did you just drop your cell phone?



Cian Pridgen v. United States (decided April 7, 2016).

The Players: Associate Judges Blackburne-Rigsby and Thompson. Senior Judge Ferren. Opinion by Judge Thompson. Mindy Daniels for Mr. Pridgen. Trial Judge: Ronna Lee Beck.

Facts: Three police officers patrolling in an unmarked vehicle saw Mr. Pridgen walking toward an apartment building. As he walked in front of their car, one officer leaned out the open window, shined a flashlight at him, and shouted out to him to ask whether he had a gun. Mr. Pridgen did not respond, kept walking, and then began to run. He “kept the palm of his left hand pressed against his jacket on his left side” as he was running, and the officers got out and followed him. As the officers followed him, he dropped a cell phone just inside the apartment building but did not stop to get it. The officers stood outside the apartment building, with the Mr. Pridgen inside, and looked through the glass doors to see Mr. Pridgen with his hand moving in his left pocket, and his body pressed up against the apartment door as if he was trying to get inside the unit. Someone let the officers in the locked door, and they shouted at Mr. Pridgen to get on the ground. When he did not obey their orders, they tackled him and forced him to the ground. When they searched him, they found a gun in his jacket pocket. Mr. Pridgen moved to suppress the gun as the fruit of an unlawful seizure.

Issue: Did the police officers have reasonable articulable suspicion justifying a seizure when they tackled Mr. Pridgen inside the apartment building?

Holding: Yes. The court held that Mr. Pridgen was not “seized” until the moment he was tackled by the officers, and so did not analyze whether officers had reasonable articulable suspicion justifying a seizure at the point when Mr. Pridgen began running and the officers ran after him. However, the court found that by the time the officers tackled Mr. Pridgen, there was reasonable articulable suspicion justifying a seizure because 1) Mr. Pridgen was running while holding his left side, which a “reasonable officer” would recognize as “the way individuals tend to run when carrying a firearm;” 2) Mr. Pridgen did not stop to retrieve the cell phone he dropped, negating the possibility that he was holding his left side to protect some other valuable item that was not a gun; and 3) Mr. Pridgen did not obey the officers’ orders to get on the ground, even though he could see that they were wearing vests that said “Police,” creating a “reasonable basis to believe he was armed and dangerous.”

Accordingly, given the “totality of the circumstances,” the court found that there was a reasonable articulable suspicion that Mr. Pridgen was armed, justifying the seizure and search that the led the officers to discover the gun in Mr. Pridgen’s jacket pocket. 

Of Note: Although the court said it was not analyzing whether there was reasonable articulable suspicion to seize Mr. Pridgen when he began running and the officers chased him, the opinion strongly suggests that the court believed there was not. The court said that the crucial moment was when Mr. Pridgen dropped the cell phone but continued running. Recognizing that a gun is not the only item a person might hold onto while running, the court said: “we are persuaded that the officers’ articulable basis for suspicion that Mr. Pridgen was armed did not ripen into a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot until the officers saw Mr. Pridgen drop the cell phone, decline to stop and retrieve it even though the door was locked behind him, and continue to hold his side as he ran upstairs to the door of the apartment unit.” The court also suggested that running away from the police could not form a basis for suspicion, saying that “we are mindful that a suspect’s flight at the sight of officers who are targeting him with a flashlight may provide a basis for fear of harm that has nothing to do with whether the suspect is engaged in criminal activity.”  SN

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