Case Title: Harris v. Commonwealth

Citation: 

Docket Number: 002337

State: virginia

Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Date: 2001-09-14T00:00:00Z

Document:
Present:  All the Justices 
 
MART T. HARRIS 
 
OPINION BY  
v.  Record No. 002337 
JUSTICE LAWRENCE L. KOONTZ, JR. 
 
September 14, 2001 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
In this appeal, we consider whether a law enforcement 
officer had a reasonable belief that an individual was 
trespassing on private property providing a sufficient basis for 
the officer to detain and conduct a “pat-down” search of the 
individual. 
BACKGROUND 
 
On the afternoon of March 20, 1997, Officers J.M. Whitehead 
and T.B. Shelton of the City of Suffolk Police Department 
received a radio dispatch relaying information or a “tip” from 
an anonymous telephone caller that a black male was selling 
drugs near the corner of Davis Boulevard and the private road 
leading into the Cogic Square Apartments, a public housing 
development.  The anonymous tipster had identified the 
individual as “Mart Harris” and had indicated that Harris was 
wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and a checkered jacket.  The 
tipster had further stated that Harris was armed. 
 
Upon arriving at Cogic Square, Whitehead and Shelton 
observed three men on the property of the housing development at 
the location indicated by the anonymous tipster.  One of the men 
was a black male dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a 
checkered jacket.  The three men were standing near a bench that 
formerly had been used as a bus stop.  A short distance away 
there was a “no trespassing” sign posted on one of the buildings 
of the housing development. 
 
Shelton had worked for two and one-half years in a drug 
elimination program at Cogic Square, was familiar with most of 
the residents and their regular visitors, and had never before 
seen any of the three men at the housing development.  Shelton 
subsequently testified that for these reasons he formed the 
opinion that the three men were possibly trespassing.  Neither 
Shelton nor Whitehead observed any activity consistent with the 
anonymous tipster’s assertion that drugs were being sold.  The 
man fitting the description given by the tipster did not readily 
appear to be armed and there were no visible bulges in his 
clothing that might have contained a concealed weapon. 
Shelton approached the man wearing the checkered jacket.  
At that time, Shelton did not question the man to ascertain his 
identity or whether he was a visitor at the housing development.  
Rather, based upon the information from the anonymous tip that 
this man was armed and because this man’s jacket was loose 
fitting, Shelton decided to conduct a pat-down search for 
weapons as a precaution for the officers’ safety.  During the 
 
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pat-down search, Shelton seized a handgun concealed under this 
man’s jacket near his left hip. 
Following the seizure of the handgun and in response to 
Shelton’s questions, the man admitted that he was Mart Harris.  
Shelton then determined that none of the three men was a 
resident of Cogic Square.  He charged the other two men with 
trespassing and arrested Harris for trespassing and possession 
of a concealed weapon.  Shelton performed a search of Harris 
incident to the arrest on the trespassing and firearm charges 
and seized a clear, zip-lock, plastic bag containing a substance 
later determined to be 3.29 ounces of marijuana.  Subsequently, 
Harris was indicted for possession of marijuana with intent to 
distribute, Code § 18.2-248.1, and possession of a firearm after 
having been convicted of a felony, Code § 18.2-308.2. 
 
Immediately prior to trial, Harris moved to suppress the 
evidence seized during the protective search and the subsequent 
search incident to arrest.  The Commonwealth contended that the 
initial stop and search were permissible because the officers 
had corroborated sufficient information from the anonymous tip 
regarding Harris and his illegal activity and also that Shelton 
reasonably believed Harris was trespassing prior to detaining 
him. 
The trial court denied Harris’ motion to suppress, finding 
that Shelton’s corroboration of the appearance of the individual 
 
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described by the anonymous tipster coupled with his own 
observations and knowledge of the area provided Shelton with an 
adequate basis to temporarily detain Harris.  The trial court 
further found that the protective search was warranted by the 
tipster’s assertion that Harris was armed.  The trial court 
convicted Harris on both charges, sentencing him to five years’ 
imprisonment, with three years suspended, for possession of 
marijuana with intent to distribute and five years’ 
imprisonment, with four years suspended, for possession of a 
firearm after having been convicted of a felony.  The sentences 
were imposed to run consecutively.1
 
Harris’ initial appeal of these convictions to the Court of 
Appeals of Virginia was dismissed for failure to file a timely 
notice of appeal.  By an order dated March 2, 1999, this Court 
granted Harris’ subsequent petition for a writ of habeas corpus 
and permitted him to seek a delayed appeal in the Court of 
Appeals.  Harris contended in his petition for appeal in the 
Court of Appeals that the anonymous tip lacked sufficient 
indicia of credibility to provide the police with a reasonable, 
articulable suspicion that Harris was involved in criminal 
                                                 
1 Additionally, Harris was convicted of trespassing and 
carrying a concealed weapon, both misdemeanors.  Harris did not 
challenge these convictions on appeal. 
 
 
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activity.  By order dated December 13, 1999, the Court of 
Appeals granted Harris’ petition for appeal. 
 
Before the argument of Harris’ appeal in the Court of 
Appeals, the United States Supreme Court released its opinion in 
Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266 (2000), holding that an anonymous 
tip identifying a person by location and appearance and 
asserting that the person is armed is not sufficient to justify 
the temporary detention of a person matching the description 
given by the tipster in order to conduct a pat-down search where 
the law enforcement officers responding to the tip did not also 
corroborate the tipster’s assertions that the individual was 
involved in illegal activity.  Id. at 268.  Applying J.L., the 
Court of Appeals determined that the anonymous tip received by 
the police in the present case did not provide an adequate basis 
for initially detaining Harris because the officers’ 
observations of Harris, and the other two men, did not 
“corroborate the tipster’s assertion that [Harris] was engaged 
in selling drugs.”2  Harris v. Commonwealth, 33 Va. App. 325, 
332, 533 S.E.2d 18, 20 (2000). 
                                                 
2 The Court of Appeals erroneously recites in its opinion 
that Shelton identified Harris by name before conducting the 
pat-down.  Although the testimony concerning the sequence of 
events which preceded the pat-down is somewhat confused, when 
Shelton was asked on cross-examination if he had identified 
Harris “by name” prior to the pat-down, Shelton replied, “No, 
sir.”  We note, however, that even if Shelton had identified 
Harris by confirming his name prior to conducting the pat-down, 
 
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The Court of Appeals reasoned, however, that the police 
were not prohibited from unobtrusively observing the activities 
of a person identified by an anonymous tipster as possibly being 
involved in criminal activity in order to “corroborate[] the 
anonymous information with the specific indicia of reliability 
required by the holding of J.L., or . . . provide[] independent 
reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts that 
criminal activity may be afoot.”  Harris, 33 Va. App. at 333, 
533 S.E.2d at 21 (internal quotation marks omitted)(emphasis 
added).  The Court of Appeals concluded that, in light of his 
familiarity with the residents of Cogic Square and their regular 
visitors, Shelton had “a reasonable basis to believe that 
[Harris] was trespassing on private property” and that this 
justified the initial detention of Harris.  Id., 533 S.E.2d at 
22. 
The Court of Appeals properly recognized that “the 
authority to conduct a pat-down search does not follow 
automatically from the authority to effect an investigative 
stop.”  Id. at 334, 533 S.E.2d at 22.  Relying on the language 
in J.L. to the effect that the need to confirm the reliability 
of an anonymous tip “in no way diminishes a police officer’s 
prerogative . . . to conduct a protective search of a person who 
                                                                                                                                                             
this still would not have corroborated the tipster’s allegations 
of criminal wrongdoing. 
 
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has already been legitimately stopped,” J.L., 529 U.S. at 274, 
the Court of Appeals concluded that Shelton could rely on “the 
information concerning the presence of a weapon” in the tip as 
the basis for conducting a protective pat-down search once 
Harris was otherwise lawfully detained.  Harris, 33 Va. App. at 
334, 533 S.E.2d at 22.  Accordingly, the Court of Appeals 
affirmed the judgment of the trial court.  We awarded Harris 
this appeal. 
DISCUSSION 
 
Before addressing the substantive issue raised by this 
appeal, we must first consider the procedural posture of Harris’ 
conviction for possession of a firearm after having been 
convicted of a felony.  This Court’s order granting Harris’ 
petition for a writ of habeas corpus and awarding him a delayed 
appeal references the trial court’s record numbers for his 
convictions for possession of marijuana with intent to 
distribute and possession of a firearm after having been 
convicted of a felony, but identifies only the drug-related 
conviction by express reference to the offense by name.  The 
notice of appeal filed pursuant to that order also identifies 
both convictions by those record numbers, and Harris sought 
reversal of both convictions in his petition for appeal in the 
Court of Appeals. 
 
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Although some of the Court of Appeals’ records reference 
both of the trial court’s record numbers, the Court of Appeals 
affirmed Harris’ drug-related conviction, but concluded that a 
delayed appeal had not been awarded with respect to the firearm 
conviction.  Harris, 33 Va. App. at 329 n.1, 533 S.E.2d at 19 
n.1.  This conclusion was erroneous. 
An appellate court may take judicial notice of its own 
records.  Cunningham v. Hayes, 204 Va. 851, 857, 134 S.E.2d 271, 
275, cert. denied, 376 U.S. 973 (1964).  Reading our March 2, 
1999 order in its entirety, it is clear that we intended Harris 
to have the right to seek an appeal of both convictions.  
Because the issue raised in the appeal necessarily applies to 
the suppression of all the evidence seized from Harris, the 
Court of Appeals’ erroneous interpretation of our order does not 
undermine the arguments made by the parties, nor will it affect 
our analysis.  Indeed, the Court of Appeals recognized that 
“[t]he issue in this case is the validity of the initial stop 
and accompanying pat-down, not the arrest or search incident 
thereto.”  Harris, 33 Va. App. at 331, 533 S.E.2d at 20.  That 
same issue is dispositive in both of the appealed convictions.  
Accordingly, we hold that Harris’ delayed appeal relates to both 
convictions, the Court of Appeals’ order awarding that appeal 
brought both convictions before that Court, and Harris’ appeal 
 
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from the judgment of that Court brings both convictions before 
us in this appeal. 
We now turn to the substantive issue raised by this appeal.  
Although the Commonwealth does not expressly concede the 
applicability of the holding in J.L. to the facts of this case, 
it does not contend that the Court of Appeals erred in holding 
that the anonymous tip received by the police, coupled with 
their corroboration of innocuous information asserted in the 
tip, was insufficient to support the initial detention of 
Harris.  Accordingly, we need not address that aspect of the 
Court of Appeals opinion.  Rather, the dispositive issue is 
whether the Court of Appeals properly concluded under the 
particular facts of this case that Shelton had the requisite 
reasonable, articulable suspicion that Harris may have been 
engaged in criminal wrongdoing sufficient to warrant the initial 
detention of Harris consistent with his rights under the Fourth 
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  See 
generally Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). 
It is undisputed that the officer did not observe any 
conduct that would support a reasonable belief that Harris was 
selling drugs or that he was unlawfully in possession of a 
concealed weapon.  Thus, our focus is upon whether Harris’ 
conduct reasonably suggested that he was trespassing.  We are of 
 
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opinion that our decision in Ewell v. Commonwealth, 254 Va. 214, 
491 S.E.2d 721 (1997), controls our analysis. 
In Ewell, we held that an off-duty police officer working 
as a security guard in an apartment complex was not justified in 
stopping a vehicle leaving the complex’s parking lot and 
detaining the operator based on the officer’s suspicion that the 
operator was trespassing because the officer was unfamiliar with 
the vehicle and its operator.  Id. at 217, 491 S.E.2d at 723.  
In that case, the record showed that the officer “was employed 
primarily to enforce the complex’s policy against trespassing.  
The complex’s parking lot had only one access, and it was posted 
with a ten-by-five foot, lighted sign, stating ‘no 
trespassing.’ ”  Id. at 215, 491 S.E.2d at 722.  The officer 
testified that “he was familiar with most of the complex’s 
residents and their automobiles” and “was concerned because it 
was very early [in the morning] and the car was parked in an 
area suspected of ‘high narcotics’ trafficking.”  Id. at 216, 
491 S.E.2d at 722. 
The Commonwealth contends that Ewell may be distinguished 
on several grounds.  The Commonwealth first contends that the 
officer in Ewell was familiar with the apartment complex only 
through his part-time employment as a security guard, whereas 
Shelton’s knowledge of Cogic Square through his two-and-a-half 
years of work in the drug elimination program provided him with 
 
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a greater familiarity with the residents and their guests than 
was evident in Ewell.  We disagree. 
There is nothing in Ewell to indicate the length of time 
the officer had been employed as a security guard by the 
apartment complex; thus, we cannot say that Shelton’s asserted 
familiarity with the residents and visitors of Cogic Square was 
quantitatively greater than that of the officer in Ewell.  
Moreover, the officer in Ewell “was employed primarily to 
enforce the complex’s policy against trespassing” and it follows 
logically that his familiarity with the complex, its residents, 
and their guests would be naturally heightened with respect to 
enforcing that policy.  By way of contrast, on the record before 
us we cannot say that Shelton’s duties under the drug 
elimination program focused primarily on, or even necessarily 
included, regularly enforcing Cogic Square’s no trespassing 
policy. 
The Commonwealth next contends that Shelton’s testimony 
that he participated in the drug elimination program at Cogic 
Square creates a heightened expectation that drug trafficking 
was occurring at Cogic Square and that Harris and the other two 
men were thus more likely to be trespassers involved in that 
criminal activity.  We see no distinction between the assertion 
in Ewell that it was “suspected” that drug trafficking was 
taking place in the parking lot and the “reasonable inference” 
 
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the Commonwealth asks this Court to draw in this case that an 
ongoing drug elimination program establishes that the particular 
location where Harris was standing was known for drug 
trafficking. 
To the contrary, unlike the officer’s assertion in Ewell 
that the specific area where he first observed the defendant in 
her car was suspected as a drug market, Shelton testified only 
that Cogic Square as a whole was the subject of the drug 
elimination program.  Moreover, it does not necessarily follow 
that a long-term drug elimination program supports the inference 
that drug trafficking continued to occur, for it might be 
equally true that the program was successful and that Cogic 
Square was being maintained in the program in order to assure 
that it remained drug-free. 
Finally, the Commonwealth contends that while “there was 
nothing unusual about [Ewell] leaving an apartment complex in 
her automobile” near midnight, Harris and the other two men “had 
no apparent reason to be standing on [a] private street corner.” 
The evidence, however, was that the three men were standing and 
conversing near a former and, by appearance, possibly still 
functioning bus stop immediately adjoining a public street.  
Certainly, three persons standing and conversing near an 
apparent bus stop adjoining a public street at midday is no more 
unusual than a person driving away from a parking lot at 
 
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midnight.  Moreover, although the prominence of the “no 
trespassing” sign posted on one of the buildings at Cogic Square 
is not clear from the record, there is nothing in the record to 
suggest that this sign was any more prominent than a ten-by-five 
foot, lighted sign posted at the single entrance to the property 
as in Ewell.  Thus, just as in Ewell, the officer observed an 
individual on private property that was posted “no trespassing,” 
but otherwise “act[ing] as any other person might have acted 
under similar circumstances.”  Id. at 217, 491 S.E.2d at 723. 
In each case, the officers’ subjective knowledge that the 
area was known for drug trafficking did not attach with any 
particularity to the observed activity or the individual.  Each 
officer had no more than an “unparticularized suspicion or 
‘hunch’ ” that criminal activity was afoot.  See Terry, 392 U.S. 
at 27.  As such, each officer’s subjective belief that the 
individual might be a trespasser was not sufficient to warrant a 
non-consensual investigatory detention. 
The Commonwealth relies upon the information of the 
anonymous tipster that Harris was armed as justification for 
heightening Shelton’s inchoate “hunch” that Harris was 
trespassing to the level of a reasonable, articulable suspicion.  
In doing so, the Commonwealth bootstraps the legitimate concern 
for law enforcement officers’ safety, which permits a protective 
search of a legally detained suspect, to serve as the basis for 
 
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detaining the suspect.  However, the issue before this Court is 
not whether Shelton could, based on the information in the tip 
that Harris was armed, conduct the protective pat-down had 
Harris been otherwise lawfully detained, but whether Shelton had 
a reasonable, articulable suspicion to warrant detaining Harris 
in the first place. 
As we have noted, nothing in the behavior observed by the 
officers corroborated the tipster’s allegation that Harris was 
armed.  Nor did the tipster assert that Harris was trespassing, 
and nothing in the information supplied suggests that the 
tipster would have a reason to know whether Harris was lawfully 
on the property of Cogic Square.  The mere presence of an 
unknown individual on the property of a large housing 
development does not create a reasonable suspicion that such an 
individual is engaged in trespassing or some other criminal 
activity.  Thus, the uncorroborated tip in no way elevates 
Shelton’s inchoate hunch that Harris was trespassing, an offense 
not generally associated with the wrongdoer being armed, to a 
reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal wrongdoing to 
warrant detaining Harris in order to conduct a protective pat-
down search based upon that same information. 
Accordingly, we hold that, at the time Shelton detained 
Harris, Shelton lacked a sufficient reasonable, articulable 
suspicion that Harris was engaged in any criminal activity and, 
 
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thus, the initial seizure of Harris was in violation of his 
Fourth Amendment rights.  Consequently, the evidence obtained as 
a result of that seizure and in the search incident to Harris’ 
arrest was tainted. 
CONCLUSION 
For these reasons, we hold that the trial court erred in 
failing to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the 
initial seizure of Harris and in the subsequent search of Harris 
incident to his arrest, and the Court of Appeals erred in 
affirming the trial court’s judgment.  Accordingly, we will 
reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals, enter final 
judgment vacating Harris’ convictions for possession of 
marijuana with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm 
after having been convicted of a felony, and dismiss the 
indictments against him. 
Reversed and final judgment. 
 
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