Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-13-03102/USCOURTS-caDC-13-03102-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Will Gross
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 4, 2014 Decided April 21, 2015

No. 13-3102

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

WILL GROSS,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:13-cr-00068-1)

Sandra G. Roland, Assistant Federal Public Defender, 

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was A.J. 

Kramer, Federal Public Defender.

Nicholas P. Coleman, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Ronald C. 

Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman and 

Stephen J. Gripkey, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: BROWN and SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SRINIVASAN.

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Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge BROWN.

SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judge: Appellant Will Gross was 

indicted on one count of unlawful possession of a firearm by a 

convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Gross 

filed a motion to suppress the firearm, arguing that its 

discovery on his person was the fruit of an unlawful seizure. 

The district court denied the motion, reasoning that Gross had 

not been seized when officers approached him and asked if he 

was carrying a gun. The case then proceeded to trial, 

culminating in Gross’s conviction. Gross now appeals the 

denial of his motion to suppress, arguing that officers subjected 

him to an unlawful seizure before finding the gun. We 

conclude that no unlawful seizure occurred, and we therefore 

affirm.

I.

On the evening of February 4, 2013, four officers of the 

Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s Gun 

Recovery Unit drove along the 4000 block of 9th Street, S.E. 

The officers were working on “gun patrol,” which involved 

“[r]iding through the area looking to see if [they] could recover 

any guns.” Mot. Hr’g Tr. 40 (June 17, 2013). The officers’ 

car was unmarked, but each officer wore a tactical vest that 

said “police” in large letters on the front and back. Officer 

Jason Bagshaw drove the vehicle and Officer Jordan Katz rode 

in the rear driver-side seat. Two other officers—whose 

conduct is not at issue—sat in the passenger-side seats. 

Around 7 p.m., the officers came across appellant Gross 

on 9th Street as he walked along the sidewalk to the left of the 

car. When the officers reached the corner of 9th and Bellevue

Street, they turned left onto Bellevue. Gross also turned onto 

Bellevue and continued to travel in the same direction as the 

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officers. Officer Bagshaw slowed the car as it moved next to 

Gross and shined a flashlight on Gross to get his attention. 

Officer Bagshaw then called out to Gross from the car, “[H]ey, 

it is the police, how are you doing? Do you have a gun?” Id. at 

10. Gross stopped, but did not answer, and Officer Bagshaw 

stopped the car to remain parallel with Gross. Bagshaw then 

asked Gross, “Can I see your waistband?” Id. at 12. Still not 

speaking, Gross responded by lifting his jacket slightly to show 

his left side, looking back over his shoulder in the process. 

Officer Bagshaw, apparently satisfied with the interaction, 

began to roll the car forward. 

Officer Katz, however, asked Officer Bagshaw to stop the 

car. Suspicious of Gross, Officer Katz opened the driver-side 

rear door and asked, while stepping out of the vehicle, “[H]ey 

man, can I check you out for a gun?” Id. at 15. As soon as 

Officer Katz began to exit the car, Gross turned and ran back 

towards 9th Street. Officer Katz gave chase. He observed 

Gross patting his right side with his hand as he ran, behavior 

that Officer Katz later testified “can mean someone is trying to 

hold a gun in their waistband.” Id. at 15-16. Officer Katz 

also smelled PCP while pursuing Gross. After a short chase, 

Officer Katz apprehended Gross. With Gross in handcuffs, 

Officer Katz performed a frisk and recovered a .40-caliber 

semiautomatic handgun from underneath Gross’s waistband. 

After his indictment, Gross filed a motion to suppress the 

handgun on the ground that its recovery derived from an 

unlawful seizure. At the motion hearing, Officer Katz 

testified about his recollections of the encounter with Gross, 

describing both his actions and those of Officer Bagshaw. 

After hearing Officer Katz’s testimony and arguments from 

both sides, the district court denied Gross’s motion. The court 

reasoned that no Fourth Amendment seizure occurred until 

after Gross fled because nothing to that point would have 

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indicated to a reasonable person that he lacked freedom to 

disregard the officers’ questions and walk away. The court 

concluded that Gross’s flight, when considered in conjunction 

with his other behavior, provided the officers with reasonable 

grounds to detain him and conduct a pat-down frisk for 

weapons. 

After the district court denied his motion to suppress, 

Gross waived his right to a jury trial and proceeded to a bench 

trial. The district court found Gross guilty and sentenced him 

to twenty-one months of imprisonment followed by three years 

of supervised release. Gross now appeals the district court’s 

denial of his suppression motion.

II.

Gross argues that the district court erred in denying his 

motion to suppress the handgun found on his person. 

According to Gross, he was subjected to an unlawful seizure 

when Officer Bagshaw asked if he was carrying a gun and 

would reveal his waistband. The government argues that

Gross is barred from raising that seizure argument on appeal 

because he failed to raise it with adequate specificity in the 

district court. We decline to resolve whether Gross forfeited 

his argument. We instead conclude that, even assuming Gross 

adequately preserved the argument he now presses, his 

unlawful-seizure argument fails on the merits.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees the “right of the 

people to be secure in their persons . . . against unreasonable 

searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. The 

prohibition against unreasonable seizures requires that all 

seizures, even ones involving “only a brief detention short of 

traditional arrest,” be founded upon reasonable, objective 

justification. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 

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878 (1975). But not all interactions between police officers 

and citizens amount to a “seizure” for Fourth Amendment 

purposes.

A Fourth Amendment seizure occurs only when an officer, 

“by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some 

way restrained the liberty of a citizen.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 

U.S. 1, 19 n.16 (1968). Unless “a reasonable person would 

have believed that he was not free to leave,” no seizure will 

have taken place. United States v. Maragh, 894 F.2d 415, 418 

(D.C. Cir. 1990) (quoting Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 

567, 573 (1988)). That “reasonable person” test asks, “not . . . 

what the defendant himself . . . thought, but what a reasonable 

man, innocent of any crime, would have thought had he been in 

the defendant’s shoes.” United States v. Goddard, 491 F.3d 

457, 460 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (per curiam). 

Gross argues that he was subjected to a Fourth 

Amendment seizure when Officer Bagshaw, speaking to him 

from the police car, asked if he was carrying a gun and would 

expose his waistband. Right out of the gate, Gross’s argument 

runs into the settled principle that a “seizure does not occur 

simply because a police officer approaches an individual and 

asks a few questions.” Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 434 

(1991). Even when officers “have no basis for suspecting a 

particular individual, they may generally ask questions of that 

individual . . . as long as the police do not convey a message 

that compliance with their requests is required.” Id. at 435. 

And “[w]hile most citizens will respond to a police request, the 

fact that people do so, and do so without being told they are 

free not to respond, hardly eliminates the consensual nature of 

the response.” United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, 205 

(2002). 

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Gross contends that a reasonable, innocent person 

nonetheless would have considered his encounter with Officer 

Bagshaw to be nonconsensual in light of the particular 

circumstances. Gross emphasizes three factual considerations 

in support of his argument: (i) there were four officers in the 

car, each of whom wore a tactical vest; (ii) the officers 

followed Gross; and (iii) Officer Bagshaw’s questions were 

accusatory, implying that Gross could not leave until he proved 

his innocence (i.e., that he did not possess a gun). Because we 

consider “the totality of the circumstances” in assessing 

whether there was a seizure, see Samson v. California, 547 

U.S. 843, 848 (2006), we examine the particular factual 

considerations emphasized by Gross in the context of the 

overall effect of the encounter. We conclude that the 

circumstances are materially indistinguishable from those in 

cases in which our court, or the Supreme Court, has determined 

that no seizure took place. Those decisions compel the same 

outcome here.

Gross initially points to the fact that four officers were 

present in the car and that the officers wore tactical vests 

marked “police.” We confronted comparable circumstances 

in United States v. Goddard, 491 F.3d 457. There, four 

officers exited their police car and approached the defendants 

while wearing badges and jackets marked with a police logo. 

See id. at 459. We concluded that those circumstances did not 

amount to a seizure. As we explained, “the presence of 

multiple officers” wearing “[police] gear, including guns and 

handcuffs,” does not “automatically mean that a stop has 

occurred.” Id. at 461. The circumstances of this case are, if 

anything, less suggestive of a seizure than those in Goddard. 

Here, all four officers remained in a car separated from Gross 

by one lane of traffic during Officer Bagshaw’s questioning. 

And while the officers carried weapons, there is no indication 

that the weapons were visible to Gross from the sidewalk.

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The officers’ “following” of Gross likewise did not 

convert the encounter into a seizure. Testimony from the 

motion hearing showed that the officers merely turned in the 

same direction as Gross and then slowed their car for a few 

seconds as it passed next to him across one lane of traffic. In 

Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, the Supreme Court 

concluded that no seizure had occurred when four officers in a 

police car “accelerated to catch up with a running pedestrian 

and drove parallel to him for a short while.” Goddard, 491 

F.3d at 461 (describing Chesternut). Although the “presence 

of a police car might be ‘somewhat intimidating,’” id. at 461 

(quoting Chesternut, 486 U.S. at 575), the act of approaching a 

person in a police car “does not constitute a seizure where the 

officers [do] not use their siren or flashers, [do] not command 

the [person] to stop, [do] not display their weapons, and [do] 

not drive aggressively to block or control the [person’s] 

movement,” id. Just as in Chesternut and Goddard, the 

officers did none of that in this case.

With regard to the questions posed by Officer Bagshaw, 

the “nature of a police officer’s question[s]” can bear on 

whether a person has been seized. Gomez v. Turner, 672 F.2d 

134, 146 (D.C. Cir. 1982). Questions alone, however, 

ordinarily do not amount to a “show of authority” sufficient to 

constitute a seizure. Gross points to cases in which direct

accusations of criminal conduct by officers have weighed in 

favor of finding a seizure. See, e.g., United States v. Tyler, 

512 F.3d 405 (7th Cir. 2008). But Officer Bagshaw’s 

questions (“Do you have a gun?”, “Can I see your 

waistband?”) did not accuse Gross of possessing a gun or 

committing a crime. 

The Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. 

Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, is instructive. The Court held that no 

seizure had taken place when multiple officers wearing visible 

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badges boarded a bus and asked passengers numerous 

questions. Id. at 198-99. Of particular salience, one officer 

asked if a passenger “had any weapons or drugs in his 

possession,” and then asked, “Do you mind if I check your 

person?” Id. at 199. Officer Bagshaw posed highly similar 

questions to Gross. Indeed, whereas the officer in Drayton 

asked if he could perform a search of the passenger’s person, 

here, Officer Bagshaw merely asked whether Gross himself 

would reveal his waistband. And while the passengers in 

Drayton were questioned while inside a bus with an officer 

positioned near the exit, see id. at 205, the street encounter in 

this case posed no physical impediment to Gross’s freedom to 

walk away.

Reviewing the totality of the circumstances in this case in 

light of precedents involving comparable interactions, we 

conclude that Officer Bagshaw’s questioning of Gross did not 

effect a seizure for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. 

Moreover, Gross raises no challenge to the district court’s 

conclusion that the circumstances did not subsequently ripen 

into a seizure when Officer Katz exited the police car and 

asked if he could check Gross for a gun. Nor does Gross 

contest the district court’s determination that, once he 

attempted to flee in response to that question, the officers had 

authority to stop him and conduct the frisk that uncovered the 

handgun on his person. Consequently, there is no ground for 

disallowing the introduction of the firearm into evidence.

* * * * *

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s 

denial of Gross’s motion to suppress.

So ordered.

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BROWN, Circuit Judge, concurring:

In its efforts to ferret out illegal firearms the District has 

implemented a “rolling roadblock.” Officers randomly trawl 

high crime neighborhoods asking occupants who fit a certain 

statistical profile—mostly males in their late teens to early 

forties—if they possess contraband. Despite lacking any 

semblance of particularized suspicion when the initial contact 

is made, the police subject these individuals to intrusive 

searches unless they can prove their innocence. Our case law 

considers such a policy consistent with the Fourth 

Amendment. See, e.g., United States v. Goddard, 491 F.3d 

457 (D.C. Cir. 2007). I continue to think this is error. Our 

jurisprudence perpetuates a fiction of voluntary consent where 

none exists and validates a policy that subverts the framework 

of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). 

* * *

“Nothing is more clear than that the Fourth Amendment 

was meant to prevent wholesale intrusions upon the personal 

security of our citizenry.” Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 

726 (1969). “Terry for the first time recognized an exception 

to the requirement that Fourth Amendment seizures of 

persons must be based on probable cause.” Dunaway v. New 

York, 442 U.S. 200, 208–09 (1979). There, the Supreme 

Court wisely found that where police officers “ha[ve] reason 

to believe [they] [are] dealing with an armed and dangerous 

individual . . . the[y] [] need not be absolutely certain that the 

individual is armed,” so long as there are particularized facts 

that could lead a “reasonably prudent person to believe their 

safety or that of others [is] in danger.” Terry, 392 U.S. at 27. 

There is a further exemption beyond the narrow Terry

rule; voluntary consent to a search dispels any “inference of 

coercion.” United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, 207 

(2002). Because no Fourth Amendment interest is triggered a

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search may proceed on the basis of individual consent, despite 

the absence of reasonable and particularized suspicion of 

misconduct. See id. at 201, 207–08; Florida v. Rodriguez, 

469 U.S. 1, 5–6 (1984) (“[C]onsensual encounter[s] [] 

implicate[] no Fourth Amendment interest.”). 

The District’s Gun Recovery Unit relies on the latitude 

afforded by voluntary consent to facilitate both suspicionless 

“consented” searches and Terry seizures premised on 

purportedly reasonable suspicions. But in the particulars of 

its application, the District’s policy perverts the logic 

underlying Terry. 

Terry’s premise is straightforward: “police officer[s]

must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, 

taken together with rational inferences from those facts, 

reasonably warrant [] intrusion” into a citizen’s autonomy. 

392 U.S. at 21. But rather than rely upon particularized 

suspicions in the first instance, the District maximizes its odds 

of illegal firearm recovery by patrolling high crime 

neighborhoods “looking for guns,” or more accurately, 

looking for people likely to have guns. Transcript of Motions 

Hearing at 40, United States v. Gross, No. CR13-068 (D.D.C. 

June 17, 2013). But playing the odds is not the same thing as 

reasonable suspicion. See also United States v. Black, 707 

F.3d 531, 542 (4th Cir. 2013) (mere presence in a high crime 

area at night does not support involuntary detention by 

police). 

In the absence of any particularized reports, evidence, or 

suspicions, patrolling officers simply question every likely 

person they encounter. They “employ[] a simple technique: 

they ask[] any individual they encounter[] if he or she ha[s] a 

gun and then watch[] to see if that individual engage[s] in 

what the officers perceive[] to be suspicious behavior.” 

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Robinson v. United States, 76 A.3d 329, 331 (D.C. 2013). If 

consent to question or search is refused, officers frequently 

construe citizens’ varied reactions to their probes as 

rationalizing a Terry stop.

1

The Gun Recovery Unit’s officers have all but candidly 

recognized that their policy amounts to statistical 

gamesmanship. In a prior case involving the same policy, 

Officer Katz, for example, noted that the unit’s officers 

targeted a particular “high crime” area for patrols because it 

“was one of [the officer’s] top-yielding gun areas as far as 

recovering firearms off of people” and stopped an individual 

for questioning without “any discussion among” the officers 

about the rationale for the stop, where neither Officer Katz 

nor the other officers “[saw] anything, initially, about him” to 

suggest he had a gun. Transcript of Motions Hearing at 8, 24, 

United States v. Robinson, No. 2011-CF2-023024 (D.C. 

Super. Ct. May 10, 2012). See also id. at 29 (Officer Katz 

stating, “I didn’t see anything that would make me think that 

[the defendant] had a gun,” prior to questioning him about

firearm possession). As the D.C. Superior Court noted, like 

all officers in the District’s Gun Recovery Unit, “[Officer 

Katz] asked [the individual] whether he had a weapon, not 

because he had any suspicion that he did, but because that’s 

his job. He’s a gun recover[er]—and he asks everyone. 

Apparently, he goes down the street asking everyone, do you 

have a gun.” Id. at 120 (emphasis added).

As a thought experiment, try to imagine this scene in 

Georgetown. Would residents of that neighborhood maintain 

 1 The act of refusal itself does not, however, form the basis of the 

justification. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 125 (2000) 

(“[R]efusal to cooperate, without more, does not furnish the 

minimal level of objective justification needed for a . . . seizure.”).

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there was no pressure to comply, if the District’s police 

officers patrolled Prospect Street in tactical gear, questioning 

each person they encountered about whether they were 

carrying an illegal firearm? Nothing about the Gun Recovery 

Unit’s modus operandi is designed to convey a message that 

compliance is not required. While viewing such an encounter 

as consensual is roughly equivalent to finding the latest 

Sasquatch sighting credible, I submit to the prevailing 

orthodoxy, but I continue to reject its counterintuitive 

premise. 

Under our Circuit precedents there is little question we 

must treat consent to such questioning as voluntary, even 

when—as here—multiple officers in tactical gear engage an 

individual, repeatedly question him about his possession of 

illegal firearms, and ask that he consent to a search. Brief of 

Appellant at 4–6, United States v. Gross, No. 13-3102 (D.C. 

Cir. June 12, 2014). Our decision in Goddard, for example, 

involved facts more extreme than the present. This Court 

nonetheless found no Terry stop where four officers dressed 

in police gear used their patrol car to block the entrance of a 

gas station—where the defendant stood with a group of other 

young men—and then “jumped out” of their vehicle to 

confront them. 491 F.3d at 461–62. 

Yet our case law’s stubborn mythology that consent is 

truly voluntary belies the all but foreordained nature of the 

resulting search. Individuals approached by the District’s 

Gun Recovery Unit officers know they possess little more 

freedom than to elect the manner in which to be skewered 

upon Morton’s Fork.2

 The outcome is effectively 

 2 Morton’s Fork derives from “Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal, 

and Minister of Henry VII John Morton’s (supposed) method of 

levying forced loans by arguing that those who were obviously rich 

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predetermined. They will be searched. The choice they face 

is to “voluntarily” acquiesce to the officers’ request or to have 

any reaction to the officers’ inquiries—regardless of how 

objectively benign—serve as the factual predicate justifying a 

Terry search. See, e.g., Transcript of Motions Hearing at 80, 

United States v. Gross (finding articulable facts warranting

Officer Katz’s search of Gross, who looked to the rear after 

noticing the officers and failed to completely comply with a

request that he voluntarily show his waistband, lifting only 

part of his shirt). 

With the guise of voluntary consent stripped away, the 

reality of the District’s regime is revealed. It is a rolling 

roadblock that sweeps citizens up at random and subjects 

them to undesired police interactions culminating in a search 

of their persons and effects. If the Fourth Amendment is 

intended to offer meaningful protection in the context of 

Terry stops, the voluntary consent exemption cannot be used 

to engage with members of the public en masse and at random 

to fabricate articulable suspicions for virtually every citizen 

officers encounter on patrol. 

“No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully 

guarded . . . 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.” Terry, 392 U.S. at 9. Our 

 

could afford to pay, and those who lived frugally must have 

amassed savings. Hence in extended and allusive use it is: a 

practical dilemma, especially one in which both of the choices . . .

available disadvantage or discredit the chooser.” United States v. 

Johnson, 482 F. App’x 137, 145 n.14 (6th Cir. 2012) (internal 

punctuation marks and citations omitted).

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precedents, however, fail to safeguard this fundamental right, 

and instead permits encounters intended to coerce 

“consented” searches and justify Terry stops through 

purposive interpretation of citizens’ reactions to “voluntary” 

questioning. 

Persons questioned by the District’s Gun Recovery Unit

patrols may reasonably be at a loss as to how to react to these 

contacts. Is there a means to react to such nominally 

voluntary encounters that might preserve their constitutional 

prerogatives? I offer this advice: speak to officers firmly, 

politely, respectfully. Tell them, “I do not wish to have an 

encounter with the police right now. Am I free to leave?” If 

the answer is “no,” then coercion will cease to masquerade as 

consent. Our courts will be forced, at last, to directly grapple 

with the reality of the District’s policy of routinized and 

involuntary seizures. 

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