[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 23-12931

Non-Argument Calendar

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

DEMETRIUS LAMAR RAHMINGS, 

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 8:21-cr-00262-KKM-SPF-1

____________________

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2 Opinion of the Court 23-12931

Before ROSENBAUM, BRANCH, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

In this appeal, Demetrius Rahmings argues that his 

conviction for possession of a firearm by a felon should be vacated 

because the search that found the weapon violated his Fourth 

Amendment rights. The district court denied Rahmings’s motion 

to suppress the evidence, finding that Rahmings abandoned any 

reasonable expectation of privacy in the backpack where he carried 

the gun when he left the backpack in the home of a friend while 

fleeing from police. After review, we find no error and affirm.

I. Background

In October 2020, Rahmings was wanted under several 

felony arrest warrants for a shooting incident. Rahmings had been 

seen at a friend’s house in Tampa, Florida, so law enforcement 

officials set up surveillance there hoping to catch and arrest him. 

Not long after, Rahmings showed up carrying a white backpack 

with a University of South Florida (“USF”) logo and the number 81 

embroidered on it. 

The police activated their emergency lights and approached 

him. Rahmings fled into the house. The officers chased him inside. 

Within a minute or two, Rahmings emerged from a bedroom with 

his hands up. Rahmings was no longer wearing the backpack. 

After arresting him, the police obtained the homeowner’s 

permission to conduct a protective sweep of the home. The 

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homeowner specifically said that she did not want guns in the 

house because she had young children. During the sweep, the 

police found the USF backpack in the hallway about 10 to 15 feet 

away from where Rahmings had emerged just before his arrest. 

They found a handgun in the backpack. 

Outside the house, the homeowner asked Rahmings if he 

had left anything inside her house. Rahmings did not respond. A 

sergeant then asked Rahmings if a white iPhone found in the house 

was his, and he confirmed that it was. 

Rahmings was indicted on one count of possession of a 

firearm by a felon pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2). 

Rahmings moved to suppress the fruits of the search, 

arguing that the search of the house and seizure of the backpack 

violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The government 

responded that the homeowner consented to the sweep, and 

Rahmings had abandoned the backpack and lacked standing to 

challenge the search. Rahmings insisted he did not abandon the 

backpack because he left it “in a residence that [he] viewed as a 

secure place to temporarily leave” it. 

The district court held an evidentiary hearing, and then 

entered an order denying the motion. The court agreed that 

Rahmings had abandoned the backpack, and thus any Fourth 

Amendment interest, “when he cast it off in the hallway while 

running from police.” The district court also said that, “[t]o the 

extent that Rahmings object[ed] to the scope of the protective 

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sweep,” he “lack[ed] standing” because he was neither the 

homeowner nor an overnight guest there. 

The case went to a bench trial, and the court found 

Rahmings guilty. Rahmings was sentenced to 120 months’ 

imprisonment followed by a term of supervised release. Rahmings 

appealed. 

II. Discussion

Rahmings argues on appeal that “[t]he district court erred as 

a matter of law” in denying his motion to suppress because it

“erroneously concluded that [he] abandoned the backpack[.]” In 

Rahmings’s view, “[t]he evidence established that [he] simply 

removed and set aside the backpack in response to law 

enforcement’s efforts to [arrest] him inside the house.” Rahmings 

insists that he “had a valid possessory interest . . . in the backpack,” 

and, “took no action to attempt to hide the backpack,” and instead 

merely put it down in “a home that he was known to frequent” 

because “he was about to be taken into custody[.]” We disagree. 

When reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we 

evaluate the district court’s legal conclusions de novo, accepting the 

court’s findings of fact unless they are clearly erroneous. United 

States v. Ramos, 12 F.3d 1019, 1022 (11th Cir. 1994). Whether a 

person abandons property is a factual issue, so we review the lower 

“court’s finding of abandonment . . . under the clearly erroneous 

standard.” Id. A finding of fact is clearly erroneous only when, on 

review of the evidence, we are left “with the definite and firm 

conviction that a mistake has been committed.” United States v. 

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Plasencia, 886 F.3d 1336, 1342 (11th Cir. 2018) (quotations omitted). 

We find no such error here.

The Fourth Amendment provides that the “right of the 

people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, 

against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated[.]” 

U.S. Const. amend. IV. Following the Supreme Court’s lead, we 

have held that the Amendment’s protections “extend to any thing 

or place with respect to which a person has a ‘reasonable 

expectation of privacy.’” United States v. Ross, 963 F.3d 1056, 1062 

(11th Cir. 2020) (quoting California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 211 

(1986)). 

But a person can abandon property and, with it, their 

reasonable expectation of privacy in that property. United States v. 

McKennon, 814 F.2d 1539, 1545 (11th Cir. 1987). The government 

bears the burden of proving abandonment. Ramos, 12 F.3d at 1023. 

And “[d]etermining whether an abandonment has occurred 

requires a consideration of case-specific facts[.]” Id. at 1025. “[T]he 

critical inquiry is whether the person prejudiced by the search . . . 

voluntarily discarded, left behind, or otherwise relinquished his 

interest in the property[.]” Id. at 1022 (quotations omitted).

Here, the court found the following facts, all of which are 

well supported by the evidence introduced at the suppression 

hearing. Rahmings’s flight from arrest “indicated an attempt to rid 

himself of incriminating evidence.” The house was not only “not 

Rahming’s residence” but was also a place “known to law 

enforcement as a hotspot for gang activity.” The backpack was 

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“lying on the floor in the hallway in an area where Rahmings must 

have passed to enter the bedroom from which he emerged when 

surrendering[.]” (emphasis added). The homeowner “indicated 

that she had not given Rahmings permission to store his backpack 

in the hallway when she asked him if he had left anything behind.” 

And Rahmings’s “silence in response” to questions about whether 

he left anything in the house “further evidence[d]” his “intent to 

distance himself from the backpack”—“particularly when 

compared to his response to a subsequent question about whether 

the iPhone belonged to him.” 

Those findings are more than enough to show 

abandonment. By voluntarily ridding himself of the backpack to 

distance himself from incriminating evidence, Rahmings showed 

an intent to voluntarily relinquish or discard any interest in the 

property. See United States v. Williams, 569 F.2d 823, 826 (5th Cir. 

1978) (holding that the defendant abandoned his trailer when he 

unhooked it from his truck at a rest stop and then drove away while 

being pursued by federal agents because his purpose “in leaving the 

trailer unguarded and unlocked in the parking area was to rid 

himself of the vehicle with its incriminating contents”).1 That 

inference is only strengthened by the facts showing that Rahmings

jettisoned the backpack in the hallway of a home that was not his 

own, where the guns he brought were not welcome, only for 

1 In Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc), we 

adopted as binding precedent all decisions of the former Fifth Circuit handed 

down before October 1, 1981.

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Rahmings to later decline an opportunity to stake a claim to the 

backpack after it was seized. See United States v. Cofield, 272 F.3d 

1303 (11th Cir. 2001) (holding that a defendant abandoned luggage 

when he left the bags on the ground in a train station, walked away 

from them, and denied that the bags belonged to him). It does not 

matter whether Rahmings subjectively hoped to reclaim the 

backpack later. Williams, 569 F.2d at 826 (finding abandonment 

even when the defendant “retained a hope that he might

accomplish two objects: the protection of himself from possession 

of evidence while he was pursued, and the chance of recovery of 

the trailer if neither the officers nor anyone else took it.”).

Rahmings replies that the Supreme Court’s decision in Smith 

v. Ohio, 494 U.S. 541, 543–44 (1990) mandates a ruling in his favor. 

He is wrong. In Smith, the defendant ignored officers’ calls to stop 

and question him, throwing his bag down on the hood of his own 

car before turning to face them. See id. When Smith refused to tell 

the officers what was in the bag, they brushed him aside and 

searched the bag anyway. Id. at 544. The Supreme Court held that 

Smith had not abandoned the bag in doing so, accepting the lower 

court’s finding that Smith had merely “attempt[ed] to protect his 

private property from inspection[ ] after throwing it on a car to 

respond to [the] police officer’s inquiry.” Id. at 543. Rahmings 

reasons that he, too, was simply protecting his property from 

inspection. But here, unlike in Smith, Rahmings jettisoned the 

backpack out of his personal vicinity, in someone else’s home, and 

declined to stake a claim to the bag once it was seized. See Cofield, 

272 F.3d at 1307 n.3 (distinguishing Smith on the grounds that 

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Cofield denied ownership of his luggage and walked away from it). 

Even if Rahmings’s own view of the evidence were similar to 

Smith, the district court’s findings were reasonable—and therefore 

not clear error. United States v. Almedina, 686 F.3d 1312, 1317 (11th 

Cir. 2012) (explaining that, where “the fact pattern gives rise to two 

reasonable and different constructions, the district court’s choice 

between them cannot be clearly erroneous.”).

Thus, we find no error—clear or otherwise—in the district 

court’s finding that Rahmings abandoned the backpack and any 

reasonable expectation of privacy in it.

We therefore AFFIRM.

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