COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Judge Humphreys, Senior Judges Hodges and Overton 

Argued at Chesapeake, Virginia 

HAROLD KENNETH DICKERSON, III 

 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

v. Record No. 1332-99-1 JUDGE ROBERT J. HUMPHREYS 

 JUNE 13, 2000 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF CHESAPEAKE 

S. Bernard Goodwyn, Judge 

 James B. Melton for appellant. 

 Amy L. Marshall, Assistant Attorney General 

(Mark L. Earley, Attorney General, on brief), 

for appellee. 

 

* Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, recodifying Code 

§ 17-116.010, this opinion is not designated for publication.

 Harold Kenneth Dickerson, III was convicted in a bench 

trial of possession of cocaine and possession of marijuana. In 

this appeal, we consider whether the trial court erred in 

denying a motion to suppress evidence seized following an 

investigatory detention and subsequent arrest of Dickerson. 

Finding no error in the denial of the motion to suppress, we 

affirm. 

 The parties are fully conversant with the record, and this 

memorandum opinion recites only those facts necessary to the 

disposition of the appeal. 
I. BACKGROUND 

 On August 14, 1998, Officers John Hildebrand and Michelle 

Hunter of the Chesapeake Police Department were patrolling the 

area of Maplewood Apartments. The officers observed Dickerson, 

accompanied by a juvenile, walking on Maple Field Drive in the 

apartment complex. 

 Maplewood Apartments, by letter, had granted to the 

Chesapeake Police Department the authority to enter its property 

to investigate criminal activity in the apartment complex, 

specifically including drug activity and trespassing. The 

apartment complex also posted "No Trespassing" signs throughout 

the complex, including several on Maple Field Drive. 

 Both officers testified that they were community police 

officers assigned to the area of Maplewood Apartments and were 

familiar with the residents. They knew the juvenile was a 

resident of a neighboring community, and they also knew that 

Dickerson was not a resident of Maplewood Apartments because 

they had previously given him a ride to his home in the City of 

Portsmouth. 

 The officers approached Dickerson and his companion and 

asked them if they were visiting anyone in the Maplewood 

Apartments complex. Neither of them was able to provide the 

officers with the name or address of a resident. Rather, 

Dickerson responded by simply gesturing toward the rear of the 

apartments, approximately one-eighth mile away. 

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 The officers then asked Dickerson and his juvenile 

companion to get into their police car so that Dickerson and his 

companion could direct the officers to the apartment they had 

been visiting. The officers testified that they detained 

Dickerson and his juvenile companion as trespassing suspects in 

order to investigate further. The officers further testified 

that if it turned out that Dickerson and his companion were able 

to confirm that they had been visiting a resident, they would 

have been free to go. 

 The officers never communicated their state of mind to 

Dickerson or his companion as to their custody status. 

Dickerson was not restrained or handcuffed. He testified that 

he believed he was free to leave if he chose to do so. 

 Dickerson's juvenile companion entered the back seat of the 

officers' police car. Dickerson then moved toward the car as if 

he were going to enter it but then became "visibly shaken and 

nervous" and waived his arms in the air and began to turn from 

the car. Believing that Dickerson was about to run, Hunter 

grabbed his arm and a violent struggle ensued. Dickerson was 

eventually subdued by the officers and placed under arrest. In 

a search of Dickerson incident to that arrest, the officers 

recovered a plastic baggie containing marijuana and four plastic 

baggies containing cocaine. 

 Dickerson testified that he told the officers that he was 

visiting a friend named Jay and that while he did not give them 

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a specific address, he told them how to find Jay's apartment. 

Dickerson further testified that the officers asked him to 

accompany them on foot to the apartment and as he and his 

juvenile companion turned to walk towards the apartments, Hunter 

grabbed him. Dickerson denied that he was trying to get away 

and contended that he was just trying to get the officers off of 

him. 

II. ANALYSIS 

 When we review a trial court's denial of a suppression 

motion, "[w]e review the evidence in a light most favorable to 

. . . the prevailing party below, and we grant all reasonable 

inferences fairly deducible from that evidence." Commonwealth 

v. Grimstead, 12 Va. App. 1066, 1067, 407 S.E.2d 47, 48 (1991). 

While we are bound to review de novo the ultimate questions of 

reasonable suspicion and probable cause, we "review findings of 

historical fact only for clear error1 and . . . give due weight 

to inferences drawn from those facts by resident judges and 

local law enforcement officers." Ornelas v. United States, 517 

U.S. 690, 699 (1996) (footnote added). 

 "Fourth Amendment jurisprudence recognizes three categories 

of police-citizen confrontations: (1) consensual encounters, 

(2) brief, minimally intrusive investigatory detentions, based 

 1

 "In Virginia, questions of fact are binding on appeal 

unless 'plainly wrong.'" McGee v. Commonwealth, 25 Va. App. 193, 

198 n.1, 487 S.E.2d 259, 261 n.1 (1997) (en banc) (citations 

omitted). 

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upon specific, articulable facts, commonly referred to as Terry

stops, and (3) highly intrusive arrests and searches founded on 

probable cause." Wechsler v. Commonwealth, 20 Va. App. 162, 

169, 455 S.E.2d 744, 747 (1995) (citation omitted). 

 "[N]ot all personal intercourse between policemen and 

citizens involves 'seizures' of persons. Only when the officer, 

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

restrained the liberty of a citizen may we conclude that a 

'seizure' has occurred." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19 n.16 

(1968). A Terry stop occurs "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." United

States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554 (1980). "As long as the 

person to whom questions are put remains free to disregard the 

questions and walk away, there has been no intrusion upon that 

person's liberty or privacy as would under the Constitution 

require some particularized and objective justification." Id. 

 We recognize that the trial court and the parties analyzed 

the initial stop as a Terry stop. However, we find that the 

officers' initial approach of and questions posed to Dickerson 

and his companion regarding the identity of the resident that 

Dickerson and his companion were visiting constituted a 

consensual encounter that did not implicate the Fourth 

Amendment. See Payne v. Commonwealth, 14 Va. App. 86, 88, 414 

S.E.2d 869, 870 (1992) (questioning by police officers does not 

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implicate Fourth Amendment as long as citizen voluntarily 

cooperates). Only when the officers learned that Dickerson and 

his companion could not specifically identify the resident they 

were visiting, causing the officers to investigate further by 

requesting that Dickerson and his companion enter the police 

car, did the consensual encounter become an investigatory 

detention which must have been supported by a reasonable 

articulable suspicion of criminal activity. 

 "If a police officer has a reasonable, articulable 

suspicion that a person is engaging in, or is about to engage 

in, criminal activity, the officer may detain the suspect to 

conduct a brief investigation without violating the person's 

Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and 

seizures." McGee v. Commonwealth, 25 Va. App. 193, 202, 487 

S.E.2d 259, 263 (1997) (en banc). Reasonable suspicion is a 

"'particularized and objective basis' for suspecting the person 

stopped of criminal activity." Ornelas, 517 U.S. at 696 

(citation omitted). 

 We find that the officers' knowledge that Dickerson and his 

juvenile companion, whom they knew, did not live on the 

property, coupled with the inability of Dickerson and his 

companion to specifically identify the person they were 

allegedly visiting, provided the officers with a reasonable 

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articulable suspicion that Dickerson and his companion were 

possible trespassers, thereby warranting further investigation.2

 Therefore, we conclude, as did the trial court, that the 

initial stop and investigative detention were constitutionally 

permissible. We now must turn our attention to the issue of 

whether the officers' request for Dickerson to accompany them in 

their police car was unreasonable and exceeded the bounds of a 

permissible Terry stop and whether the officers were justified 

in physically preventing Dickerson's departure from the scene, 

and in subsequently arresting and searching him. 

 "When 'evaluating whether an investigative detention is 

unreasonable, common sense and ordinary human experience must 

govern over rigid criteria.' The test is whether the police 

methods were calculated to confirm or dispel the suspicion 

quickly and with minimal intrusion upon the person detained." 

Washington v. Commonwealth, 29 Va. App. 5, 15, 509 S.E.2d 512, 

517 (1999) (en banc) (citation omitted). 

 Here, the evidence, taken in the light most favorable to 

the Commonwealth, established that the officers possessed 

reasonable suspicion to detain Dickerson long enough to verify 

his guest status in the apartment complex and to release him 

 2

 Code § 18.2-119 provides in pertinent part that "[i]f any 

person without authority of law goes upon or remains upon the 

lands, buildings or premises of another, or any portion or area 

thereof, after having been forbidden to do so . . . [or] after 

having been forbidden to do so by a sign or signs posted . . . 

shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor." (Emphasis added.) 

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once that had been done. When Dickerson was unable to identify 

the name or address of the person he was allegedly visiting, the 

method employed by the officers to locate that person was 

calculated to confirm or dispel their suspicions quickly and 

with minimal intrusion upon Dickerson. Thus, the request by the 

officers for Dickerson to take them to the apartment less than 

one-eighth of a mile away was "neither unreasonable nor 

conducted under circumstances that constituted the functional 

equivalent of an arrest." Thomas v. Commonwealth, 16 Va. App. 

851, 858, 434 S.E.2d 319, 323 (1993), aff'd on reh'g en banc, 18 

Va. App. 454, 444 S.E.2d 275 (1994). 

 Furthermore, Dickerson's conduct of becoming visibly 

nervous as he was about to enter the police car, attempting to 

run from the officers instead of entering the police car and 

violently struggling with them, coupled with the fact that he 

had already been unable to specifically identify the person he 

was allegedly visiting, provided the officers with probable 

cause to seize and arrest him for trespassing. See James v. 

Commonwealth, 8 Va. App. 98, 101-02, 379 S.E.2d 378, 380 (1989) 

(probable cause for arrest shown when apartment complex posted 

with "No Trespassing" signs, defendant was acting in suspicious 

manner, and when officer approached to inquire further, he 

fled). 

 "An arresting officer may, without a warrant, search a 

person validly arrested." Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31, 

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35 (1979). The officers discovered the challenged evidence 

during the search of appellant's person incident to arrest. 

Therefore, we find that the search of appellant and the seizure 

of appellant's contraband were reasonable under the meaning of 

the Fourth Amendment. See Jordan v. Commonwealth, 207 Va. 591, 

596-97, 151 S.E.2d 390, 394-95 (1966) (holding that a search 

incident to an arrest for trespassing was constitutional). 

 Accordingly, we agree with the trial court that the 

officers acted reasonably under the totality of the 

circumstances, and we find no error in the denial of the motion 

to suppress the evidence. 

Affirmed.

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