IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE
SHANNON MATHIS, §
§ No. 89, 2015
Defendant Below, §
Appellant, §
§ Court Below – Superior Court
v. § of the State of Delaware, in
§ and for New Castle County
STATE OF DELAWARE, §
§ Cr. ID. No. 1307020179
Plaintiff Below, §
Appellee. §
Submitted: October 21, 2015
Decided: October 23, 2015
Before HOLLAND, VALIHURA, and SEITZ, Justices.
ORDER
This 23rd day of October, 2015, it appears to the Court that:
(1) In the early morning hours of July 25, 2013, officers assigned to
Operation Safe Streets were driving in an unmarked police vehicle to a residence in
the 2800 block of North Washington Street in Wilmington, Delaware to perform a
curfew check on a probationer. They observed Shannon Mathis drinking a beer
from a can as he walked along the sidewalk with another man. The officers passed
by the two men and then made a U-turn to park in front of the residence where they
were planning to perform the curfew check. When the unmarked police vehicle
completed the U-turn, Mathis began fleeing. The officers pursued in their vehicle,
pulling up next to Mathis as Mathis was running away. One of the officers
announced the officers as police and ordered Mathis to stop and get on the ground.
Mathis continued fleeing. Before the police apprehended him on foot, they saw
Mathis trying to dispose of a gun. When the police brought Mathis to the ground
after attempting to run past the officers, a gun fell from his person.
(2) The State indicted Mathis for possession of a firearm by a person
prohibited, carrying a concealed deadly weapon, possession of a firearm with an
obliterated serial number, and resisting arrest. Prior to trial Mathis sought to
suppress the gun evidence as the product of an illegal seizure. The Superior Court
denied his motion, and a jury convicted Mathis on all charges. On appeal, Mathis
claims the Superior Court erred by denying his motion to suppress the gun
evidence. After reviewing the record, we agree with the Superior Court that the
officers had a reasonable, articulable suspicion that Mathis was engaged in
criminal activity. The officers were therefore warranted in conducting an
investigatory stop of Mathis. We affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.
(3) Wilmington Police Sergeant Thomas Looney and Special Probation
Officers Daniel Collins and Kate Sweeney were driving in an unmarked Ford
Expedition police vehicle in the 2800 block of North Washington Street in
Wilmington in the early morning hours of July 25, 2013. They were on their way
to a residence on that block where a probationer lived to conduct a curfew check.
2
As they were approaching the residence on the opposite side of the street, they
passed Shannon Mathis and another man walking on the sidewalk. They saw
Mathis drinking a beer from an open can.1
(4) Sergeant Looney was driving and made a U-turn to park in front of
the residence. After completing the U-turn, the officers noticed that Mathis had
begun running in the opposite direction. The officers pursued Mathis and pulled
alongside him in the Expedition. Officer Collins shouted out to Mathis, identifying
the officers as police and asking him what was wrong. Despite hesitating and
seeming to think about stopping, Mathis took off fleeing once again. Mathis
ignored instructions from Officer Collins to stop and get on the ground.2
(5) The officers continued to pursue Mathis in the Expedition. Mathis
turned and ran into a driveway. The officers stopped in front of the driveway and
got out of the Expedition. They saw Mathis reach for a gun in his waistband and
attempt unsuccessfully to dispose of it over a fence. Mathis then turned and sought
to run out of the driveway and past the officers. Officer Collins tackled him. As
Mathis was going to the ground, a gun fell from his person.3
(6) The police arrested Mathis and charged him with possession of a
firearm by a person prohibited, carrying a concealed deadly weapon, possession of
1
App. to Opening Br. at 26-27.
2
Id. at 26-27, 37.
3
Id. at 29.
3
a firearm with an obliterated serial number, and resisting arrest. Before trial,
Mathis moved to suppress the gun as the fruit of an illegal seizure. The Superior
Court denied Mathis’s motion. A Superior Court jury convicted Mathis on all
charges. The trial judge sentenced Mathis to five years of incarceration followed
by descending levels of supervision.
(7) This Court reviews a trial court’s denial of a motion to suppress for
abuse of discretion. We review the trial court’s legal conclusions de novo. The
trial court’s findings of fact are reviewed to determine if the trial court abused its
discretion in finding that there was sufficient evidence to support those findings
and whether those findings were clearly erroneous.4
(8) Article I, Section 6 of the Delaware Constitution provides:
The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and
possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures; and no warrant
to search any place, or to seize any person or thing, shall issue without
describing them as particularly as may be, unless there be probable
cause supported by oath or affirmation.
Delaware’s constitution provides greater privacy protections against unreasonable
searches and seizures than the United States Constitution.5 In Terry v. Ohio,6 the
United States Supreme Court held that a police officer may detain a person for
investigatory purposes for a limited scope and duration, but only if such detention
4
Brown v. State, 2014 WL 5099648, at *1 (Del. Oct. 9, 2014).
5
Jones v. State, 745 A.2d 856, 865-66 (Del. 1999).
6
392 U.S. 1 (1968).
4
is supported by reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity. In
Quarles v. State this Court elaborated on the Terry “reasonable and articulable”
standard: “a police seizure can be justified only when, based upon specific and
articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts,
reasonably warrant the belief that a crime is being or has been committed.”7
(9) In this case, it is undisputed that Mathis was seized when Officer
Collins shouted to Mathis from the Expedition, as Sergeant Looney drove the
vehicle alongside the fleeing Mathis, that Mathis must stop and get on the ground.8
The question is whether at that point in time there were specific, articulable facts,
together with rational inferences, that reasonably warranted a belief on the officers’
part that Mathis was committing or had committed a crime.
(10) The State claims that the officers had more than reasonable articulable
suspicion that Mathis was committing a crime because they witnessed him
violating a Wilmington City ordinance by drinking an alcoholic beverage from an
open container on a public street. 9 Mathis claims that the officers lacked
reasonable suspicion to support the investigatory stop because, according to the
testimony of Sergeant Looney and Officer Collins, the officers pursued Mathis and
ordered him to stop, not because he had been drinking a beer, but because he had
7
Quarles v. State, 696 A.2d 1334, 1337 (Del. 1997) (citing Terry, 392 U.S. at 17-18).
8
Appellee’s Answering Br. at 5.
9
Wilm. C. § 36-66.
5
started running away. Mathis cites Wong Sun v. United States10 for the proposition
that flight from police officers cannot form the basis for reasonable suspicion
justifying seizure if the person fleeing does not know that the persons from whom
he is fleeing are police officers.
(11) There is some uncertainty in this case as to whether, when Mathis
began fleeing, he knew he was fleeing from police. The officers had not made an
overt show of force or sought to identify themselves before they pursued Mathis.
Officer Collins testified that he was not positive that Mathis noticed the officers
before Mathis started running.11 Sergeant Looney testified, however, that he and
his vehicle are well-known throughout the City of Wilmington, and Mathis was
familiar with him and his vehicle from a prior incident when Sergeant Looney was
checking on a probationer and Mathis was present. 12 Moreover, Mathis told
personnel at the hospital, where he was taken after the incident, that he started
running when he saw the police.13
(12) On appeal, this Court defers to the factual findings of the Superior
Court unless the Superior Court abused its discretion in determining there was
sufficient evidence to support those findings and those findings were not clearly
10
371 U.S. 471 (1963).
11
App. to Opening Br. at 37.
12
Id. at 31.
13
Id. at 47.
6
erroneous.14 The Superior Court found convincing, as evidence that Mathis knew
the occupants of the Expedition were police when he began fleeing, the fact that
Mathis told hospital personnel that he had begun running when he saw the police.15
The Superior Court’s reason for crediting this evidence is convincing: the person
who made the hospital records memorializing Mathis’s post-incident account was
independent and had no interest in distorting the facts. The Superior Court’s
factual finding that Mathis was aware of the police presence when he began fleeing
is supported by sufficient evidence and is not clearly erroneous.
(13) If Mathis knew that the occupants of the Expedition were police at the
time he started fleeing, Wong Sun does not require suppression of the gun
evidence. At the time the officers seized Mathis, the officers had both the fact that
they had observed Mathis violating a city ordinance and the fact that Mathis fled
from the police as specific, articulable facts supporting a reasonable belief that
Mathis was or had been engaged in criminal activity. Mathis had been caught in
the act of committing a crime. The fact that the police might have let Mathis go
with a warning for violating the open container ordinance had Mathis not fled does
not change the fact that, once Mathis responded to being caught violating a city
ordinance by fleeing, the officers had reasonable grounds for suspicion warranting
14
Brown, 2014 WL 5099648, at *1.
15
App. to Opening Br. at 47.
7
an investigatory stop. The Superior Court did not abuse its discretion when it
denied the motion to suppress.16
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the judgment of the Superior
Court is AFFIRMED.
BY THE COURT:
/s/ Collins J. Seitz, Jr.
Justice
16
Jones v. State, 745 A.2d 856, 865-66 (Del. 1999).
8