Hilton v. State

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE
AQUAN HILTON, §
§ No. 193, 2022
Defendant-Below, §
Appellant §
§
v. § Court Below—Superior Court
§ of the State of Delaware
§
STATE OF DELAWARE, § Cr. ID No. 2008002632 (N)
§
Plaintiff-Below, §
Appellee. §
Submitted: June 7, 2023
Decided: June 26, 2023
Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA and TRAYNOR, Justices.
ORDER
This 26th day of June, 2023, after consideration of the parties’ briefs, the record
on appeal, and the argument of counsel, it appears to the Court that:
1. Aquan Hilton was convicted in the Superior Court of possession of a
firearm by a person prohibited and sentenced to 15 years in prison, suspended after
10 years for one year of intensive probationary supervision.
2. Hilton has appealed, arguing that the Superior Court erred when it
denied his motion to suppress the evidence collected following what Hilton contends
was an unlawful seizure of his person. As will be set forth below, the facts as found
by the Superior Court following an evidentiary hearing on Hilton’s motion to
suppress do not support his claim. We therefore affirm the Superior Court’s
judgment of conviction.
3. At approximately one o’clock in the morning of August 7, 2020,
Corporal Keith Johnson of the Wilmington Police Department received a cellphone
call from a WPD detective. The detective informed him that a tipster had reported
that Hilton—an individual with whom the detective was familiar—was “possibly
. . . armed . . . in the Eighth Street corridor.”1 Hilton, it was reported, “was wearing
a Captain America tee shirt, a blue tee shirt with a red and white big shield in front
of the chest.”2
4. After conducting a DELJIS3 search that disclosed Hilton’s criminal
record, Corporal Johnson, joined by two fellow patrolmen, responded to the area
described by the detective; there he observed an individual wearing such a t-shirt
walking toward the intersection of Eighth and West.
5. According to Corporal Johnson, Hilton was walking with his right-arm
pinned to his side and his left-arm swinging freely. Based on his training and
experience, Corporal Johnson thought that this manner of walking was consistent
with the presence of a gun in the subject’s waistband. After spotting Corporal
Johnson’s parked car, Hilton drastically slowed his forward progress. This
1
App. to Opening Br. at A1.
2
Id. at A2.
3
“DELJIS” stands for Delaware Criminal Justice Information System.
2
prompted the corporal to exit his vehicle and ask Hilton if the two could talk. Hilton
immediately rushed his hands to an object tucked in his waistband and bladed the
right side of his body.
6. Fearing that Hilton was armed, Corporal Johnson, according to his
suppression-hearing testimony,4 began to draw his own weapon only to see that
Hilton was running away. Seeing this, Corporal Johnson re-holstered his firearm,
yelled at Hilton to stop, and pursued on foot. During the chase, Hilton tossed what
turned out to be a .40 caliber handgun beneath a nearby parked car.
7. One of the assisting patrolmen caught up with Hilton. Once in custody,
Hilton was arrested and charged with drug and weapons offenses, including the
possession-of-a-firearm-by-a-person-prohibited charge of which he was eventually
convicted.5
8. Before trial, Hilton moved to suppress all evidence following his
detention, arguing that the Wilmington police had violated his Fourth Amendment
right to be secure from unreasonable seizures. The gravamen of Hilton’s complaint
was that the police officers lacked a reasonable articulable suspicion that he was
engaged in unlawful behavior and that consequently the officers were not justified
in seizing him. According to Hilton, he was seized within the meaning of the Fourth
4
App. to Opening Br. at A7.
5
During a search incident to arrest, Corporal Johnson discovered marijuana, crack cocaine, a
digital scale, and $2,100 in cash on Hilton’s person.
3
Amendment “when [Corporal] Johnson arrived on scene with two additional
officers, got out of his car and immediately ‘asked’ the defendant if he [w]ould talk
to him and shortly thereafter began to draw his firearm.”6
9. An officer “may detain an individual for investigatory purposes for a
limited scope and duration” where the stop “is supported by a reasonable and
articulable suspicion of criminal activity.”7 “Although reasonable, articulable
suspicion requires less than probable cause and ‘considerably less than
preponderance of the evidence,’8 the officer ‘must be able to point to specific and
articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts,
reasonably warrant that intrusion.’”9 “A determination of reasonable suspicion must
be evaluated in the context of the totality of the circumstances as viewed through the
eyes of a reasonable, trained police officer in the same or similar circumstances,
combining objective facts with such an officer’s subjective interpretation of those
facts.”10
10. In an oral ruling, the Superior Court rejected Hilton’s claim, finding
that the suppression-hearing evidence supported a finding of reasonable articulable
suspicion:
6
Opening Br. at 12.
7
Jones v. State, 745 A.2d 856, 861 (Del. 1999).
8
State v. Murray, 213 A.3d 571, 579 (Del. 2019) (quoting Woody v. State, 765 A.2d 1253, 1263
(Del. 2001)).
9
Id. (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 (1968)).
10
Diggs v. State, 257 A.3d 993, 1004 (Del. 2021).
4
There was a clothing description and an area, so the officer had
narrowed his search to someone that with [sic] certain clothing in a
certain area. The officer testified that he saw someone matching that
description in the area. And at the time he saw the suspect his right arm
was not swinging. And as soon as he saw that the uniformed officer
was approaching, he started looking right and left, his pace slowed; and
then when the officer exited the vehicle for contact and spoke to the
defendant, the testimony was that the defendant clutched his waistband
with both hands on the right side and then ran eastbound. Prior to
running, he had bladed his body to conceal his right side. . . . [U]nder
those circumstances, I find that there was reasonable articulable
suspicion to stop the defendant.11
11. We note that the court did not make a finding as to whether Corporal
Johnson had reached for his weapon before Hilton’s flight. But even assuming
Hilton’s best case on appeal—that Corporal Johnson did, in fact, begin unholstering
his firearm, thus effecting a seizure, before Hilton fled12—we are yet satisfied that
the record and the Superior Court’s factual findings, to which we are required to
give deference,13 support a determination that reasonable articulable suspicion
existed.
12. The WPD received a tip that a person prohibited from carrying a
firearm may have been in possession of one. When Corporal Johnson arrived at the
location identified by the tipster, he observed a person matching the subject’s
11
App. to Answering Br. at B33, B35.
12
See United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554 (1980) (holding that the “display of a
weapon by an officer” generally amounts to a seizure).
13
See Flowers v. State, 195 A.3d 18, 23 (Del. 2018) (“When we are reviewing the denial of a
motion to suppress evidence based on an allegedly illegal stop and seizure, we conduct a de
novo review to determine whether the totality of the circumstances, in light of the trial judge’s
factual findings, support a reasonable and articulable suspicion for the stop.”).
5
description walking toward him in a manner that, to the officer, suggested that the
person was carrying a weapon in his waistband. It was late at night in downtown
Wilmington and the individual reacted to the police presence, slowing his pace
considerably and looking to his right and left, prompting Corporal Johnson to exit
his vehicle. Up to that point, Corporal Johnson had not seized Hilton within the
meaning of the Fourth Amendment; his interaction with Hilton, to the extent that
there had been any, had not gone beyond the type of consensual encounter or mere
inquiry we described in Diggs v. State.14 At that moment, however, Hilton bladed
his body away from the corporal and appeared to grab at an object in his waistband.
These actions, taken in their totality and viewed through the eyes of a reasonable,
trained police officer, gave rise to a reasonable articulable suspicion that Hilton was
armed and justified Corporal Johnson’s response. Hence, the Superior Court did not
err when it declined to suppress the evidence Hilton discarded as he fled from the
police and the evidence found on his person when he was apprehended.
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the judgment of the Superior
Court be AFFIRMED.
BY THE COURT:
/s/ Gary F. Traynor
Justice
14
257 A.3d 993, 1003–04 (Del. 2021).
6