Criminal – Motion to suppress backpack denied where defendant abandoned item

Where the district court found the defendant abandoned his backpack – albeit within the curtilage of a home in which he may otherwise have had a reasonable expectation of privacy – and that finding was not clearly erroneous, the defendant’s motion to suppress was denied.

Background

During a foot pursuit following a traffic stop, Austin Lodge ran onto the porch of a nearby residence and attempted to place the backpack inside the home. A resident briefly opened the door and then closed it, rejecting Lodge’s attempt. Lodge continued fleeing and was apprehended without the backpack.

During questioning, but before officers recovered the bag, Lodge acknowledged that it belonged to him and stated that his children lived at the residence, which belonged to his children’s grandmother. Officers later located the backpack in the backyard of the residence next to a shed and searched it without a warrant.

The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendation denying the motion to suppress. Lodge thereafter entered a conditional guilty plea preserving his right to appeal the suppression ruling.

Analysis

The district court’s decision to adopt the report and recommendation was guided by* United States v. Small*, 944 F.3d 490 (4th Cir. 2019). Its analysis reflects a transposition of *Small*’s public-place logic onto a private, curtilage-based setting. Although the court acknowledged that Lodge placed his bag next to a shed in the backyard of the property, which was at least partially fenced but accessible to a passerby, it treated that placement as evidence of abandonment because the area was “a place where someone would not normally be” at that hour.

In doing so, the court emphasized the perceived remoteness of the location without meaningfully engaging with the constitutional significance of the bag’s placement on private property that may have fallen within the curtilage of a home which Lodge perhaps visited—an interest bearing directly on whether Lodge retained a reasonable expectation of privacy. That analytical misstep is underscored by the court’s sweeping reliance on *Small *without first engaging in a meaningful privacy-interest analysis, a move that risks collapsing the doctrinal distinction between public and private discarding. Yet location of the object is among the most consequential facts in any abandonment inquiry, particularly where the property is placed on private land rather than discarded in a public space during flight.

To be sure, some other circuits have expressly considered whether the Fourth Amendment extends to property discarded during flight within the confines of a home in which a defendant maintains a reasonable expectation of privacy. But this one has not. And contrary to Lodge’s argument on appeal, this case does not present that unresolved question because the district court’s abandonment finding necessarily precedes—and thus precludes—any analysis of whether the Fourth Amendment independently protects the bag’s placement within the home or its curtilage.

While this court’s precedent generally supports the conclusion that a defendant who flees and discards property in a public place has abandoned it, that precedent does not compel the same conclusion where property is discarded on private property in which the defendant maintains a reasonable expectation of privacy. Where property is discarded on private property, or within the curtilage of a home in which the defendant maintains a reasonable expectation of privacy, the analysis is necessarily more nuanced.

Here, Lodge plausibly could have been found to possess a reasonable expectation that the property and its curtilage were places where he and his possessions would not be disturbed. The question now shifts to whether Lodge abandoned his backpack, notwithstanding the fact that he discarded it within the curtilage of a home in which he may otherwise have had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The district court concluded that he did, and that finding was not clearly erroneous.

Affirmed.

Dissenting opinion

Gregory, J., dissenting:

The majority opinion correctly underscores that the district court failed to address a central element of the privacy-interest prong of the abandonment inquiry: the location where defendant stowed the property. Notwithstanding this analytical misstep, the majority affirms the judgment. I cannot.

When a district court applies an incorrect legal framework to reach a conclusion of fact, the appropriate response is not to affirm, but to remand for proper analysis in the first instance. Nor is it proper under clear error review for an appellate court to step into the role of factfinder, supplant the district court’s erroneous analysis with its own and decide issues of fact de novo. I would vacate the judgment and remand for a proper abandonment analysis.

United States v. Lodge, Case No. 23-4665, April 30, 2026. 4th Cir. (Young), from NDVWA at Clarksburg (Kleeh). Hilary Lynn Godwin for Appellant. Zelda Elizabeth Wesley for Appellee. VLW 026-2-153. 34 pp.

Full-Text Opinion

VLW 026-2-153
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