Austin Lodge was charged with possession with intent to distribute controlled substances after officers found methamphetamine and other drugs in a backpack he discarded during a foot pursuit. The incident began when an officer observed a traffic violation and pursued Lodge, who fled on foot carrying a backpack. Lodge attempted to place the backpack inside a nearby trailer home, but the resident shut the door, preventing him from storing it. Lodge then fled around the side of the property and discarded the backpack near a shed before being apprehended. Officers searched the backpack without a warrant and found contraband. Lodge moved to suppress the evidence, arguing he merely concealed the bag within the curtilage of a family residence and retained a reasonable expectation of privacy. The district court denied the motion, finding that Lodge had abandoned the backpack, and Lodge entered a conditional guilty plea to appeal the ruling.
Judge Young, writing for the panel, addressed whether the district court clearly erred in finding that Lodge abandoned his backpack. The court explained that abandonment is a factual determination reviewed for clear error, turning on whether the defendant intended to abandon the item based on objective facts known to officers at the time of the search. The court noted that while the location of discarded property is a crucial factor, the district court's finding was supported by the objective evidence that Lodge was turned away at the door, which undermined his claim of permission to be on the property. The court clarified that its precedent in United States v. Small does not create a categorical rule that flight plus discarding equals abandonment; rather, the analysis must consider the context, including where and how the property was discarded. However, because the district court's finding of abandonment was plausible given the evidence that Lodge lacked permission to be on the property at that moment, the court affirmed without needing to resolve the open question of whether a defendant retains privacy rights in property discarded within a home's curtilage during flight. The court emphasized that abandonment is not inferred from flight alone but from flight viewed in context.
The decision affirms the admissibility of evidence obtained from the warrantless search of Lodge's backpack, allowing the prosecution to proceed with the drug trafficking charges. Practically, the ruling reinforces that defendants who flee law enforcement and discard property after being denied entry to a residence may be found to have abandoned their privacy interests, even if the property is left on private land. However, the court explicitly left open the question of whether a defendant retains a reasonable expectation of privacy in property discarded within the curtilage of a home during flight, signaling that future cases involving private property discards may require a more nuanced analysis than simply relying on the fact of flight.
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