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Full Opinion
CALIFORNIA
v.
HODARI D.
Supreme Court of the United States.
*622 Ronald E. Niver, Deputy Attorney General of California, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were John K. Van de Kamp, Attorney General, Richard B. Iglehart, Chief Assistant Attorney General, John H. Sugiyama, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and Clifford K. Thompson, Jr., and Morris Beatus, Deputy Attorneys General.
Clifford M. Sloan argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. On the brief were Solicitor General Starr, Assistant Attorney General Mueller, Deputy Solicitor General Bryson, and Paul J. Larkin, Jr.
James L. Lozenski, by appointment of the Court, 498 U. S. 935, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was J. Bradley O'Connell.[*]
JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
Late one evening in April 1988, Officers Brian McColgin and Jerry Pertoso were on patrol in a high-crime area of Oakland, California. They were dressed in street clothes but wearing jackets with "Police" embossed on both front and back. Their unmarked car proceeded west on Foothill Boulevard, and turned south onto 63rd Avenue. As they rounded the corner, they saw four or five youths huddled around a small red car parked at the curb. When the youths *623 saw the officers' car approaching they apparently panicked, and took flight. The respondent here, Hodari D., and one companion ran west through an alley; the others fled south. The red car also headed south, at a high rate of speed.
The officers were suspicious and gave chase. McColgin remained in the car and continued south on 63rd Avenue; Pertoso left the car, ran back north along 63rd, then west on Foothill Boulevard, and turned south on 62nd Avenue. Hodari, meanwhile, emerged from the alley onto 62nd and ran north. Looking behind as he ran, he did not turn and see Pertoso until the officer was almost upon him, whereupon he tossed away what appeared to be a small rock. A moment later, Pertoso tackled Hodari, handcuffed him, and radioed for assistance. Hodari was found to be carrying $130 in cash and a pager; and the rock he had discarded was found to be crack cocaine.
In the juvenile proceeding brought against him, Hodari moved to suppress the evidence relating to the cocaine. The court denied the motion without opinion. The California Court of Appeal reversed, holding that Hodari had been "seized" when he saw Officer Pertoso running towards him, that this seizure was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, and that the evidence of cocaine had to be suppressed as the fruit of that illegal seizure. The California Supreme Court denied the State's application for review. We granted certiorari. 498 U. S. 807 (1990).
As this case comes to us, the only issue presented is whether, at the time he dropped the drugs, Hodari had been "seized" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.[1] If *624 so, respondent argues, the drugs were the fruit of that seizure and the evidence concerning them was properly excluded. If not, the drugs were abandoned by Hodari and lawfully recovered by the police, and the evidence should have been admitted. (In addition, of course, Pertoso's seeing the rock of cocaine, at least if he recognized it as such, would provide reasonable suspicion for the unquestioned seizure that occurred when he tackled Hodari. Cf. Rios v. United States, 364 U. S. 253 (1960).)
We have long understood that the Fourth Amendment's protection against "unreasonable . . . seizures" includes seizure of the person, see Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98, 100 (1959). From the time of the founding to the present, the word "seizure" has meant a "taking possession," 2 N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language 67 (1828); 2 J. Bouvier, A Law Dictionary 510 (6th ed. 1856); Webster's Third New International Dictionary 2057 (1981). For most purposes at common law, the word connoted not merely grasping, or applying physical force to, the animate or inanimate object in question, but actually bringing it within physical control. A ship still fleeing, even though under attack, would not be considered to have been seized as a war prize. Cf. The Josefa Segunda, 10 Wheat. 312, 325-326 (1825). A res capable of manual delivery was not seized until "tak[en] into custody." Pelham v. Rose, 9 Wall. 103, 106 (1870). To constitute an arrest, however—the quintessential "seizure of the person" under our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence—the mere grasping or application of physical force with lawful authority, whether or not it succeeded in subduing the arrestee, was sufficient. See, e. g., Whitehead v. Keyes, 85 Mass. 495, 501 (1862) ("[A]n officer effects an arrest of a person whom he has authority to arrest, by laying his hand on him for the purpose of arresting him, though he may not succeed in stopping and holding him"); 1 *625 Restatement of Torts § 41, Comment h (1934). As one commentator has described it:
"There can be constructive detention, which will constitute an arrest, although the party is never actually brought within the physical control of the party making an arrest. This is accomplished by merely touching, however slightly, the body of the accused, by the party making the arrest and for that purpose, although he does not succeed in stopping or holding him even for an instant; as where the bailiff had tried to arrest one who fought him off by a fork, the court said, `If the bailiff had touched him, that had been an arrest . . . .'" A. Cornelius, Search and Seizure 163-164 (2d ed. 1930) (footnote omitted).
To say that an arrest is effected by the slightest application of physical force, despite the arrestee's escape, is not to say that for Fourth Amendment purposes there is a continuing arrest during the period of fugitivity. If, for example, Pertoso had laid his hands upon Hodari to arrest him, but Hodari had broken away and had then cast away the cocaine, it would hardly be realistic to say that that disclosure had been made during the course of an arrest. Cf. Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457, 471 (1874) ("A seizure is a single act, and not a continuous fact"). The present case, however, is even one step further removed. It does not involve the application of any physical force; Hodari was untouched by Officer Pertoso at the time he discarded the cocaine. His defense relies instead upon the proposition that a seizure occurs "when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 19, n. 16 (1968) (emphasis added). Hodari contends (and we accept as true for purposes of this decision) that Pertoso's pursuit qualified as a "show of authority" *626 calling upon Hodari to halt. The narrow question before us is whether, with respect to a show of authority as with respect to application of physical force, a seizure occurs even though the subject does not yield. We hold that it does not.
The language of the Fourth Amendment, of course, cannot sustain respondent's contention. The word "seizure" readily bears the meaning of a laying on of hands or application of physical force to restrain movement, even when it is ultimately unsuccessful. ("She seized the purse-snatcher, but he broke out of her grasp.") It does not remotely apply, however, to the prospect of a policeman yelling "Stop, in the name of the law!" at a fleeing form that continues to flee. That is no seizure.[2] Nor can the result respondent wishes to achieve be produced—indirectly, as it were—by suggesting that Pertoso's uncomplied-with show of authority was a common-law arrest, and then appealing to the principle that all common-law arrests are seizures. An arrest requires either physical force (as described above) or, where that is absent, submission to the assertion of authority.
"Mere words will not constitute an arrest, while, on the other hand, no actual, physical touching is essential. The apparent inconsistency in the two parts of this statement is explained by the fact that an assertion of authority and purpose to arrest followed by submission of the arrestee constitutes an arrest. There can be no arrest *627 without either touching or submission." Perkins, The Law of Arrest, 25 Iowa L. Rev. 201, 206 (1940) (footnotes omitted).
We do not think it desirable, even as a policy matter, to stretch the Fourth Amendment beyond its words and beyond the meaning of arrest, as respondent urges.[3] Street pursuits always place the public at some risk, and compliance with police orders to stop should therefore be encouraged. Only a few of those orders, we must presume, will be without adequate basis, and since the addressee has no ready means of identifying the deficient ones it almost invariably is the responsible course to comply. Unlawful orders will not be deterred, moreover, by sanctioning through the exclusionary rule those of them that are not obeyed. Since policemen do not command "Stop!" expecting to be ignored, or give chase hoping to be outrun, it fully suffices to apply the deterrent to their genuine, successful seizures.
Respondent contends that his position is sustained by the so-called Mendenhall test, formulated by Justice Stewart's opinion in United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S. 544, 554 (1980), and adopted by the Court in later cases, see Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U. S. 567, 573 (1988); INS v. Delgado, 466 U. S. 210, 215 (1984): "[A] person has been `seized' within the *628 meaning of the Fourth Amendment only if, in view of all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave." 446 U. S., at 554. See also Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S. 491, 502 (1983) (opinion of WHITE, J.). In seeking to rely upon that test here, respondent fails to read it carefully. It says that a person has been seized "only if," not that he has been seized "whenever"; it states a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for seizure—or, more precisely, for seizure effected through a "show of authority." Mendenhall establishes that the test for existence of a "show of authority" is an objective one: not whether the citizen perceived that he was being ordered to restrict his movement, but whether the officer's words and actions would have conveyed that to a reasonable person. Application of this objective test was the basis for our decision in the other case principally relied upon by respondent, Chesternut, supra, where we concluded that the police cruiser's slow following of the defendant did not convey the message that he was not free to disregard the police and go about his business. We did not address in Chesternut, however, the question whether, if the Mendenhall test was met—if the message that the defendant was not free to leave had been conveyed—a Fourth Amendment seizure would have occurred. See 486 U. S., at 577 (KENNEDY, J., concurring).
Quite relevant to the present case, however, was our decision in Brower v. Inyo County, 489 U. S. 593, 596 (1989). In that case, police cars with flashing lights had chased the decedent for 20 miles—surely an adequate "show of authority"—but he did not stop until his fatal crash into a police-erected blockade. The issue was whether his death could be held to be the consequence of an unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. We did not even consider the possibility that a seizure could have occurred during the course of the chase because, as we explained, that "show of authority" did not produce his stop. Id., at 597. And we discussed, *629 ibid., an opinion of Justice Holmes, involving a situation not much different from the present case, where revenue agents had picked up containers dropped by moonshiners whom they were pursuing without adequate warrant. The containers were not excluded as the product of an unlawful seizure because "[t]he defendant's own acts, and those of his associates, disclosed the jug, the jar and the bottle—and there was no seizure in the sense of the law when the officers examined the contents of each after they had been abandoned." Hester v. United States, 265 U. S. 57, 58 (1924). The same is true here.
In sum, assuming that Pertoso's pursuit in the present case constituted a "show of authority" enjoining Hodari to halt, since Hodari did not comply with that injunction he was not seized until he was tackled. The cocaine abandoned while he was running was in this case not the fruit of a seizure, and his motion to exclude evidence of it was properly denied. We reverse the decision of the California Court of Appeal, and remand for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE MARSHALL joins, dissenting.
The Court's narrow construction of the word "seizure" represents a significant, and in my view, unfortunate, departure from prior case law construing the Fourth Amendment.[1] Almost a quarter of a century ago, in two landmark cases— one broadening the protection of individual privacy,[2] and the other broadening the powers of law enforcement officers[3]— we rejected the method of Fourth Amendment analysis that *630 today's majority endorses. In particular, the Court now adopts a definition of "seizure" that is unfaithful to a long line of Fourth Amendment cases. Even if the Court were defining seizure for the first time, which it is not, the definition that it chooses today is profoundly unwise. In its decision, the Court assumes, without acknowledging, that a police officer may now fire his weapon at an innocent citizen and not implicate the Fourth Amendment—as long as he misses his target.
For the purposes of decision, the following propositions are not in dispute. First, when Officer Pertoso began his pursuit of respondent,[4] the officer did not have a lawful basis for either stopping or arresting respondent. See App. 138-140; ante, at 623, n. 1. Second, the officer's chase amounted to a "show of authority" as soon as respondent saw the officer nearly upon him. See ante, at 625-626, 629. Third, the act of discarding the rock of cocaine was the direct consequence of the show of authority. See Pet. for Cert. 48-49, 52. Fourth, as the Court correctly demonstrates, no common-law arrest occurred until the officer tackled respondent. See ante, at 624-625. Thus, the Court is quite right in concluding that the abandonment of the rock was not the fruit of a common-law arrest.
It is equally clear, however, that if the officer had succeeded in touching respondent before he dropped the rock— *631 even if he did not subdue him—an arrest would have occurred.[5] See ante, at 624-625, 626. In that event (assuming the touching precipitated the abandonment), the evidence would have been the fruit of an unlawful common-law arrest. The distinction between the actual case and the hypothetical case is the same as the distinction between the common-law torts of assault and battery—a touching converts the former into the latter.[6] Although the distinction between assault and battery was important for pleading purposes, see 2 J. Chitty, Pleading *372-*376, the distinction should not take on constitutional dimensions. The Court mistakenly allows this common-law distinction to define its interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.
At the same time, the Court fails to recognize the existence of another, more telling, common-law distinction—the distinction between an arrest and an attempted arrest. As the Court teaches us, the distinction between battery and assault was critical to a correct understanding of the common law of arrest. See ante, at 626 ("An arrest requires either physical force . . . or, where that is absent, submission to the assertion of authority"). However, the facts of this case do not describe an actual arrest, but rather an unlawful attempt to take a presumptively innocent person into custody. Such an *632 attempt was unlawful at common law.[7] Thus, if the Court wants to define the scope of the Fourth Amendment based on the common law, it should look, not to the common law of arrest, but to the common law of attempted arrest, according to the facts of this case.
The first question, then, is whether the common law should define the scope of the outer boundaries of the constitutional protection against unreasonable seizures. Even if, contrary to settled precedent, traditional common-law analysis were controlling, it would still be necessary to decide whether the unlawful attempt to make an arrest should be considered a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and whether the exclusionary rule should apply to unlawful attempts.
I
The Court today takes a narrow view of "seizure," which is at odds with the broader view adopted by this Court almost 25 years ago. In Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), the Court considered whether electronic surveillance conducted "without any trespass and without the seizure of any material object fell outside the ambit of the Constitution." Id., at 353. Over Justice Black's powerful dissent, we rejected that "narrow view" of the Fourth Amendment and held that electronic eavesdropping is a "search and seizure" within the meaning of the Amendment. Id., at 353-354. We thus endorsed the position expounded by two of the dissenting Justices in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 (1928):
*633 "Time and again, this Court in giving effect to the principle underlying the Fourth Amendment, has refused to place an unduly literal construction upon it." Id., at 476 (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
"The direct operation or literal meaning of the words used do not measure the purpose or scope of its provisions. Under the principles established and applied by this Court, the Fourth Amendment safeguards against all evils that are like and equivalent to those embraced within the ordinary meaning of its words." Id., at 488 (Butler, J., dissenting).
Writing for the Court in Katz, Justice Stewart explained:
"Thus, although a closely divided Court supposed in Olmstead that surveillance without any trespass and without the seizure of any material object fell outside the ambit of the Constitution, we have since departed from the narrow view on which that decision rested. Indeed, we have expressly held that the Fourth Amendment governs not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements, overheard without any `technical trespass under . . . local property law.' Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505, 511. Once this much is acknowledged, and once it is recognized that the Fourth Amendment protects people—and not simply `areas'—against unreasonable searches and seizures, it becomes clear that the reach of that Amendment cannot turn upon the presence or absence of a physical intrusion into any given enclosure.
"We conclude that the underpinnings of Olmstead and Goldman have been so eroded by our subsequent decisions that the `trespass' doctrine there enunciated can no longer be regarded as controlling. The Government's activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner's words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone *634 booth and thus constituted a `search and seizure' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The fact that the electronic device employed to achieve that end did not happen to penetrate the wall of the booth can have no constitutional significance.
"The question remaining for decision, then, is whether the search and seizure conducted in this case complied with constitutional standards." 389 U. S., at 353-354.
Significantly, in the Katz opinion, the Court repeatedly used the word "seizure" to describe the process of recording sounds that could not possibly have been the subject of a common-law seizure. See id., at 356, 357.
Justice Black's reasoning, which was rejected by the Court in 1967, is remarkably similar to the reasoning adopted by the Court today. After criticizing "language-stretching judges," id., at 366, Justice Black wrote:
"I do not deny that common sense requires and that this Court often has said that the Bill of Rights' safeguards should be given a liberal construction. This principle, however, does not justify construing the search and seizure amendment as applying to eavesdropping or the `seizure' of conversations." Id., at 366-367.
"Since I see no way in which the words of the Fourth Amendment can be construed to apply to eavesdropping, that closes the matter for me. In interpreting the Bill of Rights, I willingly go as far as a liberal construction of the language takes me, but I simply cannot in good conscience give a meaning to words which they have never before been thought to have and which they certainly do not have in common ordinary usage. I will not distort the words of the Amendment in order to `keep the Constitution up to date' or `to bring it into harmony with the times.' It was never meant that this Court have such power, which in effect would make us a continuously functioning constitutional convention." Id., at 373.
*635 The expansive construction of the word "seizure" in the Katz case provided an appropriate predicate for the Court's holding in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968), the following year.[8] Prior to Terry, the Fourth Amendment proscribed any seizure of the person that was not supported by the same probable-cause showing that would justify a custodial arrest.[9] See Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 207-209 (1979). Given the fact that street encounters between citizens and police officers "are incredibly rich in diversity," Terry, 392 U. S., at 13, the Court recognized the need for flexibility and held that "reasonable" suspicion—a quantum of proof less demanding than probable cause—was adequate to justify a stop for investigatory purposes. Id., at 21-22. As a corollary to the lesser justification for the stop, the Court necessarily concluded that the word "seizure" in the Fourth Amendment encompasses official restraints on individual freedom that fall short of a common-law arrest. Thus, Terry broadened the range of encounters between the police and the citizen encompassed within the term "seizure," while at the same time, lowering the standard of proof necessary to justify a "stop" in the newly expanded category of seizures *636 now covered by the Fourth Amendment.[10] The Court explained:
"Our first task is to establish at what point in this encounter the Fourth Amendment becomes relevant. That is, we must decide whether and when Officer McFadden `seized' Terry and whether and when he conducted a `search.' There is some suggestion in the use of such terms as `stop' and `frisk' that such police conduct is outside the purview of the Fourth Amendment because neither action rises to the level of a `search' or `seizure' within the meaning of the Constitution. We emphatically reject this notion. It is quite plain that the Fourth Amendment governs `seizures' of the person which do not eventuate in a trip to the station house and prosecution for crime—`arrests' in traditional terminology. It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has `seized' that person." Id., at 16 (footnote omitted).
"The distinctions of classical `stop-and-frisk' theory thus serve to divert attention from the central inquiry under the Fourth Amendment—the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen's personal security. `Search' and `seizure' are not talismans. We therefore reject the notions that the Fourth Amendment does not come into play at all as a limitation upon police conduct if the officers stop short of something called a `technical arrest' or a `full-blown search.'" Id., at 19.
*637 The decisions in Katz and Terry unequivocally reject the notion that the common law of arrest defines the limits of the term "seizure" in the Fourth Amendment. In Katz, the Court abandoned the narrow view that would have limited a seizure to a material object, and, instead, held that the Fourth Amendment extended to the recording of oral statements. And in Terry, the Court abandoned its traditional view that a seizure under the Fourth Amendment required probable cause, and, instead, expanded the definition of a seizure to include an investigative stop made on less than probable cause. Thus, the major premise underpinning the majority's entire analysis today—that the common law of arrest should define the term "seizure" for Fourth Amendment purposes, see ante, at 624-625—is seriously flawed. The Court mistakenly hearkens back to common law, while ignoring the expansive approach that the Court has taken in Fourth Amendment analysis since Katz and Terry.[11]
II
The Court fares no better when it tries to explain why the proper definition of the term "seizure" has been an open question until today. In Terry, in addition to stating that a seizure occurs "whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away," 392 U. S., at 16, the Court noted that a seizure occurs "when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen. . . ." Id., at 19, n. 16. The touchstone of a seizure is the restraint of an individual's personal liberty "in some way." Ibid. (emphasis added).[12] Today the Court's reaction to respondent's reliance on Terry *638 is to demonstrate that in "show of force" cases no common-law arrest occurs unless the arrestee submits. See ante, at 626-627. That answer, however, is plainly insufficient given the holding in Terry that the Fourth Amendment applies to stops that need not be justified by probable cause in the absence of a full-blown arrest.
In United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S. 544 (1980), the Court "adhere[d] to the view that a person is `seized' only when, by means of physical force or a show of authority, his freedom of movement is restrained." Id., at 553. The Court looked to whether the citizen who is questioned "remains free to disregard the questions and walk away," and if he or she is able to do so, then "there has been no intrusion upon that person's liberty or privacy" that would require some "particularized and objective justification" under the Constitution. Id., at 554. The test for a "seizure," as formulated by the Court in Mendenhall, was whether, "in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave." Ibid. Examples of seizures include "the threatening presence of several officers, the display of a weapon by an officer, some physical touching of the person of the citizen, or the use of language or tone of voice indicating that compliance with the officer's request might be compelled." Ibid. The Court's unwillingness today to adhere to the "reasonable person" standard, as formulated by Justice Stewart in Mendenhall, marks an unnecessary departure from Fourth Amendment case law.
The Court today draws the novel conclusion that even though no seizure can occur unless the Mendenhall reasonable person standard is met, see ante, at 628, the fact that the standard has been met does not necessarily mean that a seizure has occurred. See ibid. (Mendenhall "states a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for seizure . . . effected *639 through a `show of authority'"). If it were true that a seizure requires more than whether a reasonable person felt free to leave, then the following passage from the Court's opinion in INS v. Delgado, 466 U. S. 210 (1984), is at best, seriously misleading:
"As we have noted elsewhere: `Obviously, not 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 restrained the liberty of a citizen may we conclude that a "seizure" has occurred.' Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 19, n. 16. While applying such a test is relatively straightforward in a situation resembling a traditional arrest, see Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 212-216 (1979), the protection against unreasonable seizures also extends to `seizures that involve only a brief detention short of traditional arrest.' United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873, 878 (1975). What has evolved from our cases is a determination that an initially consensual encounter between a police officer and a citizen can be transformed into a seizure or detention within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, `if, in view of all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.' Mendenhall, supra, at 554 (footnote omitted); see Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S. 491, 502 (1983) (plurality opinion)." Id., at 215.
More importantly, in Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S. 491 (1983), a plurality of the Court adopted Justice Stewart's formulation in Mendenhall as the appropriate standard for determining when police questioning crosses the threshold from a consensual encounter to a forcible stop. In Royer, the Court held that an illegal seizure had occurred. As a *640 predicate for that holding, JUSTICE WHITE, in his opinion for the plurality, explained that the citizen "may not be detained even momentarily without reasonable, objective grounds for doing so; and his refusal to listen or answer does not, without more, furnish those grounds. United States v. Mendenhall, supra, at 556 (opinion of Stewart, J.)." 460 U. S., at 498 (emphasis added). The rule looks, not to the subjective perceptions of the person questioned, but rather, to the objective characteristics of the encounter that may suggest whether a reasonable person would have felt free to leave.
Even though momentary, a seizure occurs whenever an objective evaluation of a police officer's show of force conveys the message that the citizen is not entirely free to leave—in other words, that his or her liberty is being restrained in a significant way. That the Court understood the Mendenhall definition as both necessary and sufficient to describe a Fourth Amendment seizure is evident from this passage in our opinion in United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U. S. 109 (1984):
"A `seizure' of property occurs when there is some meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interests in that property.5
5 "See United States v. Place, 462 U. S. 696 (1983); id., at 716 (BRENNAN, J., concurring in result); Texas v. Brown, 460 U. S. 730, 747-748 (1983) (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment); see also United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 13-14, n. 8 (1977); Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43, 76 (1906). While the concept of a `seizure' of property is not much discussed in our cases, this definition follows from our oftrepeated definition of the `seizure' of a person within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment—meaningful interference, however brief, with an individual's freedom of movement. See Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692, 696 (1981); Reid v. Georgia, 448 U. S. 438, 440, n. (1980) (per curiam); United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S. 544, 551-554 (1980) (opinion of Stewart, J.); Brown v. Texas, 443 U. S. 47, 50 (1979); United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873, 878 (1975); Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U. S. 291, 294-295 (1973); Davis v. Mississippi, *641 394 U. S. 721, 726-727 (1969); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S., at 16, 19, n. 16." Id., at 113, and n.