## Facts

- Around 1:21 a.m., a Suffolk police officer received a dispatch based on an anonymous tip that two Black males were possibly dealing firearms near a green house on Briggs Street.
- The officer described the area as one where drugs were frequently bought and sold.
- The officer found John Howard Hill, Jr. seated in the driver’s seat of a parked car near a green house in the described area; other officers arrived shortly thereafter.
- Officers observed no suspicious conduct; Hill and a companion complied with instructions to exit the car.
- The officer stated he wanted to conduct a pat-down for firearms based on the complaint.
- A physical struggle occurred during the attempted frisk; Hill resisted and struck the officer.
- Hill was charged with felony assault and battery of a law-enforcement officer under Va. Code § 18.2-57(C).
- For purposes of the legal analysis, the encounter was treated as an unconstitutional detention and frisk under Fourth Amendment principles addressing unreliable anonymous tips.

## Issues

1. Whether Virginia common law permits a person to use reasonable force to resist an illegal investigative detention, as distinguished from an illegal arrest.
2. Whether the absence of a common-law right to resist an illegal detention forecloses a justification defense to assault and battery of a law-enforcement officer arising from resistance to an unlawful pat-down.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Virginia reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated Hill’s conviction.
- The court held that Virginia common law does not recognize a right to use force to resist an illegal investigative detention, including an illegal pat-down.
- The court treated the question as a pure issue of law, reviewed without deference to the trial court’s legal conclusion.
- Because no right to forcibly resist an illegal detention existed, the Court of Appeals erred in dismissing the indictment based on a reasonableness/proportionality analysis of Hill’s resistance.

## Legal Principles

- Virginia recognizes a common-law right to use reasonable force to resist an illegal arrest, but that rule does not extend to illegal investigative detentions.
- Absent established authority in Virginia common law (including the received English common law) creating a right to use force to resist an illegal detention, courts will not expand the common law to create such a defense.
- The historical justification for allowing resistance to unlawful arrests does not apply in the same way to modern investigative detentions, which are typically limited intrusions and are subject to judicial remedies.
- The illegality of a detention under the Fourth Amendment does not, by itself, provide a privilege to use force against an officer; suppression and related remedies address the constitutional violation.

## Conclusion

Virginia law does not permit a person to use force to resist an illegal investigative detention or frisk, and such illegality does not justify assaulting an officer; Hill’s conviction for assault and battery of a law-enforcement officer was reinstated.


Commonwealth v. Hill, 264 Va. 541, 570 S.E.2d 805 (Va. 2002)