---
title: "Fourth Amendment Seizure"
type: Legal Term
source: https://casebriefly.com/legal-terms/fourth-amendment-seizure
---

# Fourth Amendment Seizure

A Fourth Amendment seizure of a person occurs when a reasonable person would not feel free to leave or to decline an officer's requests, as articulated in United States v. Mendenhall (1980). For property, a seizure occurs when there is a meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interest. The distinction between a consensual encounter (no seizure), an investigatory stop (brief seizure requiring reasonable suspicion under Terry v. Ohio), and a full arrest (seizure requiring probable cause) is critical because the level of justification the government needs escalates with the intrusiveness of the seizure.

## Related Terms

- fourth-amendment-search
- stop-and-frisk
- search-incident-to-arrest
- warrant-requirement

## Related Cases

- arizona-v-gant

## Example

When four officers surrounded a bus passenger, blocked the aisle, and demanded to search his bag, the court found this was a seizure because a reasonable person in that situation would not have felt free to terminate the encounter and leave.

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Source: [Fourth Amendment Seizure — CaseBriefly](https://casebriefly.com/legal-terms/fourth-amendment-seizure)