Opinion ID: 2168236
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Suppression Motion, Hearing, and Order

Text: The case against defendant first appeared on the call of Judge John H. McCollom (the original judge). Defense counsel filed a Motion To Quash Arrest and Suppress Confessions, Admissions and Statements and Physical Evidence. Besides seeking to quash defendant's arrest, the motion requested that the court suppress from introduction into evidence the following: A. Physical evidence discovered directly and indirectly as a result of the arrest and detention. B. Statements, utterances, reports of gestures and responses by Defendant during the detention following the arrest. C. Witnesses who viewed Defendant during the detention following the arrest, as well as witnesses discovered as a result of the arrest, provided that Defendant has the right to call said witnesses to testify for the purpose of protecting his Constitutional Rights. D. Photographs, fingerprints, and other information, the product of the processing of Defendant following his arrest, and the fruits thereof. E. All other knowledge and the fruits thereof, witnesses, statements, whether written, oral or gestural and physical evidence which is the direct and indirect product of the arrest. After June 5, July 5, and August 2, 1984, hearings on the motion, the original judge ruled on September 20, 1984, that defendant had been seized and detained in police custody without probable cause, adding: Therefore, the Court grants the Defendant's motion to quash arrest and allows the Defendant's motion to suppress confessions, admissions, statements and physical evidence. Most of the parties' argument on defendant's motion before the original judge concerned whether defendant had been seized prior to the time he confessed, not whether defendant's statements had been attenuated from the taint of any unlawful arrest. However, at one point during defense counsel's citation to the appellate court's opinion in People v. Townes (1981), 94 Ill. App.3d 850, aff'd (1982), 91 Ill.2d 32, counsel quoted from the appellate court's discussion of the attenuation issue that had been developed in Dunaway v. New York (1979), 442 U.S. 200, 60 L.Ed.2d 824, 99 S.Ct. 2248, and Brown v. Illinois (1975), 422 U.S. 590, 45 L.Ed.2d 416, 95 S.Ct. 2254. (See Townes, 94 Ill. App.3d at 853.) At another point, the prosecutor referred to the appearance of Leatha Erving at the police station as having been a totally independent factor that led the police to realize that defendant was not a mere witness but was a suspect. Thus, the original judge heard at least brief argument related to attenuation before making his suppression ruling. On October 19, 1984, the State filed a notice of appeal from the original judge's suppression ruling. However, on November 2, 1984, the State informed the court that it would not prosecute the appeal, and on December 19, 1984, the State informed the court that on November 21, 1984, the appellate court had granted its motion to dismiss its appeal and that the appellate court's mandate was being awaited. On May 29 and June 17, 1985, after the mandate had apparently been received, the State informed judges sitting in the original judge's stead that the State intended to argue before the original judge that certain items of evidence suppressed by him would have been inevitably discovered and should be admitted. On July 1, 1985, appearing before Judge Robert Boharic (the trial judge), who had succeeded the original judge because of reassignment, the State advised the court that it had been considering filing a motion for reconsideration of the suppression motion on which the original judge had ruled but that the State was not at the present time moving for reconsideration.