Court Opinion

ID: 9716404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:38:07.603325+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:45.339114
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE McDADE, dissenting: I believe the decision of the Will County circuit court was correct for the reasons stated by the court and I, therefore, dissent from the contrary decision of the majority. Following a hearing on the pertinent facts and law, the trial court quashed the arrest of the three named defendants and suppressed the use of the jack handle and pepper spray as to them. In so ruling, the court explicitly found that the police lacked probable cause to arrest them and that the two items of “evidence” were not actually in the possession of these defendants. The investigation team had monitored Cheronder Blanchard watching the “high stakes area” of Harrah’s Casino on March 18 and 19, 2001, after having observed her apparently surveilling one of the earlier robbery victims in the casino on or about March 15. (Although that person was later robbed, the police could only conjecture that Blanchard was involved in any way.) After Blanchard left the casino on the nights of March 18 and 19, she was followed by police who speculated she had been tracking a victim each night but had lost both of them. The fact is that neither “victim” Blanchard “followed” on those two nights was robbed by her or by anyone else. The officers who were trailing her thought Blanchard had a passenger in her front seat on those dates. Their testimony provides no indication that they knew or suspected the presence of additional passengers in the car on either of those nights. On March 22, Blanchard was again seen observing persons in the casino. She then “followed” a man who had been gambling in the “high stakes area” of the casino. When she pulled into the putative victim’s apartment complex, her vehicle was blocked by the police and she and her four passengers were removed from the car at gunpoint and handcuffed. A search of the vehicle after their arrest yielded a jack handle and a can of pepper spray from the passenger compartment. On these facts, the majority finds probable cause to arrest these defendants for attempted armed robbery despite the fact — as noted by the trial court — that they were not armed. Nor were they shown to have done anything but sit in the backseat of Blanchard’s car while she allegedly cased the casino and drove to the possible scene of a possible robbery. In my opinion, the police did not have probable cause to arrest Burks, Ratliff or Fletcher. There were also no warrants to either arrest or search any occupants of the car, presumably because the police knew that their speculation and conjecture did not constitute the requisite probable cause. The police had previously followed Ms. Blanchard and had a hunch what she might have been up to. They knew they were going to follow her again and that, if they were fortunate, they would catch her or another “in the act.” If they had waited for one or more of the passengers to get out of the car and move away from it with a weapon (or even for the car to stop), they might have actually had probable cause to arrest and to search. As it is, they had, at the absolute best, a reasonable suspicion permitting a pat-down, which on our facts would have revealed nothing to create probable cause. Nor was probable cause created by the subsequent discovery of the pepper spray and jack handle. It is not so improbable that either of these items might be found in a car that one can assume that an innocent or unsuspecting person seeing them (if indeed the defendants had seen them at all) would leap to the conclusion that they would be used in a robbery and would refuse to ride in the vehicle. Many people, and particularly many women, carry pepper spray in their cars and on their persons for defense. And while it might not be common to find the jack handle in the front seat area of a car, it is an automotive implement and placement inside the car for a proper purpose is not impossible (or even inherently improbable). Assuming for purposes of argument that the officers had probable cause to arrest Blanchard and that the items were properly seized pursuant to her proper arrest, that fact does nothing to prove either that they were used in the earlier robberies at all or, if they had been, that any of these three defendants knew of or participated in that use or that they were going to be used by one or more of the defendants in a robbery on March 22. These defendants could have done nothing more egregious than be in the wrong place at the wrong time with suggestive items in their general vicinity. I do not believe the State has shown that there was probable cause to arrest these defendants, nor do I believe the jack handle and pepper spray were shown to be tied to them. I would affirm the decision of the trial judge quashing the arrests and suppressing the evidence as to them.