Court Opinion

ID: 9859461
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 21:52:10.950398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:48:20.344894
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE O’MALLEY, dissenting: Two men are in a car hurtling along at 94 miles per hour with literally hundreds of pills (ironically, the pills are the key ingredient for an illegal drug known as “speed”) sitting in a Tupperware bowl at the passenger’s feet. A state trooper stops the speeding car and asks the passenger to hand him the pills. Thereafter, the passenger tells the trooper that he and defendant are on their way to Missouri to manufacture methamphetamine. The majority holds that the foregoing constitutes an illegal seizure under the plain view doctrine. I disagree. The plain view doctrine delimits the circumstances under which police may rightfully seize an object (see People v. Haycraft, 349 Ill. App. 3d 416, 423-24 (2004)), but Trooper Fane’s procurement of the pills from the passenger was not a seizure. The trial court’s own factual findings defy its holding that a seizure occurred. Trooper Fane testified: “I asked him [the passenger] to hand [the pills] to me, which [the passenger] did.” The trial court accurately described this action as a “request,” but proceeded, inexplicably, to find that the request effected a seizure: “Trooper Fane *** requested the container; seizing the property of the defendant. At the request of the officer, the passenger handed the container to the trooper.” (Emphasis added.) A request, without more, does not give rise to a seizure. See, e.g., Gonzalez, 204 Ill. 2d at 236 (“A simple request for identification is facially innocuous. It does not suggest official interrogation and is not the type of question or request that would increase the confrontational nature of the encounter”); People v. Murray, 137 Ill. 2d 382, 393 (1990) (request for defendant to exit the car and produce identification was not a seizure). In Murray, our supreme court set forth several factors to guide a court in determining whether a seizure occurred: (1) the threatening presence of several officers, (2) the display of a weapon by an officer, (3) some physical touching of the person of the citizen, and (4) the use of language or tone of voice indicating that compliance with the officer’s request might be compelled. Murray, 137 Ill. 2d at 390. “ ‘In the absence of some such evidence,’ ” explained the court, “ ‘otherwise inoffensive contact between a member of the public and the police cannot, as a matter of law, amount to a seizure of that person.’ ” Murray, 137 Ill. 2d at 390-91, quoting United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 555, 64 L. Ed. 2d 497, 509-10, 100 S. Ct. 1870, 1877 (1980). The trial court identified no coercive circumstances that could have elevated Trooper Fane’s request to the status of a demand. No deference is owed a factual finding “where an opposite conclusion is clearly evident from the record” (People v. Rockey, 322 Ill. App. 3d 832, 836 (2001)), as is the case here with the trial court’s finding of a seizure. The majority has several responses to this point. First, I am charged with “hairsplitting” for stressing the difference between a request and a demand. However, the distinction has served as the basis for deciding so many cases that it seems odd to dismiss it with a pejorative label. See, e.g., Murray, 137 Ill. 2d at 393 (“The encounter may be characterized as a seizure if the officer orders, rather than requests, that the occupant open the door or exit the car”); People v. Cole, 256 Ill. App. 3d 590, 595 (1994) (where the officer’s request that defendant produce his driver’s license was made without an imperious tone of voice or show of authority, there was no seizure); People v. Clark, 185 Ill. App. 3d 231, 236-37 (1989) (bare request that defendant roll down window of car in which he was sitting did not effect a seizure). The distinction has been repeatedly recognized not only by the courts of this state but by the United States Supreme Court as well. Summarizing its holdings in cases involving police questioning of individuals passing through airport terminals, the Supreme Court said: See also Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 501, 75 L. Ed. 2d 229, 238-39, 103 S. Ct. 1319, 1326 (1983) (plurality opinion) (defendant seized when detectives approached him in airport, announced they suspected him of carrying drugs, and asked him to accompany them to a nearby room where he agreed to a search of his luggage. “[I]f the events in this case amounted to no more than a permissible police encounter in a public place or a justifiable Terry-type detention, [the defendant’s] consent, if voluntary, would have been effective to legalize the search of his two suitcases”). If police need not have any justification for merely requesting consent to search personal property, as Bostick holds, then of course they need not justify a request that the individual hand them the property, as happened here. The greater includes the lesser. “We have stated that even when officers have no basis for suspecting a particular individual, they may generally ask questions of that individual [citations]; ask to examine the individual’s identification [citations]; and request consent to search his or her luggage [citation] — as long as the police do not convey a message that compliance with their requests is required.” Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 434-35, 115 L. Ed. 2d 389, 398, 111 S. Ct. 2382, 2386 (1991). Continuing with this theme, the majority attempts to distinguish Murray and Gonzalez on the ground that “neither case even involved a question about the seizure of property” — that both cases dealt with requests for forms of identification. 361 Ill. App. 3d at 954. The defendant in Murray, however, was asked not only to produce identification but to step out of the car as well. The supreme court did not find the request distinct for being double-pronged, but simply determined whether the request amounted to a seizure. That is what we ought to be doing here. The majority also cites two cases, People v. Synnott, 349 Ill. App. 3d 223 (2004), and People v. Morquecho, 347 Ill. App. 3d 382 (2004), where the officers’ requests were accompanied by coercive action, viz., a drawn gun or physical force. The point of these cases, says the majority, is that terms such as “ask, “request,” and “demand” are not dispositive. I enthusiastically agree. Our supreme court has provided a list of factors for courts to apply in determining whether a police officer’s “request” in reality effected a seizure. See Murray, 137 Ill. 2d at 390. Oddly, though it labors at length to explain why labels are not conclusive in light of Synnott and Morquecho, the majority devotes not one spot of ink to explaining why it believes the label of “request” does not fit here given the totality of the circumstances. Interestingly, the “hairsplitting” request/demand distinction that I am urging today is the same distinction I urged in my dissent from the decision in People v. Gonzalez, 324 Ill. App. 3d 15, 24-26 (2001) (O’Malley, J., dissenting), and this same “hairsplitting” distinction was the supreme court’s basis for reversal. See Gonzalez, 204 Ill. 2d at 236 (rejecting appellate court’s conclusion that officer’s bare request for identification constituted coercion). The majority’s statement that “the finding of a seizure is not predicated on whether the officer speaks in the passive or the affirmative” (361 Ill. App. 3d at 953) is directly at odds with the law. It is regretful that a past error of this district is today repeated, and so soon after an unequivocal correction by our highest court. The majority, however, is convinced that it is not defying our supreme court by disregarding the request/demand distinction. According to the majority, the long life that the distinction has enjoyed in Illinois came to a silent and abrupt end recently — obliterated implicitly by our supreme court in People v. Jones, 215 Ill. 2d 261 (2005). In Jones, the officer and the defendant gave conflicting testimony over whether the officer requested or demanded that the defendant give the officer what he suspected was a “one-hitter” box in the defendant’s possession following a traffic stop. Jones, 215 Ill. 2d at 264. The supreme court applied a plain view analysis without resolving the inconsistency. Jones, 215 Ill. 2d at 271-73. The majority interprets the silence as an implied dismissal of the relevancy of the request/demand distinction. That conclusion is hasty. The supreme court had just recognized the request/demand distinction in Gonzalez. It is possible that the court believed that the request/demand distinction pertains to a Gonzalez-type scenario, where the police asked for a form of identification for investigatory purposes, but not to occasions where the police procure personal property for the purpose of determining whether it itself is contraband. Possible, I think, but by no means likely. The United States Supreme Court held in Bostick that a mere request to search an individual’s personal property (i.e., luggage) does not require justification. A fortiori, a mere request that the individual hand over the property does not require justification. Our supreme court stays in lockstep with the United States Supreme Court’s holdings in search and seizure law. See People v. Lampitok, 207 Ill. 2d 231, 240-41 (2003). If the court intended in Jones to depart from federal case law, it would not have done so sub silentio. There are better explanations for the silence in Jones. The State may have failed to raise the issue of whether the officer requested or demanded that the defendant hand over the “one-hitter.” Perhaps the State raised the argument but the court failed to acknowledge it. The court might have found, but neglected to state, that a seizure occurred (based on the totality of the circumstances), or the court might simply have assumed arguendo that a seizure occurred. These are plausible readings, unlike the majority’s, which requires one to assume that Jones departed from firmly established case law without telling us. Having found no case law to support its position, the majority turns to Professor Wayne LaFave’s renowned treatise on the fourth amendment. At the start of the first volume, LaFave provides two definitions of “seizure” that the majority finds significant for not distinguishing between property that is relinquished under force, threat of force, or show of authority, and that which is relinquished voluntarily. See 1 W. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 2.1(a), at 423 (4th ed. 2004). LaFave defines a “seizure” as the “ ‘act of physically taking and removing tangible personal property,’ ” and, alternatively, as “ ‘some meaningful interference with an individual’s possessory interests in *** property.’ ”11 LaFave, Search & Seizure § 2.1(a), at 423 (4th ed. 2004), quoting 68 Am. Jur. 2d Searches & Seizures § 8 (1973), and United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113, 80 L. Ed. 2d 85, 94, 104 S. Ct. 1652, 1656 (1984). LaFave draws the first definition from a prior, out-of-print edition of American Jurisprudence. He does not identify what source the treatise itself used for that definition. Nor does the majority. Though LaFave is learned, his pronouncements are not themselves the law. The second definition comes from the United States Supreme Court. See, e.g., Maryland v. Macon, 472 U.S. 463, 469, 86 L. Ed. 2d 370, 376-77, 105 S. Ct. 2778, 2782 (1985); Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 113, 80 L. Ed. 2d at 94, 104 S. Ct. at 1656. What the Supreme Court has said in Macon and elsewhere leaves no doubt that it does not share the majority’s view on this issue. There is no seizure where the defendant “voluntarily transferís] any possessory interest he may have had in the [property]” to the police. (Emphasis added.) Macon, 472 U.S. at 469, 86 L. Ed. 2d at 377, 105 S. Ct. at 2782. “[A] seizure contemplates a forcible dispossession of the owner.” (Emphasis added.) Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43, 76, 50 L. Ed. 652, 666, 26 S. Ct. 370, 379 (1906). Illinois law is in complete accord: “ ‘A “search” is a probing or exploration for something that is concealed or hidden from the searcher. A “seizure” is a forcible or secretive dispossession of something against the will of the possessor-owner, both terms connoting hostility between the searcher and the person whose property or possession are being searched or sought.’ ” People v. Sanders, 44 Ill. App. 3d 510, 516 n.l (1976), quoting People v. Carroll, 12 Ill. App. 3d 869, 875 (1973). In the final analysis, however, this is not a semantic dispute about the definition of “seizure.” Even if a voluntary relinquishment of property may properly be called a “seizure,” it is still not subject to constitutional scrutiny, according to the principle of consent. “A voluntary consent to an otherwise unreasonable search and seizure waives the constitutional privilege and the evidence derived therefrom is admissible at trial.” People v. Devine, 98 Ill. App. 3d 914, 922 (1981). I cannot determine why the majority completely disregards this aspect of fourth amendment law. If Trooper Fane’s request for the pills was indeed a seizure, justification was supplied by the plain view doctrine. In Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 466, 29 L. Ed. 2d 564, 583, 91 S. Ct. 2022, 2038 (1971), the United States Supreme Court held that police may seize an object lying in plain view if its incriminating character is “immediately apparent.” In Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 741, 75 L. Ed. 2d 502, 513, 103 S. Ct. 1535, 1543 (1983), a plurality of the Court wrote: “Decisions by this Court since Coolidge indicate that the use of the phrase ‘immediately apparent’ was very likely an unhappy choice of words, since it can be taken to imply that an unduly high degree of certainty as to the incriminatory character of evidence is necessary for an application of the ‘plain view’ doctrine.” The plurality went on to state that a seizure under the plain view doctrine is presumptively reasonable if there is probable cause to associate the item with criminal activity. Brown, 460 U.S. at 741-42, 75 L. Ed. 2d at 513, 103 S. Ct. at 1543. “Probable cause,” the plurality wrote, “is a flexible, common-sense standard. It merely requires that the facts available to the officer would ‘warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief,’ [citation], that certain items may be contraband or stolen property or useful as evidence of a crime; it does not demand any showing that such a belief be correct or more likely true than false. A ‘practical, nontechnical’ probability that incriminating evidence is involved is all that is required. Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176[, 93 L. Ed. 1879, 1891, 69 S. Ct. 1302, 1311] (1949).” Brown, 460 U.S. at 742, 75 L. Ed. 2d at 514, 103 S. Ct. at 1543. This practical, commonsense standard was satisfied here. After he pulled the vehicle over, Trooper Fane observed the passenger “hunch over,” and he saw “a lot of hand movement.” Trooper Fane considered these movements “unusual.” See People v. Moore, 341 Ill. App. 3d 804, 811 (2003) (furtive movements of car occupants were a pertinent factor in determining whether reasonable and articulable suspicion existed to request permission to search a Terry-stopped vehicle). When Trooper Fane approached the car, he observed the pills on the passenger-side floor. The appearance of the pills was itself revealing, for they were removed from their original packaging and kept by the hundreds in a plastic container. The sheer quantity of the pills, and the manner in which they were stored, made it unlikely that they were intended for legal use. See People v. Schaefer, 133 Ill. App. 3d 697, 702 (1985) (quantity and manner of storing pills may be indicia of criminality). Additionally, the pills were situated in the very area toward which the passenger apparently was reaching when he was suspiciously hunched over. Of course, despite all this, there remained a possibility that the pills were legal. However, there was also a possibility that the small wooden box in Jones was not drug-oriented and contained no contraband, yet our supreme court held that the officer was justified in seizing the box under the plain view doctrine even though his suspicion of illegality “was not absolutely guaranteed to be correct” (Jones, 215 Ill. 2d at 278). I do not see much of the practical or the nontechnical in the majority’s refusal to apprehend that a reasonable officer could believe that the pills, removed as they were from their original packaging and packed into a Tupperware container, might be contraband. The majority insists that Jones is distinguishable because Trooper Fane’s testimony “had none of the indicia of training, experience, or even knowledge of the law” possessed by the officer in Jones. 361 Ill. App. 3d at 955. The majority illustrates its point with a hypothetical, noting that if Trooper Fane had seen a bag of green, leafy substance in the car but “did not know if any green, leafy substances were illegal and was simply interested ***, it is not practical, either technically or nontechnically, for him to seize it.” 361 Ill. App. 3d at 952. The last clause is somewhat puzzling; I presume the majority means to say that Trooper Fane’s seizure of the green, leafy substance would be unconstitutional, not somehow impractical, if he did not know there exists an illegal green, leafy substance. In any event, the hypothetical serves only to underscore the majority’s egregious error. The majority believes that Trooper Fane could not lawfully seize the green, leafy substance if he failed to recognize it as having the physical characteristics of contraband. Such a view is patently at odds with the law. The majority, amazingly, does not understand the difference between objective and subjective, and that distinction is fundamental to search and seizure law. The legality of Trooper Fane’s hypothetical seizure of the green, leafy substance would not depend on his “knowing” or even suspecting that there exists an illegal green, leafy substance. Similarly, Trooper Fane did not need to have any particular degree of confidence that the pills he procured in the present case were contraband. In fact, a seizure would still have been legal even if Trooper Fane did not harbor the slightest inkling that the pills were illegal but instead obtained them for some other reason. LaFave describes the proper approach: “This test, as is the case with the legal standard for arrest, is purely objective and thus there is no requirement that an actual suspicion by the officer be shown. Moreover, as again is the case with respect to arrest, the objective grounds as to one offense are not defeated because the officer either thought or stated that he was acting with regard to some other offense or on some other basis entirely.” (Emphasis in original.) 4 W. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 9.5(a), at 472-73 (4th ed. 2004). Illinois law holds precisely the same: “Just as a court may overrule an officer’s determination of probable cause even when made in good faith, a court may also find probable cause in spite of an officer’s judgment that none exists. An objective test applies. The subjective intentions or beliefs of the officer are not dispositive.” People v. Gray, 305 Ill. App. 3d 835, 839 (1999). “The facts should not be viewed with analytical hindsight, but instead should be considered from the perspective of a reasonable officer at the time that the situation confronted him or her.” People v. Thomas, 198 Ill. 2d 103, 110 (2001). But we need not take our own courts’ word for it. The United States Supreme Court, when asked to interpret the fourth amendment as barring pretextual traffic stops, held that the subjective beliefs of the officer are irrelevant to determining whether there was justification for a traffic stop. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813, 135 L. Ed. 2d 89, 97-98, 116 S. Ct. 1769, 1774 (1996). “Subjective intentions play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis.” Whren, 517 U.S. at 813, 135 L. Ed. 2d at 98, 116 S. Ct. at 1774. “ ‘[T]he fact that the officer does not have the state of mind which is hypothecated by the reasons which provide the legal justification for the officer’s action does not invalidate the action taken as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify that action.’ ” Whren, 517 U.S. at 813, 135 L. Ed. 2d at 98, 116 S. Ct. at 1774, quoting Scott v. United States, 436 U.S. 128, 138, 56 L. Ed. 2d 168, 178, 98 S. Ct. 1717, 1723 (1978). Significantly, Scott dealt with the legality of a wiretap, and thus the objectivity principle articulated in Whren does not apply only to traffic stops. In fact, it applies to hy~ potheticals regarding green, leafy substances. The majority would have the lawfulness of a seizure turn on the particular attributes of the seizing officer. In the majority’s vision of the law, because the officer in Jones had more “knowledge of the law,” more law enforcement experience, was more confident in his beliefs, and gave more articulate testimony than did Trooper Fane, the officer in Jones satisfied the fourth amendment but Trooper Fane violated it. But the rights of individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures do not fluctuate with the characteristics of the officers they encounter. Cf. Whren, 517 U.S. at 813, 135 L. Ed. 2d at 98, 116 S. Ct. at 1774 (rejecting suggestion that reasonableness of traffic stop should depend on whether it is consistent with local police practices: “We cannot accept that the search and seizure protections of the Fourth Amendment are so variable [citations] ***”). The obvious, but ironic, problem here is not with the training, experience, and “knowledge of the law” of Trooper Fane, but rather with the training, experience, and “knowledge of the law” of the majority, which, as noted, simply does not understand the difference between the subjective and the objective. Jones, the majority’s main source of authority, does not support the majority’s confused approach despite whatever subjectivism the majority might read into the supreme court’s statement that, “in deciding whether probable cause exists, a law enforcement officer may rely on training and experience to draw inferences and make deductions that might well elude an untrained person.” Jones, 215 Ill. 2d at 274. Jones cites as authority for this statement a United States Supreme Court case, Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 134 L. Ed. 2d 911, 116 S. Ct. 1657 (1996). Ornelas makes it clear that the existence of probable cause is a question not of what the officer, possessed of his own peculiar skills and experience, might have believed, but of “whether [the] historical facts, viewed from the standpoint of an objectively reasonable police officer, amount to *** probable cause.” Ornelas, 517 U.S. at 696, 134 L. Ed. 2d at 919, 116 S. Ct. at 1661-62. This is the constancy by which our fourth amendment attempts to achieve consistency. The majority’s approach, by contrast, is blatantly contrary to a rule of law so firmly established as to be nearly boilerplate. Tellingly, the majority chooses not to respond to my points here regarding the subjective/objective distinction. As long as the majority remains ignorant of such a basic concept of search and seizure law, it is doomed to keep repeating such basic and obvious errors. Here, a reasonable officer in Trooper Fane’s position would have believed that the pills were possibly contraband, and that should suffice for our purposes here.