Court Opinion

ID: 9723897
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:37:32.592899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:53.187836
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE HEIPLE, specially concurring: The record reflects the search warrant affidavit was prepared by police to recover items they believed were evidence of a murder. The police thought such an offense had been committed based on their investigation as well as medical reports indicating Mr. Pandow’s death occurred due to wounds from a blunt instrument. This belief was mistaken. Defendant was charged with reckless homicide. At the suppression hearing the trial judge quashed the search warrant and the evidence seized as a result of its execution. He concluded the affidavit lacked sufficient facts to believe a murder, the offense named in the search warrant affidavit, had been committed. This was error. A false issue has been injected into this cause by the trial judge evaluating a search warrant in terms of the title of the offense named in the complaint as opposed to the affidavit’s factual composition. A search warrant affidavit must contain sufficient facts to cause a neutral magistrate, as a reasonable man, to believe an offense has been committed and that the evidence sought is in the place to be searched. (People v. George (1971), 49 Ill. 2d 372, 377.) It does not matter whether the affidavit indicates the offense is murder, voluntary manslaughter, or reckless homicide, since the facts in the affidavit, not the offense cited by the affiant, are those which the magistrate is required to assess in terms of their sufficiency. If it were otherwise, the naming of the offense would become the operative fact upon which the evaluation by the magistrate would depend. It is the magistrate’s analysis of the information the affidavit supplies, however, which forms the foundation of whether probable cause exists. Thus the facts, or the story the affidavit relates, are what count, not how they are titled. The particularity requirement of the fourth amendment requires nothing more. Accord, People v. Raicevich (1978), 61 Ill. App. 3d 143, cert, denied (1979), 441 U.S. 963, 60 L. Ed. 2d 1067, 99 S. Ct 2409. As to whether the affidavit contained sufficient details which could lead a neutral magistrate to conclude a crime had been committed and evidence of the crime was in the place to be searched, the question is a close one. On balance, however, I believe they do, and therefore concur with that portion of the majority’s opinion and their ultimate resolution of this cause.