Court Opinion

ID: 9542375
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:33:37.522381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:48.642132
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE APPLETON, dissenting: I respectfully dissent and would affirm the trial court’s order suppressing the evidence. The majority’s opinion thwarts the rights guaranteed by the fourth amendment. In factually similar cases, both this court and the United States Supreme Court have held that an anonymous tip, without corroboration, is insufficient to justify a stop and search. Nevertheless, the majority holds otherwise. The majority relies on the creation of a material fact to distinguish this case from this court’s decision in Sparks and the Supreme Court’s decision in J.L. In Sparks, a known informant told police that the defendant was going to be arriving in Springfield from Texas in a car with contraband. The informant provided the following information to the police: (1) the defendant’s name, race, and age; (2) the make, model, color, and license-plate number of the car; and (3) the date and approximate time that the car would be arriving in Springfield from Texas on Interstate 55. Compared to the facts of this case, the officers in Sparks had a tremendous amount of detail that could be used to assure them that the informant had “inside information” (see J.L., 529 U.S. at 271, 146 L. Ed. 2d at 260-61, 120 S. Ct. at 1379). Yet, we held it was not enough. Sparks, 315 Ill. App. 3d at 795, 734 N.E.2d at 223. In our opinion, the tip did not provide the officers with the required reasonable suspicion to justify a Terry stop because “[t]he informant did not indicate that he had witnessed any criminal activity by defendants or that he had participated in previous criminal activity with them, which would have lent some credibility to his story.” Sparks, 315 Ill. App. 3d at 794, 734 N.E.2d at 223. The majority skirts the precedential effect of Sparks by blindly asserting that the anonymous caller “witnessed the original activity— selling drugs — and the tip had sufficient detail to permit the reasonable inference that the anonymous caller actually witnessed what he described. Unlike Sparks, the informant in our case did indicate he witnessed criminal activity, which lent credibility to his story.” (Emphasis in original.) 382 Ill. App. 3d at 839. Attempting to add credence to the tipster’s description of defendant, his vehicle, his location, and his purported criminal activity, the majority insists that the caller’s statement that defendant was selling drugs from the trunk of the vehicle equates to an eyewitness account of the same. The Supreme Court has emphatically held otherwise. J.L., 529 U.S. at 272, 146 L. Ed. 2d at 261, 120 S. Ct. at 1379. In J.L., the anonymous caller told police that “a young black male standing at a particular bus stop and wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun.” J.L., 529 U.S. at 268, 146 L. Ed. 2d at 259, 120 S. Ct. at 1377. The Court held that “[s]uch a tip, however, does not show that the tipster has knowledge of concealed criminal acitivity. The reasonable suspicion here at issue requires that a tip be reliable in its assertion of illegality, not just in its tendency to identify a determinate person.” J.L., 529 U.S. at 272, 146 L. Ed. 2d at 261, 120 S. Ct. at 1379. The Court did not infer from the information contained in the tip that the caller actually witnessed the defendant carrying a gun at the bus stop, nor should this court impute from the information contained in the tip that the caller actually witnessed defendant selling drugs from his car. As the Court noted in J.L., “[a]ll the police had to go on in this case was the bare report of an unknown, unaccountable informant who neither explained how he knew about the gun nor supplied any basis for believing he had inside information about J.L.” (Emphasis added.) J.L., 529 U.S. at 271, 146 L. Ed. 2d at 260-61, 120 S. Ct. at 1379. If we substituted the word “gun” for “drugs” in the preceding sentence, this case and J.L. would be identical. The caller’s report was not sufficient in J.L., and it is not sufficient here. The majority relies on an uncorroborated telephone call to evade the fourth amendment. For these reasons, I would affirm the trial court.