Court Opinion

ID: 9729635
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:45:20.229051+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:00.310668
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE MILLER, dissenting: The majority holds that the circuit court, having granted the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence on the ground that the defendant was taken into custody without probable cause, lacked authority to consider later whether any of the evidence ordered suppressed was nonetheless attenuated from the primary taint and hence admissible at trial. I do not agree with the majority’s decision that the circuit court’s consideration of that question was unauthorized, and therefore I respectfully dissent. The majority notes that the parties are not in accord on what issues were determined by the original judge in granting the defendant’s suppression motion and, further, that the parties dispute whether the original ruling implicitly determined the attenuation issue later raised by the State. The majority believes that resolution of those questions is not necessary, however, because under Illinois practice, as represented by the decision in People v. Taylor (1971), 50 Ill. 2d 136, a party aggrieved by an order that is appealable when it is entered must either appeal the ruling or seek reconsideration in a timely manner. The majority concludes that the State’s failure in the present case to follow either course in the wake of the original judge’s order must mean that the State could not later request a ruling on the separate question whether any of the evidence was nonetheless admissible because attenuated from the primary taint. (138 Ill. 2d at 388.) I do not agree that the dispute in the present case may be so easily avoided, or so readily rephrased. The majority’s formulation begs the question, for it assumes that the scope of the original judge’s ruling necessarily included the attenuation issue raised by the State. Although the majority opinion later declares that the Taylor rule, like the doctrine of res judicata, applies both to issues that were actually presented in the original proceeding and to issues that could have been presented in the original proceeding (138 Ill. 2d at 392), the majority fails to answer why the attenuation question raised by the State, and considered by the trial judge, must also fall within that rule. In my view, we must now decide whether the State waived consideration of the attenuation question by failing to present the issue at the time of the original hearing, or on reconsideration before the original judge. The defendant moved to quash his arrest and to suppress evidence on the grounds that the arrest was made without probable cause and without a warrant, that his statements to authorities were products of physical and mental coercion, and that he made those statements without having received the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona (1966), 384 U.S. 436, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694, 86 S. Ct. 1602. Although the original judge seemingly granted, in its entirety, the defendant’s motion to quash the arrest and suppress evidence, the original judge decided only that the defendant was arrested without probable cause. The State filed a notice of appeal from the original judge’s order but soon decided to abandon the appeal, and the cause eventually returned to the circuit court. The State subsequently requested a second hearing, at issue here, in relation to the defendant’s suppression motion. The State sought to raise two distinct issues in the new hearing: first, whether the original judge erred in ruling that the defendant’s arrest was made without probable cause, and, second, assuming the correctness of that ruling, whether any of the evidence obtained following the defendant’s arrest was nonetheless admissible because it was attenuated from the primary taint. The trial judge refused to reconsider the original judge’s ruling that the defendant’s arrest was made without probable cause. Although the trial judge questioned the soundness of that finding, he thought that People v. Taylor (1971), 50 Ill. 2d 136, barred him from reconsidering that particular issue. The trial judge did not believe, however, that he was similarly prevented from considering the second issue raised by .the State: whether any of the evidence obtained following the 'defendant’s illegal arrest was attenuated from the primary taint and hence admissible. The trial judge noted that the original judge’s ruling did not contain any findings with respect to the attenuation issue, and the trial judge observed that a question of attenuation generally does not arise until there is a determination that a constitutional violation occurred. The trial judge concluded that he was authorized to consider the State’s attenuation argument. Following an evidentiary hearing, the trial judge ruled that the confrontation of the defendant with codefendant Davis’ statement implicating the defendant in the crimes served to attenuate the taint generated by the illegal arrest. Accordingly, the trial judge ruled that statements made and evidence seized following that time were admissible in evidence. The trial judge also determined two additional issues that had been raised in the defendant’s suppression motion but had not been ruled on by the original judge. The trial judge concluded that all the defendant’s statements were uncoerced and, in addition, that the defendant gave the statements following the receipt of Miranda warnings. In the present appeal, the State makes no challenge to the original judge’s ruling that the defendant’s arrest was illegal, nor does the State question the trial judge’s refusal to reconsider that ruling. Rather, the State contends only that the attenuation issue was a separate matter with respect to which the original judge made no ruling and that the trial judge therefore possessed authority to consider the question later. I would conclude that the trial judge, consistent with Taylor, had authority to consider the State’s contention that evidence obtained following the defendant’s arrest was attenuated from that taint and hence admissible at trial. Attenuation properly becomes an issue only if the court finds an underlying illegality. Here, the defendant moved to quash his arrest and suppress evidence on several different grounds. The original judge based his ruling on only one of the grounds asserted in the motion, finding that the defendant’s arrest was made without probable cause. The attenuation question would not arise until the court determined that the defendant had sustained his burden of persuasion on that issue (see Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 38, par. 114 — 12(b)). Although the subject of attenuation was touched on briefly by the parties in the course of their arguments before the original judge, the issue was not raised at that time, and the original judge, though he made detailed findings, did not render a finding on that particular matter. While it may have been better practice for the prosecution to have requested, at that time, consideration of the attenuation issue, I do not believe that the State’s failure to seek such a ruling at the conclusion of the hearing, or within 30 days thereafter, prevented the trial judge later from considering the attenuation question. The" original judge did not address the attenuation question in his findings, and it did not become a live issue until there was a ruling in the defendant’s favor on his motion to quash his arrest and to suppress evidence. One additional point appearing in the majority opinion merits brief comment. In straining to distinguish the Taylor rule from the doctrine of law of the case, the majority undermines portions of its own analysis. The majority states that the Taylor rule does not fit within the rubric of the law-of-the-case doctrine because “invoking the law of the case might still not preclude reconsideration of an earlier judge’s order if the facts before the court changed or error or injustice were manifest.” (138 Ill. 2d at 392.) Apparently, the majority believes that new evidence or the existence of great error or injustice would not warrant reconsideration of an earlier ruling on a motion to suppress evidence. But those are circumstances in which it has been held a defendant may obtain reconsideration of the denial of his suppression motion. (See People v. Nelson (1981), 97 Ill. App. 3d 964, 967-68.) Indeed, that statement is contradicted by the majority’s later acknowledgment that the Taylor rule “admits of one comparison to law-of-the-case doctrine” because the presentation of new evidence may, under either principle, warrant reconsideration of an earlier ruling. 138 Ill. 2d at 393-94. In sum, I do not agree with the majority’s holding that the trial judge lacked authority to consider the attenuation question raised by the State following the abandonment of its appeal, and I would therefore consider in the present appeal the challenges raised by the defendant to the trial judge’s ruling on that issue. For that reason, I respectfully dissent.