Court Opinion

ID: 9540572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:17:53.790274+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:00:02.973798
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE CLARK, dissenting: I dissent. The majority’s recitation of a laundry list of generalities about the need to accord law enforcement officers a certain amount of discretion (a need which I recognize) does not address the issue raised by this case: whether this law enforcement officer had adequate grounds for this search. Resolution of that issue requires analysis of the precise facts which the law enforcement officer possessed at each significant stage of his intrusion upon defendant’s fourth amendment rights, as well as comparison of those precise facts to the types of facts and circumstances which this court and the United States Supreme Court have found adequate to justify such intrusions. Had the majority seen fit to embark upon this admittedly painstaking but nonetheless necessary course of analysis, it could not have reached the result it did. Moreover, in its haste to uphold the lawfulness of this search, the majority has cast a shadow upon along line of this court’s decisions regarding the trial court’s role in assessing the credibility of witnesses and making factual findings in connection with motions to suppress evidence. Kenneth Beam, a deputy sheriff of Randolph County, testified at the suppression hearing that the Randolph County sheriff’s office had received a tip that illegal drugs were being sold at the residence of George Kraft in Percy, Illinois, a small town near the eastern edge of Randolph County. (Beam gave no other significant details regarding the tip.) The sheriff’s office placed the house under surveillance. About a week later, on February 22, 1975, one of the other deputies on the surveillance detail told Beam that a shipment of drugs was expected. (Beam again gave no other significant details regarding this additional tip.) The next evening, shortly after 7 p.m., Beam was stationed in an unmarked car across the street from the house when he observed a succession of four or five persons drive up to the house, enter, and depart after 5 or 10 minutes. About 7:30 p.m. he observed the defendant and the defendant’s brother, Michael, similarly arrive, enter the house, and return about 5 minutes later carrying a brown paper bag which, Beam testified, they placed in the trunk of the car. When the car departed, Beam followed it as it headed westward through Randolph County toward Steeleville. He testified that, while following the car, he was unable to read its license number because the light which normally illuminates the rear license plate was not working and because a trailer hitch obstructed his view. Beam radioed for assistance, and testified that, as he did so, he observed the occupants of the car turn around and look at him. As the Blitz car reached a relatively well-lighted area at Steeleville, Beam turned on the flashing red light on his dashboard, leading defendant to promptly pull over to the side of the road. Beam admitted that his reason for stopping defendant’s car was, at least in part, to search its trunk. The trial court apparently found that the traffic stop was merely a pretext for the vehicle search; the majority does not contest this finding. After stopping, defendant got out of his car and started walking back toward Beam’s car in what Beam described as a “nervous manner.” The defendant gave Beam an apparently valid driver’s license. Beam testified that, at about this time, he heard what he thought to be police radio transmissions coming from defendant’s car, and that, when he saw Michael turn a knob on a radio in the car, he opened the door, took the radio from Michael, and told everybody to get out of the car and put their hands on the trunk. Beam then returned to his own car and ran an apparently fruitless radio check on defendant’s driver’s license and automobile license plate numbers. Beam then took a shotgun from his car and returned to the Blitz car and its occupants. Another officer arrived and took charge of the shotgun while Beam conducted an apparently limited search of the suspects. When even more officers arrived, one of them, Joe McDaniel, searched the suspects again, this time revealing a knife concealed on the person of Michael, who was arrested. At this point Beam formally placed defendant under arrest, and the officers began searching the interior of the car. McDaniel and Beam obtained the key to the trunk, which they unlocked and searched, eventually finding a brown grocery bag containing two plastic bags of a substance which appeared to be cannabis. The State put forward several theories to justify the search; the theory which the majority evidently found persuasive was that Beam and McDaniel had probable cause to search the trunk of the car for drugs. That theory, and therefore the majority’s opinion, is irreconcilable with the controlling precedents of both this court and the United States Supreme Court as to what constitutes probable cause for such a search. See Whiteley v. Warden (1971), 401 U.S. 560, 28 L. Ed. 2d 306, 91 S. Ct. 1031; Spinelli v. United States (1969), 393 U.S. 410, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637, 89 S. Ct. 584; Recznik v. City of Lorain (1968), 393 U.S. 166, 21 L. Ed. 2d 317, 89 S. Ct. 342; Draper v. United States (1959), 358 U.S. 307, 3 L. Ed. 2d 327, 79 S. Ct. 329; People v. Thomas (1975), 62 Ill. 2d 375. Cf. People v. Clay (1973), 55 Ill. 2d 501. See also LaFave, Probable Cause From Informants: The Effects of Murphy’s Law on Fourth Amendment Adjudication, 1977 U. Ill. L.F. 1, 49-66. When Beam first observed defendant’s car, all he knew was that someone had told someone in the sheriff’s office something about drugs being sold at a particular house. This “tip” lacked the “sufficient detail” necessary to indicate “that he is relying on something more substantial than a casual rumor circulating in the underworld or an accusation based merely on an individual’s general reputation” (Spinelli v. United States (1969), 393 U.S. 410, 416, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637, 644, 89 S. Ct. 584, 589). Even if the tip had come to him through a trusted superior (and Beam had no idea where he had heard it), he was not entitled to rely upon it. See Whiteley v. Warden (1971), 401 U.S. 560, 565-66, 28 L. Ed. 2d 306, 310-12, 91 S. Ct. 1031, 1035. Beam’s subsequent observations added little or nothing to the tip. Certainly the comings and goings of cars to a location rumored to be the site of criminal activity did not add anything. (See generally Recznik v. City of Lorain (1968), 393 U.S. 166, 21 L. Ed. 2d 317, 89 S. Ct. 342.) The paper bag (which defendant claimed to have put on the back seat) was not incriminating. Nor did the obscured license plate, the broken light, or even the discovery of Michael’s knife and radio add anything to corroborate the alleged tip. Although “information gathered by the arresting officers can be used to sustain a finding of probable cause for an arrest that could not adequately be supported by the tip alone,” “the additional information acquired by the arresting officers must in some sense be corroborative of the informer’s tip that the arrestees committed the felony or, as in Draper itself, were in the process of committing the felony.” (Whiteley v. Warden (1971), 401 U.S. 560, 567, 28 L. Ed. 2d 306, 312-13, 91 S. Ct. 1031, 1036. Accord People v. Thomas (1975), 62 Ill. 2d 375, 378.) Here, the information gathered by Beam did not corroborate anything. Of course, the tip itself was so meager that there was little which he could corroborate. In short, Beam did not have probable cause to believe that he would find drugs in the trunk. The majority evidently did not reach the State’s argument that the search of the locked trunk was incident to the traffic arrest. In light of my position on the question of probable cause, however, I do reach that argument, and reject it. The locked trunk clearly contained neither potential threats to the safety of the arresting officers nor evidence of the alleged crime of driving with a broken license plate light, and the trial court properly so found. (Chimel v. California (1969), 395 U.S. 752, 23 L. Ed. 2d 685, 89 S. Ct. 2034; People v. Hendrix (1974), 25 Ill. App. 3d 339.) Moreover, there is a serious question as to whether a full search of the car and trunk is justifiable on the basis of its being “incident” to a mere traffic arrest: “Unlike searches of the person, United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 (1973); United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800 (1974), searches of possessions within an arrestee’s immediate control cannot be justified by any reduced expectations of privacy caused by the arrest.” United States v. Chadwick (1977), 433 U.S. 1, 16 n.10, 53 L. Ed. 2d 538, 551 n.10, 97 S. Ct. 2476, 2486 n.10. The majority’s reliance on People v. Brown (1967), 38 Ill. 2d 353, to justify this search is particularly misplaced, since Brown dealt primarily with whether a warrant was necessary to search a car, and also involved a car which had no license plates at all. To equate a broken license plate light with the total absence of license plates as grounds for a full search of the car and trunk is to suggest that police officers may use a driver’s violation of any one of hundreds of seldom-enforced traffic ordinances as a pretext for searching any car they feel like searching. This court has not adopted such a wholesale abandonment of the requirements of the fourth amendment with regard to automobiles. See, e.g., People v. Erickson (1964), 31 Ill. 2d 230. Finally, the majority has ignored the impact of the trial court’s finding that probable cause to search the trunk was lacking. There were factual disputes which the trial court must have resolved in reaching its decision to suppress the fruits of this search. By reversing that decision, the majority has cast a shadow upon the long-established rule that the trial court’s findings of fact in connection with a motion to suppress evidence will not be overturned by a reviewing court unless manifestly erroneous. See, e.g., People v. Williams (1974), 57 Ill. 2d 239, 246; People v. Clay (1973), 55 Ill. 2d 501, 505; People v. Dailey (1972), 51 Ill. 2d 239, 242; People v. Brooks (1972), 51 Ill. 2d 156, 165; People v. Johnson (1970), 44 Ill. 2d 463, 470; People v. Daily (1968), 41 Ill. 2d 116, 120; People v. Henderson (1965), 33 Ill. 2d 225, 229. One factual dispute concerned whether Beam actually had observed what he testified he had observed. Beam testified that he saw defendant put a paper bag in the trunk. The defendant testified that he put the bag on the back seat. The trial court was not required to find the deputy sheriff to be inherently more credible than the defendant. Indeed, there was other evidence in the record which might have cast doubt upon Beam’s credibility, e.g., Beam’s testimony regarding whether there was such a bag in the back seat was, at best, equivocal. Also, there was a significant inconsistency between Beam’s testimony at the preliminary hearing and at the suppression hearing regarding whether the radio was tuned to the police band. Thus, it is not insignificant that the trial court kept referring to the bag having been put “in the back” of the car, rather than in the trunk. At the very least therefore, I would remand the cause to the circuit court with directions to enter findings of fact as to whether Beam actually had observed what he testified he had observed. I would further direct that if the court finds that Beam did not observe the bag being placed in the trunk, the defendant’s motion to suppress should be granted. Of course, even if Beam did see what he testified he saw, I do not believe that he had grounds to search the trunk. I therefore respectfully dissent.