Court Opinion

ID: 9819425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:25:02.856691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:10:21.753605
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE O’MALLEY, dissenting: None of the cases cited by the majority supports its rule that “generally, a police officer may not ask for and run a warrant check on the identification of a passenger [of a lawfully stopped automobile], without reasonably suspecting the passenger of criminal activity” (324 Ill. App. 3d at 20). In my mind, People v. Branch, 295 Ill. App. 3d 110 (1998), the majority’s principal authority for its decision, was an unwarranted departure from a long line of this court’s cases. In Branch, the court held that, because the officer did not have reason to suspect the passenger of criminal activity, he “did not have the authority to request an ID from the *** passenger.” (Emphasis added.) Branch, 295 Ill. App. 3d at 114. The foundations for that holding are suspect. The court explained that the State’s argument that the officer had authority to request the passenger’s identification was “directly contrary” to People v. Jennings, 185 Ill. App. 3d 164 (1989), where the court held that, because the officer who stopped the car in which the defendant was a passenger did not have reason to suspect the defendant of criminal activity, the officer therefore had no authority to demand the defendant’s identification. Branch, 295 Ill. App. 3d at 114, citing Jennings, 185 Ill. App. 3d at 169. That Branch blurred the distinction between demand and request is not surprising because Jennings did, too. The facts as recited in Jennings do not indicate whether the officer requested or demanded the defendant’s identification. Responding to the State’s argument that the officer “had a lawful right to ask for and run a warrant check on defendant’s driver’s license,” the Jennings court held that the officer “did not possess the authority to demand the production of defendant’s driver’s license absent proof that defendant was driving the vehicle.” (Emphasis added.) Jennings, 185 Ill. App. 3d at 169, citing People v. Francis, 4 Ill. App. 3d 65 (1971). Two lines later in the opinion, the court asserted that the officer “did not have the authority to request defendant’s license.” (Emphasis added.) Jennings, 185 Ill. App. 3d at 169. I do not think the attentive reader can tell whether Jennings’s use of “demand” and “request” interchangeably was due to an unstated assumption that no legal difference exists or to mere carelessness. Faced with this imprecision, the Branch court should have been more circumspect in citing Jennings as authority. Francis, the sole authority cited by Jennings, was inapposite; the issue there was whether an individual had to be operating a motor vehicle before an officer could rightfully require him to produce a driver’s license under section 6 — 112 of the Driver Licensing Law (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1969, ch. 95V2, par. 6 — 112 (now 625 ILCS 5/6 — 112 (West 1998))), which requires that every licensed driver retain his license in his immediate possession while operating a motor vehicle. Francis, 4 Ill. App. 3d at 66. Francis has no relevance to cases in which police obtain an individual’s license for purposes of a criminal history check. Branch simply ignored People v. Smith, 266 Ill. App. 3d 362 (1994), and its distinction between a request for identification and a demand for identification. The majority follows Branch in failing to address the validity of this distinction. Instead, the majority dismisses Smith as factually distinguishable from the case upon which Smith chiefly relies, Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 434, 115 L. Ed. 2d 389, 398, 111 S. Ct. 2382, 2386 (1991). The majority notes that the defendant in Bostick, unlike the defendant in Smith and the present case, was told that he had the right of refusing to comply with the officers’ requests. Although the Court in Bostick mentioned that this advisement was given (see Bostick, 501 U.S. at 432, 115 L. Ed. 2d at 397, 111 S. Ct. at 2385), nowhere did the Court explain the significance of that advisement, much less state that such an advisement is necessary for a request to remain noncoercive. The Court did observe, however, that “no seizure occurs when police ask questions of an individual [or] ask to examine the individual’s identification *** — so long as the officers do not convey a message that compliance with their requests is required.” Bostick, 501 U.S. at 437, 115 L. Ed 2d at 400, 111 S. Ct. at 2388. Before Branch, this court agreed with this statement of the law. There is a reason why Branch could cite only a Fourth District case (Jennings) to support its holding, for this court had long been of the mind that a police officer’s request of a private citizen does not constitute a seizure per se. See, e.g., People v. Cole, 256 Ill. App. 3d 590, 593-95 (1994) (no seizure when “police merely approach an individual in a public place and ask him if he is willing to answer questions or put questions to him if he is willing to listen”); People v. Graves, 196 Ill. App. 3d 273, 278 (1990) (declining “to hold, as a bright-line rule, that [a] deputy’s mere running of a driver’s license check, without more, [rises] to the level of a seizure”). In this, we are aligned with our supreme court. See People v. Murray, 137 Ill. 2d 382, 391, 393 (1990) (“the mere approaching and questioning of a person seated in a parked vehicle does not constitute a seizure,” but “[t]he encounter may be characterized as a seizure if the officer orders, rather than requests, that the occupant open the door or exit the car”). The majority offers no reason why, when the police encounter an individual who is sitting in the passenger seat of a car that they have stopped as opposed to standing on a public sidewalk, an officer’s requests of that individual constitute a seizure per se. The remaining cases cited by the majority, People v. Brownlee, 186 Ill. 2d 501 (1999), and People v. Robinson, 322 Ill. App. 3d 169 (2001), lend no support to the majority’s holding. Neither case addressed the lawfulness of a police request for identification from a passenger of a car stopped for a traffic violation; rather, both address the lawfulness of events occurring after such requests occurred. In both Brownlee and Robinson, the issue was whether the police, having stopped a car for suspected traffic violations, had a basis for continuing to detain the occupants after the police ran warrant checks on their identities and informed them that they would not be cited for traffic violations. Brownlee, 186 Ill. 2d at 517; Robinson, 322 Ill. App. 3d at 172. In both cases, the court held that this continued detention exceeded the scope of the traffic stop and was not justified independently of the grounds for the stop. Brownlee, 186 Ill. 2d at 520-21; Robinson, 322 Ill. App. 3d at 175. In neither case was the lawfulness of the officer’s request for the occupants’ identification and the subsequent warrant check at issue. Defendant does not claim that the traffic stop was illicitly prolonged after the officer obtained and ran his identification, but such a claim is the only claim that Brownlee and Robinson would support.