Court Opinion

ID: 9862057
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:59:02.651997+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:29:58.667023
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE CAMPBELL, dissenting: I do not share my colleagues’ opinion that the evidence should not be suppressed and respectfully dissent. In my judgment, it necessarily follows from the majority holding that any person who activates a metal detector while attending a sporting event, concert or public event, on private property, where signs are posted advising that patrons may be checked, must automatically submit to a search by a police officer who happens to be present. At the hearing on defendant’s motion to suppress on November 12, 1982, Officer Venticinque testified to the following additional details: that he was standing approximately three feet away from the metal detector; that he observed an individual passing through the metal detector; that he and the security personnel went up to the subject and he made a pat-down search and recovered a loaded revolver on his person. He then placed the individual under arrest. The officer indicated that he had made other arrests using metal detection equipment in the past. On cross-examination, Officer Venticinque testified that the sign did not say that a person would be searched upon entering. The sign indicated that an individual would be checked, not searched. He did not know if defendant’s admission ticket had been surrendered before passing through the metal detector or not. At the time of this incident the lobby was crowded. When the defendant walked through the detector, the alarm sounded and the officer went over to defendant to search him. He did not have a conversation with defendant. The officer was not a specialist in metal detectors, nor was he familiar with their operating procedure. He knew that where the heavy alarm sounded, it indicated that the person had something on him that had large quantities of metal. Keys could activate a metal detector. The record does not indicate whether the police officer was in uniform or not, and it is undisputed that the only activities engaged in by the defendant were the acts of purchasing an admission ticket to a boxing event and walking through the metal detector device to attend the event. While defendant walked through the metal detector device, the alarm sounded, and the police officer stopped and seized the defendant and performed a pat-down search. The police officer did not identify himself, and there was no conversation between the officer and the defendant. The trial court, following a hearing on the motion to suppress, determined that any implied consent of the defendant was not freely and voluntarily given. In analyzing these facts under the Terry standards for a stop- and-frisk search, the majority concludes that “once defendant went through the metal detector and triggered the alarm because he had a large metal mass concealed on his person, Officer Venticinque had reasonable and articulable facts from which he could presume that defendant was unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon and could be considered dangerous.” From this holding, it would follow that any person activating a metal detector upon private property presents a prima facie case of specific and articulable facts, in addition to a waiver of consent, to justify a seizure and a search by police, even if such alarm is caused by keys or other metal objects unrelated to any crime or offense. In the recent traffic stop case, People v. Long (1983), 99 Ill. 2d 219, 227, 457 N.E.2d 1252, 1255-56, our supreme court stated: “Before the decision in Terry v. Ohio, it was considered that the restraint of any person that amounted to seizure for fourth amendment purposes was invalid unless probable cause requirements were met. (See Florida v. Royer (1983), 460 U.S. 491, 498, 75 L. Ed. 2d 229, 236, 103 S. Ct. 1319, 1324.) With Terry v. Ohio, however, the United States Supreme Court recognized a limited exception to the probable cause requirement, which was intended to allow police to briefly detain a person for investigatory purposes and, if necessary for safety, to search that person for weapons. In Terry, the court explained that the exception to the probable cause requirement would arise in cases where police conduct could be deemed reasonable because the governmental interest justifying the seizure outweighed the intrusion on the individual’s fourth amendment interests. (392 U.S. 1, 20-23, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889, 905-07, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1879-81.) During the years since Terry, courts have used this balancing test to measure the legality of countless brief detentions by police, but the basic tenets justifying the Terry exception have remained unchanged. See United States v. Place (1983), 462 U.S. 696, 703, 77 L. Ed. 2d 110,118,103 S. Ct. 2637, 2642-43. The Terry court provided further guidance by stating that an analysis of whether an officer’s conduct was reasonable requires a dual inquiry. The conduct constituting seizure or search must have been ‘justified at its inception, and *** reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.’ (392 U.S. 1, 20, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889, 905, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1879.) To make these determinations, a court should consider whether the facts available to the police officer would warrant a man of reasonable caution to believe that the police action was appropriate. An objective standard applies, so the police officer seeking to justify the intrusion ‘must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.’ Terry v. Ohio (1968), 392 U.S. 1, 21, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889, 906, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1880. See also People v. Smithers (1980), 83 Ill. 2d 430, 434; People v. Tassone (1968), 41 Ill. 2d 7,10.” Here, the trial court found, after applying the above legal principles to the facts and circumstances of this case, that there was no justification for the search and seizure of defendant nor was there implied consent by defendant. I agree. Even if we accept the police officer’s version of the encounter, the mere activation of a metal detector by a patron on private property does not provide articulable facts to justify seizure, or an implied consent to search. The majority’s willingness to find, as a matter of law, that the police acted in a reasonable manner and that the word “check” is synonymous with the word “search” is unfounded. Moreover, implied consent is simply unsupported by the facts in this case. When the validity of a search rests on consent, the State has the burden of proving that the necessary consent was obtained and that it was freely and voluntarily given, a burden that is not satisfied by showing a mere submission to a claim of lawful authority. (Florida v. Royer (1983), 460 U.S. 491, 75 L. Ed. 2d 229, 103 S. Ct. 1319.) Any implied consent given by defendant was insufficient to encompass the body search to which he was subjected. In my view, the police improperly seized the defendant within the meaning of the fourth amendment and consent, if any, was tainted, and the evidence should have been suppressed. In the majority opinion numerous findings of fact have been made contrary to the explicit findings of fact made by the trial court. This entire episode appears to be predicated upon a hunch, mere suspicion, or intuition, and devoid of any specific and articulable facts to justify the warrantless seizure, search and arrest. “The inquiry must focus on what was done and known by the police, not on what was believed, what the facts objectively viewed added up to, not what the officer on the scene believed they added up to.” People v. Moody (1983), 94 Ill. 2d 1, 10, 445 N.E.2d 275, 279. The evidence that is alleged to establish implied consent here is entirely consistent with innocent behavior. Up to the time the defendant walked through the metal detector no probable cause existed to believe that defendant was carrying a weapon. It was conceded in the testimony of the police officer that keys' could activate the alarm system. It is not unreasonable to assume that jewelry and other articles could also activate the alarm system. The police officer did not claim to have any background experience in the use of metal detectors, as in some airport encounter cases, nor were there any suspicious actions or behavior or conversation on the part of the defendant. There are no facts in the record of this case to predicate a claim of implied consent. It was the duty of the trial court to determine objectively whether there was probable cause to arrest and implied consent to search the defendant, and it found both lacking here. A reviewing court will not disturb a trial court’s finding on a motion to suppress unless that finding is determined to be manifestly erroneous. (People v. Reynolds (1983), 94 Ill. 2d 160, 445 N.E.2d 766; People v. Free (1983), 94 Ill. 2d 378, 447 N.E.2d 218, cert, denied (1983), 464 U.S. 865, 78 L. Ed. 2d 175, 104 S. Ct. 200.) There is nothing apparently incriminating about walking through a metal detector, and there is no evidence to support the finding of implied consent as found by the majority. I would, therefore, affirm the judgment of the trial court.