Court Opinion

ID: 9520913
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:53:14.09277+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:13.550739
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE DOYLE, specially concurring: I agree with our majority’s conclusion that the trial court was correct in its determination that there was no basis for a stop of defendant’s truck. The reason for this determination is plain and simple — the information communicated by the complainant, Cindy Ertl, did not contain sufficient facts to create a reasonable suspicion that defendant had committed, or was committing, any crime. The fact that defendant reportedly "hammered” at the door or, at some time in the past, had made threats or possessed firearms falls short of providing reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was currently afoot. I believe our opinion should have ended there. Instead, the majority has embarked upon what seems to me to be a confusing discussion, creating a potential for muddling well-established principles in the law of arrest and temporary detention for investigation. Instead of simply discounting the complainant’s information as factually insufficient, the discussion focuses heavily on the aspect of her credibility. For no apparent reason other than that the complainant used a telephone to communicate her information, the majority suggests that the police officers were required to regard her complaint on the same level as information supplied by a confidential informant or an anonymous tipster, concluding, "the forcible stop of a citizen cannot be legitimized by the simple expedient of one officer passing on a telephone informant’s tip lacking the requisite degree of reliability, quality, factual sufficiency, and corroboration.” (Emphasis added.) 292 Ill. App. 3d at 875. Accordingly, the opinion parades out a series of decisions dealing with the special scrutiny requirements applicable when authorities act upon information from confidential or anonymous sources, the cases ordinarily focusing on the need to establish reliability of the source through a prior track record or corroboration of the information. In my view, these cases have no application to the present case, where the source of information was not a confidential or anonymous informant but, rather, an ordinary citizen who identified herself and who claimed to have directly witnessed the events she was reporting. It has long been recognized that the proof-of-veracity rules applicable to informant cases are inapplicable when the information comes from an identified citizen who is in a position to supply the information by virtue of having been a crime victim or eyewitness. People v. Bean, 84 Ill. 2d 64, 68 (1981); People v. Hoffman, 45 Ill. 2d 221, 226 (1970); People v. Hester, 39 Ill. 2d 489, 514 (1968); People v. Carroll, 260 Ill. App. 3d 319, 340-41 (1992); 2 W. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 3.4(a), at 204-24 (3d ed. 1996). As in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 26 L. Ed. 2d 419, 90 S. Ct. 1975 (1970), the United States Supreme Court has proceeded as if veracity may be assumed when information comes from the victim of or a witness to criminal activity. 2 W. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 3.4(a), at 205. Accordingly, police may ordinarily rely on information from a private citizen who is a victim or witness to formulate probable cause to arrest without verifying that citizen’s reliability. Carroll, 260 Ill. App. 3d at 340-41; People v. McCleary, 208 Ill. App. 3d 466, 478 (1990). A well-recognized exception to this rule exists where police are aware of special circumstances that would make it unreasonable to automatically rely on statements of a witness (e.g., witness known to be mentally deranged or to have a clear motive to fabricate). 2 W. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 3.4(a), at 211-12. Although any caller who claims to have been the victim of a domestic disturbance might arguably harbor a "bias” in wanting the alleged offender apprehended, this cannot mean that officers may not act immediately on a sufficiently detailed complaint. Hopefully, it is still the law that if police receive a 911 call from an identified woman alleging that her husband has just attempted to strangle her and is now headed south in a specifically described vehicle, responding officers would, without more, have reasonable suspicion authorizing them -to intercept and detain the driver of that vehicle for investigation. Yet, our majority states that, without more, the statement of a citizen who is an eyewitness to a crime is "no longer viewed as presumptively or inherently reliable.” 292 Ill. App. 3d at 873. In defense of my colleagues, I must acknowledge that at least one other court, in dicta, has made the same unfortunate statement. See People v. Jones, 196 Ill. App. 3d 937, 956 (1990). I believe that this erroneous observation may have been hatched from a fundamental misinterpretation of our supreme court’s analysis in People v. Adams, 131 Ill. 2d 387 (1989). However, a close reading of Adams shows that the court was not addressing the present question of whether police may ordinarily assume veracity when acting on a call from a crime victim or eyewitness. Rather, Adams was analyzed in its context of the information having been provided by a paid, confidential informant with no track record for reliability who, unlike an ordinary crime victim or witness, must be subjected to heightened scrutiny. The trial court, however, made the error of mechanically categorizing this informant as an "ordinary citizen” (probably because the police represented that he was not of the criminal milieu), thereby automatically crediting his information as reliable. Second, the informant’s information in Adams failed to disclose any clear basis for his knowledge that the suspect would be transporting contraband at the time in question; therefore, even if the informant had been an identified citizen-witness, the existence of probable cause would have been questionable absent corroboration. Finally, the efforts of the police to strengthen the conclusory information through investigation were unsatisfactory. Accordingly, in commenting, "the rigidity embodied in the presumptions concerning the classifications [of sources of information] is no longer applicable” (131 Ill. 2d at 398), the supreme court, speaking in the context of an informant case, was merely illustrating the trial court’s error in finding that the source’s information presumptively established probable cause because of his status as an "ordinary citizen” informant. The arrest could have been upheld only if, in the totality of the circumstances, further investigation had sufficed to corroborate the information. Certainly, our supreme court, in Adams, has continued to follow Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 76 L. Ed. 2d 527, 103 S. a. 2317 (1983), in substituting a totality of the circumstances approach for the less flexible Aguilar analysis. But, nothing in Adams or Gates stands for the proposition that police officers would be unjustified in detaining a suspect where, in the totality of the circumstances, their only information is a call from an ordinary victim or eyewitness who has provided sufficient facts from his or her own personal observation to raise a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been perpetrated by the suspect. The totality approach, of course, retains the traditional requirement that the police must consider any known circumstances tending to discredit the witness’s veracity. The overall effect of Gates, another anonymous informant case, was to expand, not to restrict, the potential for the issuance of a valid search warrant when an element of reliability, viewed independently under Aguilar standards, is questionable. By permitting the total circumstances to compensate for a deficiency in the veracity prong, an anonymous or confidential informant’s information may still be a viable component of the probable cause determination when, under the previously inflexible Aguilar analysis, this deficiency would have been fatal. People v. Tisler, 103 Ill. 2d 226, 240 (1984). Accordingly, in People v. Kidd, 175 Ill. 2d 1 (1996), our supreme court was able to find probable cause for arrest from the total circumstances in spite of the defendant’s argument that "Mrs. Orange must be considered an informant” (apparently because she was not an eyewitness but had worked behind the scenes in cooperation with the police in eliciting admissions from the defendant), and she was of "untested and unestablished reliability.” 175 111. 2d at 23. Again, however, Kidd does not address the present issue of police reliance on information from victims or eyewitnesses to a crime. Our majority’s references to cases in which reviewing courts have cited police corroboration of an ordinary eyewitness’s information to further support a finding of probable cause lend no support to the unique theory that such corroboration is essential. Nothing prevents a court from referring to corroborating evidence or any other facts that might strengthen the finding of veracity. See 2 W. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 3.4(a), at 211. In my view, it is potentially misleading for our opinion to commingle the nonissue of Cindy Er-tl’s veracity with our examination of the sufficiency of her information. As an identified eyewitness to the alleged events, with no special circumstances to signal fabrication, her report should have been regarded as presumptively reliable. However, more is required than a reliable witness with an evident basis of knowledge. The witness’s report must still contain sufficient facts to create a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity by the suspect. It is there that Cindy Ertl’s report fails, and it is that failure that should be the sole basis of our decision to affirm the trial court’s suppression order.