People v. LeFlore, 116799.

• Decision Date: 21 May 2015
• Docket Number: No. 116799.,116799.
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant, v. Keith LeFLORE, Appellee.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

32 N.E.3d 1043

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant
v.
Keith LeFLORE, Appellee.

No. 116799.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

May 21, 2015.

32 N.E.3d 1044

Lisa Madigan, Attorney General, of Springfield, and Joseph H. McMahon, State's Attorney, of St. Charles (Carolyn E. Shapiro, Solicitor General, and Michael M. Glick and Eldad Z. Malamuth, Assistant Attorneys General, of Chicago, and Patrick Delfino, Lawrence M. Bauer and Jay Paul Hoffmann, of the Office of the State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor, of Elgin, of counsel), for the People.

Michael J. Pelletier, State Appellate Defender, Alan D. Goldberg, Deputy Defender, and Darren E. Miller, Assistant Appellate Defender, of the Office of the State Appellate Defender, of Chicago, and Christopher D. Moore, law student, for appellant.

OPINION

Justice THOMAS delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 Defendant, Keith LeFlore, was charged with aggravated robbery, robbery and burglary in connection with an April 24, 2009, robbery of a gas station in Aurora, Illinois. Defendant filed a pretrial motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence, arguing that police improperly used a Global Positioning System (GPS) device without a warrant to track the movements of a vehicle he used. The trial court denied the motion. Following a jury trial, defendant was convicted of all charges, and sentenced to 20 years in prison on the aggravated robbery charge. The appellate court reversed and remanded. We allowed the State's petition for leave to appeal. Ill. S.Ct. R. 315 (eff. July 1, 2013).

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¶ 2 BACKGROUND

¶ 3 In April 2009, Aurora police received a tip from the Crime Stoppers hotline that defendant was committing burglaries on the west side of Aurora and bringing “various items” into his apartment complex. The police located defendant's address at the apartment complex after a data search. Police also discovered that defendant was on mandatory supervised release from prison. They also knew that in a recent police encounter defendant had been arrested for fleeing in a red Kia Spectra with license plate X743* * *. The Kia was registered to Stephanie Powell, who lived at the same address as defendant.

¶ 4 On April 23, 2009, Aurora police detective Jeremy Shufelt placed a GPS device under the rear bumper of the Kia while it was parked at the apartment complex where defendant resided. Detective Shufelt did not obtain a warrant to place the GPS device on the car's exterior. Early the next morning, a local gas station located a few minutes from defendant's residence was held up. Tracking from the GPS device showed that the Kia was parked near the gas station at the time it was robbed around 4:40 a.m.

¶ 5 A surveillance camera captured the robbery on video. It showed that the robber used what looked like a shotgun. He took the cash drawer and a carton of Newport cigarettes from the cashier and fled. The video also showed that the robber was wearing a pair of Steve Madden athletic shoes, which have a distinctive striping pattern on them.

¶ 6 On the evening of the same day as the robbery, police conducted a parole search of defendant's residence. Defendant arrived at the apartment complex driving the Kia at the same time the police were conducting their search of his residence. Defendant was taken into custody for driving with a revoked license. He was wearing Steve Madden athletic shoes. During the search, the police recovered a hollow metal cane that had the rubber tip removed from the end.

¶ 7 When defendant was interviewed, the police told him that he had been under surveillance, but they did not tell him about the use of the GPS device. The police also told him that the apartment complex's video camera showed him leaving early in the morning. After the police placed the metal cane in the interview room, defendant confessed, explaining that he made the cane look like a gun by removing the rubber stopper at the end and placing a black grocery-type bag around the center. The cashier from the store later picked defendant out of a photo lineup.

¶ 8 Defendant was eventually charged with aggravated robbery, robbery and burglary in the circuit court of Kane County. Defendant filed a motion to quash his arrest and suppress evidence, arguing that it was solely through information received through the GPS tracking device that defendant became a suspect in the robbery and therefore all the evidence against him should be suppressed. The trial court denied the motion, finding that the use and “the existence” of the GPS device, which did not interfere with defendant's possessory interest in the vehicle, did not constitute a search under either the federal or state constitutions. Relying upon United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55 (1983), United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530 (1984), and United States v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994 (7th Cir.2007), as controlling authority, the court concluded that the fourth amendment was not violated because “the information secured by the police was equal to what personal surveillance would have revealed and [was] available from the observations that could

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have been made on or about the public way or the publicly accessible locations.”

¶ 9 Defendant represented himself at his trial and the jury found him guilty of all charges. The trial court entered judgment on the aggravated battery charge and sentenced defendant to 20 years in prison. On appeal, defendant argued that the trial court erred in denying his motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence, and that the court erroneously allowed him to waive counsel without properly admonishing him under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 401(a) (eff. July 1, 1984).

¶ 10 While this case was pending on appeal in the appellate court, the United States Supreme Court decided United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. ––––, ––––, 132 S.Ct. 945, 948–49, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012), which held that the attachment of a GPS tracking device and the subsequent use of the device to monitor a vehicle's movements on public streets was a search under the fourth amendment because the placement of the device constituted an unlawful trespass. Also while this case was pending on appeal, the Supreme Court decided Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011). In Davis, the Court applied the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule to an automobile search conducted by a state police officer “in objectively reasonable reliance on binding judicial precedent.” Id. at ––––, 131 S.Ct. at 2428–29.

¶ 11 Prior to the oral argument before the appellate court in the present case, the State submitted Jones as additional authority. 2013 IL App (2d) 100659, ¶ 83, 374 Ill.Dec. 983, 996 N.E.2d 678 (Birkett, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The parties were then directed to address Davis and whether the good-faith exception applied. Id. At oral argument, the State argued that Knotts and Karo were “binding precedent” at the time the search was conducted, and defendant argued that those two cases were distinguishable because they involved “beeper” tracking devices and not the more advanced GPS technology used here. Id. ¶ 108.

¶ 12 A divided appellate court reversed defendant's conviction based on Jones and remanded for further proceedings to determine whether defendant borrowed the vehicle with Powell's consent so as to establish standing under Jones. Id. ¶ 29 (majority opinion). The appellate court majority accepted defendant's argument that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule was not applicable due to the more advanced nature of GPS tracking. Id. ¶¶ 44–45. However, Justice Birkett in his partial dissent determined, among other things, that the good-faith exception applied and that the evidence that resulted from the GPS tracking should not be excluded. He concluded that the trial court correctly ruled that Knotts and Karo were “binding precedent” that controlled the outcome at the time the search was conducted in April 2009. Id. ¶ 115 (Birkett, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Finally, the appellate court was in unanimous agreement that the defendant's convictions must be reversed and the cause remanded for a new trial based on the trial court's failure to properly admonish defendant pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 401(a) (Ill.S.Ct. R. 401(a) (eff. July 1, 1984)). 2013 IL App (2d) 100659, ¶ 60, 374 Ill.Dec. 983, 996 N.E.2d 678.

¶ 13 We allowed the State's petition for leave to appeal. Ill. S.Ct. R. 315 (eff. July 1, 2013). Before this court, the State concedes that the appellate court correctly determined that defendant must be retried based on the lack of proper admonishments under Supreme Court Rule 401(a). The State contends, however, that upon remand for a new trial, there is no need

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for the trial court to hold a new suppression hearing. In that regard, three issues are raised before this court: (1) whether the fourth amendment permitted police to place a GPS device on a car associated with defendant, where defendant was on mandatory supervised release from prison at the time and thus had a diminished expectation of privacy from that of an...