People v. Colyar
| Decision Date | 03 October 2013 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 111835. |
| Citation | 2013 IL 111835,374 Ill.Dec. 880,996 N.E.2d 575 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant, v. Michael COLYAR, Appellee. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Lisa Madigan, Attorney General, of Springfield, and Anita Alvarez, State's Attorney, of Chicago (Alan J. Spellberg, Annette Collins, Veronica Calderon Malavia and Anne L. Magats, Assistant State's Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.
Algis F. Baliunas, of Mokena, for appellee.
Chief Justice KILBRIDE delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. Justices Garman, Karmeier, and Theis concurred in the judgment and opinion. Justic Thomas specially concurred, with opinion. Justice Burke dissented with opinion, joined by Justice Freeman, and dissented upon denial of rehearing, with opinion.
¶ 1 The issue in this appeal is whether police officers violated defendant's constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures (U.S. Const., amend. IV; Ill. Const. 1970, art. I, § 6). The contested conduct arose during an incident that both parties agree was initiated as a proper Terry stop. After police officers observed a bullet in plain view in the center console of the vehicle, the officers ordered defendant and his two passengers out of the vehicle, handcuffed and searched them, and then, after recovering additional bullets from defendant's person and the vehicle, recovered a handgun from the passenger side floor of the vehicle.
¶ 2 The circuit court of Cook County granted defendant's motion to suppress all of the recovered evidence. A majority of the appellate court affirmed, concluding that the challenged police conduct subjected defendant to an unlawful search without probable cause because the bullet did not establish evidence of a crime. 407 Ill.App.3d 294, 310, 346 Ill.Dec. 921, 941 N.E.2d 479. For the reasons that follow, we reverse the judgments of the appellate and circuit courts.
¶ 4 Defendant was charged with multiple weapons charges after police officers recovered bullets and a handgun from his person and vehicle. Defendant filed a pretrial motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence, arguing that the underlying search was unreasonable and that he was subjected to an unlawful arrest without probable cause.
¶ 5 At the suppression hearing, Homewood police officer William Alcott testified that on the evening of June 29, 2006, he was working the tactical unit for a suburban task force in an unmarked squad car with his partner, Detective Johnson. The officers wore plain clothes, a police badge, a name tag, and a vest with the word “police” across the back.
¶ 6 At approximately 8:45 p.m., Officer Alcott arrived at a motel the officers routinely patrolled to check for “parties and stuff of that nature” involving minors. The officers, however, had not received any calls of suspicious activity or reports of criminal activity that day. When the officers arrived at the motel, defendant's vehicle was parked in the south entrance to the motel's parking lot, between 50 and 100 feet from the motel's main building entrance. Because of the location of defendant'svehicle, Officer Alcott drove around the motel building to the west parking lot entrance and stopped, observing defendant's vehicle for two or three minutes. During this time, defendant's vehicle remained in the entrance.
¶ 7 Officer Alcott parked his squad car in the parking lot, but he did not block defendant's vehicle. The officers then exited their squad car and walked toward defendant's vehicle to ask defendant why he was parked in the entrance. During their approach, the officers did not draw their service weapons. Officer Alcott described the lighting conditions at the time as “dusk” but “not dark.” Defendant sat in the driver's seat, with the car's engine running, and there was also a passenger in his car. As the officers approached defendant's vehicle, a third individual exited the motel, walked to defendant's vehicle, and got inside the rear passenger compartment.
¶ 8 Officer Alcott approached the driver side, and Detective Johnson went to the passenger side. When Officer Alcott asked defendant why he was blocking the entrance, defendant replied that he was picking someone up from the motel. During this conversation, Detective Johnson motioned to Officer Alcott and advised him of a plastic bag in the center console. Officer Alcott shined his flashlight into the center console and saw in plain view a plastic bag with a bullet “sticking up” inside. Officer Alcott described the bullet as “the largest pistol round” he had ever seen, approximately three inches long. Officer Alcott further described the bullet as being as large as a rifle round.
¶ 9 After Officer Alcott saw the bullet, he ordered defendant and his two passengers out of the car. The officers handcuffed defendant and the two passengers near the front of the vehicle. Officer Alcott recovered the plastic bag from the center console, and discovered that it contained a total of five live rounds of .454–caliber ammunition.
¶ 10 After recovering the five bullets from the bag in defendant's center console, the officers conducted a pat-down search of defendant and his two occupants. Officer Alcott recovered a single bullet from defendant's front pants pocket that matched the five .454–caliber bullets recovered from the plastic bag in the center console. Based on the recovery of the five bullets from the center console and one bullet from defendant's pocket, Officer Alcott believed that there might be a gun inside defendant's vehicle. Ultimately, Detective Johnson found a .454 revolver under a floor mat on the front passenger side. Subsequently, defendant and his two passengers were transported to the police station.
¶ 11 Following Officer Alcott's testimony, and prior to ruling on defendant's motion to suppress, the circuit court heard arguments from the parties on two separate days. Defendant argued that the police officers lacked probable cause for any of their conduct because possession of a bullet is not per se illegal and the police officers failed to ask defendant whether he possessed a valid Firearm Owner's Identification (FOID) card. Consequently, because the officers did not know whether defendant possessed the bullet legally, defendant asserted that the officers subjected him to an unlawful arrest without probable cause when they ordered him out of the car and handcuffed him. Defendant noted that no criminal activity had been reported in the area at the time of the incident and no evidence suggested that he was engaged in criminal activity.
¶ 12 In response, the State argued that the officers did not subject defendant to an illegal seizure or arrest. Instead, the officers acted appropriately when they approacheddefendant's vehicle to ascertain why it was blocking the motel's parking lot entrance. When the officers saw the bullet in the center console, they were entitled to order defendant and his two passengers out of the car for their own safety. Similarly, when they recovered the multiple bullets from the center console and the bullet from defendant's pants pocket, the officers properly searched the car and recovered the handgun.
¶ 13 After hearing arguments, the trial court denied defendant's motion to suppress the bullets, but granted his motion to suppress the gun. The court found that, pursuant to Terry, the officers properly recovered the bullets, including the bullet recovered from defendant's pants when he was handcuffed. The court further found, however, that the recovery of the gun was illegal because the officers did not have probable cause to believe that defendant was committing a crime when the possession of a bullet is not per se illegal and the officers failed to asked defendant if he possessed a valid FOID card. The court explained that it “presum[ed] the State's theory is search incident to arrest that allowed them to conduct” the search of the vehicle.
¶ 14 Defendant moved orally to reconsider the trial court's ruling admitting the bullets. Defendant again asserted that possession of a bullet is not per se illegal and, therefore, the officers in this case arrested him unlawfully when they ordered him out of the car and handcuffed him based solely on the plain-view bullet without first finding out if defendant possessed a valid FOID card or had previously been convicted of a felony. The State responded that the trial court's ruling admitting the bullets recovered from the center console and defendant's person was proper under Terry.
¶ 15 Following arguments on defendant's oral motion to reconsider, the circuit court granted his motion to reconsider and ordered that all the bullets be suppressed because the officers failed to ask defendant whether he possessed a valid FOID card before they ordered him out of the car and searched him and the vehicle. Thus, the court ordered that all of the recovered evidence, the bullets and the gun, be suppressed.
¶ 16 In addition, the circuit court continued the State's written motion to reconsider its ruling suppressing the gun. In pertinent part, the State argued that the officers' discovery of the bullets created justifiable concern for their safety because the bullets could reasonably indicate the presence of a gun, citing Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983). Ultimately, however, the State filed a certificate of substantial impairment and notice of appeal under Supreme Court Rule 604(a)(1) (eff. July 1, 2006) before the circuit court could rule on the State's motion to reconsider.
¶ 17 On appeal, a majority of the appellate court affirmed the circuit court's order suppressing all of the evidence. Before reaching the merits of the suppression order, the majority construed the State's position on appeal as being that the officers had probable cause to believe a crime had been committed when they saw the bullet in plain view in...
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