People v. Gonzalez

• Citation: 273 Ill.Dec. 360,789 N.E.2d 260,204 Ill.2d 220
• Decision Date: 17 April 2003
• Docket Number: No. 92305.,92305.
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant, v. John A. GONZALEZ, Appellee.
• Court: Supreme Court of Illinois

789 N.E.2d 260

204 Ill.2d 220

273 Ill.Dec. 360

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant, v. John A. GONZALEZ, Appellee.

No. 92305.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

April 17, 2003.

James E. Ryan, Attorney General, Springfield, and Joseph E. Birkett, State's Attorney, Wheaton (Joel D. Bertocchi, Solicitor General, William L. Browers and Kristen L. Hopkins, Assistant Attorneys General, Chicago, and Norbert J. Goetten, Martin P. Moltz and Lawrence M. Bauer, of the Office of the State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor, Elgin, of counsel), for the People.

No appearance for appellee.

Justice FITZGERALD delivered the opinion of the court:

The issue we consider is whether, during the course of a routine traffic stop, a police officer's mere request for identification from a passenger runs afoul of the federal and state constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable seizures. See U.S.Const., amend. IV; Ill. Const.1970, art. I, § 6. We hold that such a request passes constitutional muster.

BACKGROUND

The salient facts in this case are not in dispute. On December 9, 1998, Officers McCarthy and Lee of the Naperville police department were on routine patrol. Both officers were in plain clothes in an unmarked vehicle. At approximately 4 p.m., while patrolling Route 59, they stopped a vehicle, in which defendant was the passenger, for not having a front license plate. Lee approached the car on the driver's side; McCarthy approached the car on the passenger's side. McCarthy, who observed no criminal conduct by defendant either before or immediately after the stop, asked him for identification. Defendant complied, producing a traffic ticket, in lieu of other identification. Thereafter, McCarthy ran a criminal history of defendant. The ensuing encounter between McCarthy and defendant resulted in a search of defendant's person, revealing a packet of cocaine. Defendant was subsequently arrested and charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance (less than 15 grams of a substance containing cocaine). See 720 ILCS 570/402(c) (West 1998).

Defendant filed a motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence, arguing that his arrest constituted an unreasonable seizure under the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 6, of the Illinois Constitution. See U.S. Const., amend. IV; Ill. Const.1970, art. I, § 6. Defendant maintained that Officer McCarthy had no lawful basis to ask him for identification, thus tainting the subsequent search. The trial court agreed, concluding that, absent any suspicion of criminal conduct by defendant, Officer McCarthy's request for identification was unreasonable. The trial court, therefore, granted defendant's motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence. The State appealed.

The appellate court, with one justice dissenting, affirmed the trial court's judgment. 324 Ill.App.3d 15, 257 Ill.Dec. 583, 753 N.E.2d 1209. We allowed the State's petition for leave to appeal (see 177 Ill.2d R. 315) and now reverse the judgment of the appellate court.

ANALYSIS

I

Preliminarily, we note that defendant has not filed an appellee's brief in this case. Nonetheless, we will decide the merits of the appeal under the principles set forth in First Capitol Mortgage Corp. v. Talandis Construction Corp., 63 Ill.2d 128, 133, 345 N.E.2d 493 (1976) ("if the record is simple and the claimed errors are such that the court can easily decide them without the aid of an appellee's brief, the court of review should decide the merits of the appeal").

Before proceeding to the merits, we consider the appropriate standard of review. When a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress involves factual determinations or credibility assessments, the court's ruling will not be disturbed on review unless it is manifestly erroneous. People v. Anthony, 198 Ill.2d 194, 200-01, 260 Ill.Dec. 632, 761 N.E.2d 1188 (2001); People v. Sorenson, 196 Ill.2d 425, 430-31, 256 Ill.Dec. 836, 752 N.E.2d 1078 (2001); see also People v. Gherna, 203 Ill.2d 165, 175, 271 Ill.Dec. 245, 784 N.E.2d 799 (2003). Where, however, the facts are not in dispute, the ultimate question posed by the legal challenge to the trial court's ruling is reviewed de novo. Gherna, 203 Ill.2d at 175, 271 Ill.Dec. 245, 784 N.E.2d 799; Anthony, 198 Ill.2d at 201, 260 Ill. Dec. 632, 761 N.E.2d 1188. As already indicated, the facts relevant to this appeal are not in dispute. We, therefore, review de novo the State's legal challenge to the suppression order.

II

At the outset, we reject the State's contention that the fourth amendment is not implicated in this case because Officer McCarthy's request for identification qualified as "community caretaking."

"Community caretaking" is a label used to describe consensual police-citizen encounters that typically involve the safety of the public. People v. Murray, 137 Ill.2d 382, 387, 148 Ill.Dec. 7, 560 N.E.2d 309 (1990); see also 324 Ill.App.3d at 22, 257 Ill.Dec. 583, 753 N.E.2d 1209 (collecting cases). This type of encounter involves no coercion or detention and thus requires no legal justification. Murray, 137 Ill.2d at 387,148 Ill.Dec. 7,560 N.E.2d 309. The State fails to explain in what way the request for identification from defendant served a public-safety function, and we glean no facts from the record which would warrant using the community-caretaking label in this case. Accordingly, we turn to an examination of the fourth amendment in the context of this traffic stop.

III

The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." U.S. Const., amend. IV; see Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 213, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 1442, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669, 1675 (1960) (fourth amendment prohibition is applicable to state officials through the fourteenth amendment). Similarly, article I, section 6, of our state constitution guarantees that the "people shall have the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and other possessions against unreasonable searches, [and] seizures." Ill. Const.1970, art. I, § 6. We have construed the search and seizure language found in section 6 in a manner consistent with the Supreme Court's fourth amendment jurisprudence. Fink v. Ryan, 174 Ill.2d 302, 314, 220 Ill.Dec. 369, 673 N.E.2d 281 (1996).

The fourth amendment's imposition of a reasonableness standard is intended to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by government officials, including law enforcement agents. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653-54, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1396, 59 L.Ed.2d 660, 667 (1979). A particular law enforcement practice is thus judged by "balancing its intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests." Prouse, 440 U.S. at 654, 99 S.Ct. at 1396, 59 L.Ed.2d at 667-68; see also Illinois v. McArthur, 531 U.S. 326, 331, 121 S.Ct. 946, 950, 148 L.Ed.2d 838, 848 (2001) ("we balance the privacy-related and law enforcement-related concerns to determine if the intrusion was reasonable").

The Supreme Court has characterized the temporary detention of "individuals" during a vehicle stop by police, even if only for a brief period and for a limited purpose, as a "seizure" of "persons" within the meaning of the fourth amendment. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 809-10, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 1772, 135 L.Ed.2d 89, 95 (1996), citing Prouse, 440 U.S. at 653,99 S.Ct. at 1396,59 L.Ed.2d at 667; United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 556, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 3082, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116, 1127 (1976); United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 878, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 2578, 45 L.Ed.2d 607, 614 (1975). Although the Court has not expressly held that a "passenger," as distinguished from the "driver," is seized at the moment the vehicle is stopped, the Court has recognized that, as a practical matter, any passengers are stopped by virtue of the stop of the vehicle. Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 413-14, 117 S.Ct. 882, 886, 137 L.Ed.2d 41, 47 (1997); see also Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 436, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 3148, 82 L.Ed.2d 317, 332 (1984) (acknowledging that a traffic stop "significantly curtails the `freedom of action' of the driver and the passengers, if any, of the detained vehicle"). The Court has also referred to the driver and any passengers collectively as the "occupants" of the vehicle, holding that all are seized. See, e.g., United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 226, 105 S.Ct. 675, 679, 83 L.Ed.2d 604, 610 (1985) ("stopping a car and detaining its occupants constitute a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment"); Prouse, 440 U.S. at 653,99 S.Ct. at 1396,59 L.Ed.2d at 667 ("stopping an automobile and detaining its occupants constitute a `seizure' within the meaning of [the fourth and fourteenth] Amendments"); see also United States v. Kimball, 25 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.1994) ("When a police officer effects an investigatory stop of a vehicle, all occupants of that vehicle are subjected to a seizure, as defined by the Fourth Amendment" (emphasis in original)); United States v. Roberson, 6 F.3d 1088, 1091 (5th Cir.1993) ("a stop results in the seizure of the passenger and driver alike"). Accordingly, we conclude that defendant here, as a passenger/occupant in the vehicle stopped by police, was "seized" within the meaning of the fourth amendment.

Because a vehicle stop constitutes a seizure of the vehicle's occupants, a vehicle stop is subject to the fourth amendment's requirement of reasonableness. Whren, 517 U.S. at 809-10, 116 S.Ct. at 1772, 135 L.Ed.2d at 95. In determining the reasonableness of a traffic stop, courts are guided by the Supreme Court's observation that the usual traffic stop is more analogous to a Terry investigative stop (see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)) than to a formal arrest. Berkemer, 468 U.S. at...