People v. Lambert
| Decision Date | 02 May 2019 |
| Docket Number | NO. 5-18-0248,5-18-0248 |
| Citation | 2019 IL App (5th) 180248,431 Ill.Dec. 967,128 N.E.3d 1137 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. James R. LAMBERT, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
Patrick Windhorst, State’s Attorney, of Metropolis (Patrick Delfino, Patrick D. Daly, and Sharon Shanahan, of State’s Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor’s Office, of counsel), for the People.
Mark C. Hunter and Cord Z. Wittig, of Kruger, Henry & Hunter, of Metropolis, for appellee.
¶ 1 In November 2014, the defendant, James R. Lambert, was involved in an automobile collision on the Brookport Bridge, which spans the Ohio River between Massac County, Illinois, and McCracken County, Kentucky. The defendant was initially charged in McCracken County with offenses stemming from the incident, but the charges were later dismissed on the grounds that the accident had actually occurred in Illinois. After the defendant was subsequently charged with similar offenses in Massac County, he filed a motion to suppress evidence that had been obtained by the McCracken County sheriff's department. Following a hearing, the circuit court entered an order partially granting the defendant's motion to suppress. The State appeals, and for the reasons that follow, we reverse that portion of the circuit court's judgment.
¶ 3 In Illinois v. Kentucky , 500 U.S. 380, 389-90, 111 S.Ct. 1877, 114 L.Ed.2d 420 (1991), after declaring that the boundary between the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the State of Illinois was the low-water mark along the Ohio River's northern shore as it existed in 1792, the United States Supreme Court remanded the case "to the Special Master for such further proceedings as may be necessary to prepare and submit an appropriate decree for adoption by the Court, locating the 1792 line." In December 1994, after such proceedings were held, the Special Master filed a report with the Court advising that the United States Geological Survey had used 7355 geodetic coordinate points to identify the 1792 low-water mark as nearly as it could presently be determined and had prepared maps identifying a proposed boundary line based on those coordinates. Illinois v. Kentucky , Report of Special Master, Original No. 106 (1994) 6-9. The report identified the maps as "Joint Exhibit Numbers 3-24" and the coordinate points as "Joint Exhibit Numbers 25 and 26." Id. at 8. The report advised that the exhibits accurately reflected the 1792 low-water mark as nearly as it could now be determined and recommended that the Court adopt the exhibits as declarative of the boundary line between Kentucky and Illinois. Id. at 13-14. The Special Master's proposed decree stated that the boundary line between Kentucky and Illinois "is fixed as geodetically described in Joint Exhibits 3 through 26." Id. at 18. Notably, the decree further stated that Kentucky and Illinois "each have concurrent jurisdiction over the Ohio River." Id. at 19. The decree ordered that copies of the decree and copies and prints of Joint Exhibits 3 through 26 be filed with the Secretary of State of Illinois, the Secretary of State of Kentucky, and the county clerk's offices of the Kentucky and Illinois counties along the Ohio River, including Massac and McCracken. Id. In January 1995, the Court adopted the Special Master's report and entered the proposed decree. Illinois v. Kentucky , 513 U.S. 177, 115 S.Ct. 896, 130 L.Ed.2d 680 (1995).
¶ 4 In February 2016, a Massac County grand jury indicted the defendant on two counts of aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol ( 625 ILCS 5/11-501(d)(1)(A), (C) (West 2014)), one count of obstructing justice ( 720 ILCS 5/31-4(a)(1) (West 2014)), one count of unlawful possession of cannabis ( 720 ILCS 550/4(b) (West 2014)), and one count of unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia ( 720 ILCS 600/3.5(a) (West 2014)). In March 2017, the defendant filed his motion to suppress. In December 2017, the cause proceeded to a hearing on the motion, where the following evidence was adduced.
¶ 5 On the afternoon of November 11, 2014, Deputy Jerry Jones and Sergeant David Shepherd of the McCracken County sheriff's department were dispatched to the Brookport Bridge to respond to a reported head-on collision involving a pickup truck and a car. Officers Nick Myrick and Chris Hines of the Brookport, Illinois, police department also responded to the reported collision and assisted the Kentucky officers. Jones and Shepherd were the only witnesses called at the suppression hearing, but the parties stipulated that Myrick would have testified that he and Hines were the first officers to arrive at the scene of the accident.
¶ 6 It was undisputed that the Brookport Bridge is approximately a mile long and that the defendant's accident occurred on the Illinois side of the bridge along a curve "over dry land in Illinois." It was also noted that the curve where the accident occurred was a "bad location" that had been the scene of numerous prior collisions. The record indicates that the defendant is a resident of Kentucky and has prior convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol.
¶ 7 Jones testified that when he arrived at the scene of the accident, he saw the defendant and his female passenger, Katrina Warren, standing by the truck that had been involved in the crash. Jones then observed the defendant throw something off the bridge. Jones asked Myrick and Hines to look under the bridge, and on the dry land below, they discovered a small bag of marijuana, a pipe with marijuana residue, and a pack of rolling papers. Jones took possession of the items and later booked them into evidence.
¶ 8 Jones testified that the car that had collided with the truck sustained "quite a bit of damage" and that its female occupant had to be removed from the vehicle so that she could be transported by ambulance to a local hospital. The record indicates that the ambulance had been dispatched from Kentucky. Jones indicated that Warren had sustained minor injuries and was also taken to a hospital for medical treatment. After the scene of the accident was "cleared," Jones spoke with Warren at the hospital, and she advised him that the defendant had been driving the truck at the time of the collision. Jones testified that Warren also had an observable "seat belt burn" that was consistent with a passenger injury.
¶ 9 Shepherd testified that when he had spoken with the defendant on the bridge, the defendant exhibited slurred speech and was unsteady on his feet. There was also an odor of alcoholic beverage about the defendant's person, and his eyes were red and glassy. Apparently, the defendant claimed that he had not been driving. Shepherd arrested the defendant for possessing the contraband recovered from under the bridge and transported him to the McCracken County jail. Before leaving Illinois, Shepherd read the defendant his Miranda rights ( Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) ) and questioned him about the contraband.
¶ 10 At the McCracken County jail, after Shepherd was advised that Warren had identified the defendant as the driver of the truck, Shepherd cited him for driving under the influence of alcohol and administered a horizontal gaze nystagmus test. Shepherd testified that the defendant had refused to submit to further field sobriety tests and had also refused to submit to chemical testing of his blood, breath, or urine.
¶ 11 It was undisputed that all of the law enforcement officers who responded to the collision on the Brookport Bridge believed that the accident had occurred within Kentucky's jurisdiction. Jones testified that prior to "this case," there had been "an agreement with Illinois to where Kentucky would police every bit of the bridge[,] and Illinois would conduct maintenance on every bit of the bridge." Jones indicated that the agreement as to the policing of the entire bridge had been abandoned after the Kentucky charges against the defendant had been dismissed. Jones acknowledged that he had "never seen a written agreement" and had only been advised of the agreement's existence. The agreement had nevertheless provided "the assumptions" that the officers had previously "operated upon." Jones testified that the Kentucky charges against the defendant had been dismissed on jurisdictional grounds based on "the case law" regarding "the low[-]water mark" of the Ohio River. Jones indicated that there were now signs on the bridge "delineating where that mark is."
¶ 12 Shepherd testified that he had worked for the McCracken County sheriff's department for 21 years and that "up until this case," the curve in the bridge had historically been considered Kentucky's jurisdiction. Shepherd explained that he had personally "worked numerous collisions in that curve," but the McCracken County sheriff's department did not work them anymore.
¶ 13 Following the hearing on the defendant's motion to suppress, the parties submitted memorandums in support of their respective positions regarding the evidence that had been obtained by the Kentucky officers. Referencing sections 107-3 and 107-4 of Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963 ( 725 ILCS 5/107-3, 107-4 (West 2014)), the defendant emphasized that the present case did not involve a "fresh pursuit" situation and that the Kentucky officers had exercised authority that "went well beyond the authority that a private citizen would have in making a citizen[']s arrest." The defendant argued that "[a]ll of the actions of the Kentucky officers were improper, if not illegal."
¶ 14 In response, the State maintained, among other things, that even assuming that the defendant's extraterritorial arrest had resulted in a violation of his constitutional rights, suppression of the evidence obtained by the Kentucky officers was not...
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