People v. Lindsey
| Citation | 450 Ill.Dec. 1,2020 IL 124289,181 N.E.3d 1 |
| Decision Date | 16 April 2020 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 124289 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant, v. Jonathan LINDSEY, Appellee. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
Kwame Raoul, Attorney General, of Springfield (Jane Elinor Notz, Solicitor General, and Michael M. Glick and Eldad Z. Malamuth, Assistant Attorneys General, of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.
James E. Chadd, State Appellate Defender, Peter A. Carusona, Deputy Defender, and Editha Rosario-Moore, Assistant Appellate Defender, of the Office of the State Appellate Defender, of Ottawa, for appellee.
¶ 1 The central issue in this case is whether a warrantless dog sniff outside the door of the motel room where defendant Jonathan Lindsey was staying violated the fourth amendment. The Rock Island County circuit court decided that it did not and denied the defendant's motion to suppress evidence. The defendant was convicted of unlawful possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance within 1000 feet of a school (see 720 ILCS 570/407(b)(1) (West 2014)) and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. The appellate court reversed and remanded, holding that the trial court should have granted the defendant's suppression motion. 2018 IL App (3d) 150877, 427 Ill.Dec. 522, 118 N.E.3d 723. For the reasons that follow, we reverse the judgment of the appellate court and affirm the judgment of the trial court.
¶ 3 Rock Island police officer Timothy Muehler received information from a confidential informant that the defendant was selling narcotics from a room at a local motel. A background check revealed that the defendant had an extensive criminal record, including two 2012 arrests for the manufacture and delivery of controlled substances. Another officer then contacted the defendant. The defendant stated that he had narcotics for sale and agreed to meet the officer. At the meeting, the officer and the defendant discussed drugs, but no deal occurred.
¶ 4 On April 27, 2014, Officer Muehler surveilled the motel and observed the defendant drive away from the parking lot. Muehler knew that the defendant had a suspended driver's license, so he followed the defendant's vehicle and called dispatch for help. Officer Jacob Waddle eventually stopped the defendant. He was arrested for driving with a suspended license (see 625 ILCS 5/6-303 (West 2014) ) and transported to the Rock Island Police Department, where he signed a waiver of rights form. According to Officer Muehler, the defendant stated that he was staying in Room 129 at the motel. Another officer went there and spoke to the motel's staff, who advised that the defendant was staying in Room 130. Deputy Jason Pena of the Rock Island County Sheriff's Department and his K-9 partner Rio then went to the motel. Rio conducted a "free air sniff" outside Room 130 and alerted to the odor of narcotics. Officer Muehler submitted an affidavit outlining the investigation to a trial judge, who issued a search warrant. Inside the room, police found 4.7 grams of heroin in a dresser drawer, along with related items—a digital scale, scissors, corner-cut plastic bags, and sandwich-sized plastic bags. The defendant later admitted that the heroin was his, and he was charged with unlawful possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance within 1000 feet of a school.
¶ 5 The defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence, arguing that the dog sniff violated the fourth amendment. The trial court held a hearing on the motion. The State called Sergeant Shawn Slavish of the Rock Island Police Department as its first witness. Sergeant Slavish testified that he participated in the investigation and learned the defendant was staying in Room 130 of the American Motor Inn. According to Slavish, the motel "is shaped in a U or a horseshoe shape with another building that sits at the entrance forming kind of a block there." The door to Room 130 is "set back in a little alcove[,] and as you stepped into the alcove to the right was Room 130." Slavish added that the alcove itself had a door, but the area was "open to the public, the door was propped open" on April 27.
¶ 6 Deputy Pena also testified the area was open to the public that day. There were no locked doors that prevented access to the door of Room 130. On the day of the dog sniff, Pena directed Rio to perform a free air sniff along the side of the motel. Once Rio reached "the general area" outside Room 130, he changed his behavior, sitting and lying down, which signaled an alert to the odor of narcotics. On cross-examination by defense counsel, Deputy Pena clarified that Rio "was approximately at the door handle and the door seam" and "within inches of the door" when he alerted. The State presented no further evidence.
¶ 7 The defendant called a single witness, Kylinn Ellis. Ellis testified that she was the mother of the defendant's son. On April 27, she "came down to see him" after work. At some point that afternoon, the defendant was driving Ellis's car with her in the passenger seat, when he was stopped by police and arrested. The car was impounded, and she walked back to the motel. As she approached the defendant's room, she noticed that "the curtains were moving, and you can like see somebody" inside the room. On cross-examination by the State, Ellis clarified that she did not see a person inside the room.
¶ 8 The trial court denied the defendant's motion. The trial court relied upon United States v. Roby , 122 F.3d 1120, 1125 (8th Cir. 1997), where a federal circuit court of appeals held that a hotel guest may have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his room but not in the corridor outside, so a warrantless dog sniff in that corridor did not violate the fourth amendment. The court concluded, "the motel room corridor is a public place of accommodation, and, as such, [police] have the right to walk that dog down there." Following a stipulated bench trial, the defendant was convicted and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and three years' mandatory supervised release. He appealed.
¶ 9 A divided appellate court panel reversed and remanded. 2018 IL App (3d) 150877, 427 Ill.Dec. 522, 118 N.E.3d 723. The appellate court majority rejected Roby and relied instead upon United States v. Whitaker , 820 F.3d 849, 853-54 (7th Cir. 2016), where another federal circuit court of appeals held that an apartment resident may have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the hallway outside his door, so a warrantless dog sniff in that hallway violated the fourth amendment. 2018 IL App (3d) 150877, ¶¶ 23-24, 427 Ill.Dec. 522, 118 N.E.3d 723. The majority explained that the defendant "had a justifiable expectation of privacy because, until Pena focused the free air sniff on the motel door and seams to detect the odor of drugs inside [his] motel room, the smell was undetectable outside of the room." Id. ¶ 24.
¶ 10 Having concluded that the warrantless dog sniff violated the fourth amendment, the appellate court majority shifted its attention to the exclusionary rule. The majority held that case law at the time was "quite sufficient to have apprised a reasonably well-trained officer that the execution of the Pena dog sniff without a warrant" was unconstitutional. Id. ¶ 36. The majority determined that the police lacked an objectively reasonable good-faith belief that their conduct was lawful, so the heroin ultimately recovered inside the defendant's room should have been suppressed. Id. ¶ 37.1
¶ 11 Justice Schmidt dissented. He observed that, while some courts have determined that dog sniffs of house and apartment doors constitute fourth amendment searches, those cases have not been extended to hotel room doors "because a hotel tenant possesses a reduced expectation of privacy." Id. ¶ 51 (Schmidt, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (citing, inter alia , Roby , 122 F.3d 1120 ). He added, "Even assuming that the majority correctly determined that the dog sniff in this case violated the fourth amendment (it did not), the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies." Id. ¶ 50.
¶ 12 This court allowed the State's petition for leave to appeal. Ill. S. Ct. R. 315(a) (eff. July 1, 2018).
¶ 14 Here, we must determine whether the appellate court erred in reversing the trial court's denial of the defendant's motion to suppress evidence. In reviewing a ruling on a suppression motion, we apply the familiar two-part standard of review announced by the United States Supreme Court in Ornelas v. United States , 517 U.S. 690, 699, 116 S.Ct. 1657, 134 L.Ed.2d 911 (1996). See People v. Luedemann , 222 Ill. 2d 530, 542-43, 306 Ill.Dec. 94, 857 N.E.2d 187 (2006). Under that standard, we give deference to the factual findings of the trial court, and we will reject those findings only if they are against the manifest weight of the evidence. Id. We remain free, however, to decide the legal effect of those facts, and we review de novo the trial court's ultimate ruling on the motion. Id.
¶ 15 The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution provides:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." U.S. Const., amend. IV.
The Illinois Constitution of 1970 provides:
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...(5) ability to control or exclude others’ use of the property, and (6) a subjective expectation of privacy in the property. People v. Lindsey , 2020 IL 124289, ¶ 42, 450 Ill.Dec. 1, 181 N.E.3d 1 ; Rosenberg , 213 Ill. 2d at 78, 289 Ill.Dec. 664, 820 N.E.2d 440. Whether one has a legitimate ......
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