People v. Moody

• Decision Date: 24 January 1983
• Docket Number: No. 55444,55444
• Citation: 445 N.E.2d 275,67 Ill.Dec. 795,94 Ill.2d 1
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court
• Parties: , 67 Ill.Dec. 795 The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant, v. Larry MOODY, Appellee.

Page 275

445 N.E.2d 275

94 Ill.2d 1, 67 Ill.Dec. 795

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant, v. Larry MOODY, Appellee.

No. 55444.

Supreme Court of Illinois Jan. 24, 1983.

Tyrone C. Fahner, Atty. Gen., Chicago, and Edward F. Petka, State's Atty., Joliet (John X. Breslin, and Gary F. Gnidovec, State's Attys. Appellate Service Com'n, Ottawa, of counsel), for the People.

Robert Agostinelli, Deputy State Appellate Defender, and Frank W. Ralph, Asst. State Appellate Defender, Ottawa, for appellee.

SIMON, Justice:

Defendant, Larry Moody, was convicted of burglary in the circuit court of Will County and sentenced to a four-year term of probation, which was subsequently revoked. The appellate court determined that he had been arrested without probable cause and reversed the conviction. (97 Ill.App.3d 758, 53 Ill.Dec. 182, 423 N.E.2d 566.) The State appeals this reversal and the accompanying order directing a new trial.

At about 9 p.m. on December 29, 1979, Joliet police officer Robert Briney responded to a report of a burglary at the Collector's Gallery, a store selling coins and guns. He found that someone had broken a plate-glass window at the front of the store, apparently to gain entrance, and had broken a glass display case and taken two shotguns and an M-1 rifle. Officer Briney could not get a description of the burglar and could find no trace of the guns, but he discovered droplets of blood on the glass at the point of entry and on the floor at that point and beneath the display case. He called in to the police communications center with this information and suggested that the center notify hospitals in the area in case anyone appeared to have cuts treated. Some 20 minutes after he did this he and a companion officer found the three guns inside an orange pickup truck behind a building three doors from the Collector's Gallery. Thomas Pennington, the owner of the Collector's Gallery, identified the guns as the ones taken. The truck in which they were found belonged to neither Pennington nor the defendant.

Around 9:30 p.m. Sergeant Clifford Erwin, also of the Joliet police, received a radio dispatch which informed him that a subject had just checked into Silver Cross Hospital for treatment of a laceration, and that blood had been found at the scene of a burglary at the Collector's Gallery some time earlier. The hospital was approximately 2 1/2 miles from the Collector's Gallery, and the defendant had checked into it at about 9:30. On arriving at the hospital, Officer Erwin found defendant lying on a hospital cart awaiting treatment for a deep cut in his leg which was still bleeding and seemed to be causing him pain. Moody was wearing only a hospital gown, as the hospital staff had removed his clothes. Officer Erwin asked him where he worked, and Moody replied that he worked for Joliet Paint and Glass Company. Officer Erwin had already been informed by another officer that Moody had stated that the leg wound had been inflicted a short while earlier by several men who had assaulted him as he was leaving a tavern which was located three doors from the Collector's Gallery.

Officer Erwin then gave Moody his Miranda rights and questioned him about the burglary. Moody stated that he understood his rights and admitted that he had been in the store two days earlier looking at guns, but denied knowledge of or involvement in the burglary. Instead of questioning Moody further, Erwin telephoned Officer Briney, who was still at the Collector's Gallery. Briney informed him about finding the guns in a truck parked in an alley between the gun store and the tavern behind which Moody had said he had been assaulted. Erwin then spoke over the telephone with Thomas Pennington, who told him that Moody had been in his store two days earlier and had examined an M-1 rifle on that occasion.

After Erwin had finished his telephone conversation, Moody called him over to his cart and mentioned that he knew the store in question and was a friend of the owner. Moody also volunteered that he had handled six or seven guns the day he was in the store. At this time a police detective who was in the room with Erwin and Moody picked up one of Moody's combat boots and showed Erwin what appeared to be particles of glass in the sole. Erwin asked Moody if he would allow the police to take a blood sample from him, and Moody answered "no."

Erwin then asked if Moody would come to the police station with him for fingerprinting and photographing after he or one of his fellow officers procured clothes for him to replace his own, which the police would take. Moody's response to this is unclear from the record; his own testimony was that he did not consent, while Erwin testified that he agreed to go to the station. Erwin nonetheless told two of his fellow officers to take various articles of Moody's clothing and instructed one of the officers to bring Moody to the police station after he was finished with his hospital treatment, take his photograph and fingerprints, and let him go afterwards rather than arresting him. The record does not disclose whether Moody heard Erwin's admonition not to arrest him. Erwin testified at the suppression hearing that the reason for this admonition was that he did not believe at that time that there existed probable cause to arrest him.

Erwin's instructions were followed, and Moody was not formally arrested until three weeks later, after his fingerprints were matched with prints found inside the display case at the Collector's Gallery. Moody made a pretrial motion to quash the arrest and suppress the physical evidence gathered from his person and his clothes on the night of December 29. He argued that the circumstances under which he went to the police station on that evening were such that he did not consider himself free to refuse to go, and that there was no warrant for his arrest at that time and no probable cause for an arrest. The circuit court agreed that an "arrest" had occurred that night, but denied the motion on the ground that probable cause existed.

In this appeal the State argues alternatively that no "arrest" occurred on December 29 and that probable cause to support an arrest existed on that night. We do not reach the former issue as we agree that there was probable cause to arrest Moody on the night of December 29.

Moody takes the position, and the appellate court held, that the objective evidence within the knowledge of the officers on December 29 did not establish grounds for a reasonable belief that he had committed the burglary at the Collector's Gallery. He argues that at the time they took Moody to the police station for photographing and fingerprinting the officers knew only that there had been a burglary, that entry was gained through a broken glass window and blood was found in the store, that guns were taken which were later found nearby in a truck which did not belong to Moody, that Moody knew the owner of the store and had examined one of the guns taken two days before the burglary, that the place where he claimed to have cut his leg was near the gun store, and that Moody was being treated for a deep cut in his leg at a hospital several miles from the store shortly after the burglary occurred. A sufficient time elapsed after the break-in occurred to have permitted him to travel from the Collector's Gallery to the hospital. This information, he argues, was not a sufficient foundation either individually or collectively for a reasonable belief that Moody was the burglar. Moody also points out that Sergeant Erwin knew him before the burglary and that he did not believe that he had probable cause to make an arrest on December 29. He cites People v. Miller (1972), 7 Cal.3d 219, 496 P.2d 1228, 101 Cal.Rptr. 860, for the proposition that under these circumstances the arresting officer's subjective beliefs must control even though as an objective matter he could have found probable cause.

We address Moody's initial argument first. Probable cause exists in the objective sense if " ' * * * the facts and circumstances within the arresting officer's knowledge are sufficient to warrant a man of reasonable caution in believing that an offense has been committed and that the person arrested has committed the offense.' " (People v. Creach (1980), 79 Ill.2d 96, 101, 37 Ill.Dec. 338, 402 N.E.2d 228; quoting People v. Robinson (1976), 62 Ill.2d 273, 276, 342 N.E.2d 356; see Dunaway v. New York (1979), 442 U.S. 200, 208 n. 9, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 2254 n. 9, 60 L.Ed.2d 824, 833 n. 9; Brinegar v. United States (1949), 338 U.S. 160, 175-76, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1310-11, 93 L.Ed. 1879, 1890; Carroll v. United States (1925), 267 U.S. 132, 162, 45 S.Ct. 280, 288, 69 L.Ed. 543, 555.) This standard requires more than mere suspicion, but it does not require the arresting officers to have in their hands evidence sufficient to convict the defendant. The courts, in striking a balance between the need to protect citizens from invasions of their privacy at the whim of police officers and the countervailing need to allow leeway for efficient enforcement of the laws, are sensitive to the fact that policemen must often make their...