Kane County Nuggets

People v. Gempel, 2016 IL App (3d) 140833 (January). Episode 161 (Duration 5:55)

This murder confession is suppressed in large part because of the premature arrest and the police's fragrant disregard of the Defendant's Miranda rights. 

The victim's body was discovered in her burning house. She was badly burned but it was clear she had deep stab wounds.

Police began by interviewing her neighbors. Defendant was a neighbor.

Police noticed he had scratches on his face and arms and they learned he had owed the victim money.

He came in to make a voluntary statement. They arrested him, even though, they had not identified any eyewitnesses, did not have a description of the possible offender, and had not obtained a warrant to arrest the defendant.

The police did know that the defendant had trouble sleeping following the victim's death, paced more often, and missed work.

Two days later he made a full confession.

The motion to suppress the later confession was granted. The attenuation hearing was denied.

A confession after a false arrest are admissible if:

(1) the flagrancy of police misconduct;
(2) whether there were intervening circumstances
(3) the proximity of time between defendant's arrest and statement; and 
(4) whether Miranda warnings were given to the defendant.

Here, the police conduct in this case became flagrant when they ignored Defendant's request for an attorney.

Providing food and water, cigarettes, and access to the restroom does not cure these glaring violations.

Evidence tending to show that the defendant committed the crime can be an intervening circumstance in one of two ways:

(1) where a defendant is confronted with newly acquired evidence, that evidence may cause him to confess; or 
(2) new evidence may provide the probable cause that was previously not present.

However, here the preliminary results from the DNA analysis revealed the presence of unidentified male and female DNA underneath the victim's fingernails. It did not provide a match to Defendant.

Accordingly, no intervening circumstance weighs against attenuation.

In present case, the defendant had been detained nearly 37 hours when he made his statements to the police. This prolonged detention may well have aggravated the taint of the defendant's illegal arrest and compelled him to make his statement.

In the instant case, there is no dispute police gave the defendant Miranda warnings on several occasions…but here the detectives' continuous disregard for the defendant's Miranda rights demonstrated that the warnings were used as a coercive interrogation deviceto obtain statements from the defendant.

Therefore, this factor weighed against finding attenuation. All four factors in attenuation favor the defendant.

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People v. Tayborn, 2016 IL App (3d) 130594 (March). Episode 159 (Duration 4:42)

Trial counsel was ineffective for not challenging defendant's confession given without Miranda warnings.

After cocaine is found in a car, defendant who was a passenger, is allowed to see the cocaine on the hood of the car.

When the police ask him if he knew about it he tells them yes and that he was taking it to Iowa.

Dugh!

No Miranda was given.

An interrogation is any practice that police should know is reasonably likely to evoke an incriminating response from a suspect.

A custodial interrogation takes place when police initiate questioning of a person who has been taken into custody or deprived of his freedom of movement in any significant way.

Defendant was already handcuffed when this happened.

Although, he may not have been formally arrested at that point because it was the driver who was acting funny and under scrutiny, the safeguards prescribed by Miranda will become applicable during a traffic stop as soon as a suspect's freedom of action is curtailed to the same degree as a formal arrest.

The failure of defendant's trial counsel to file a motion to suppress defendant's statement to police constituted deficient performance that prejudiced the defendant because the motion would have been granted and there is a reasonable probability that outcome of the trial would have been different had defendant's statement been suppressed.

There are also good citations in here on traffic cases that turned into full custodial detentions.

People v. Little, 2016 IL App (3d) 140124 (March). Episode 158 (Duration 8:10)

Cigarette break is not a sufficient amount of time to remove the taint of the original unrecorded interrogation violation.

Defendant arrested with the murder weapon used to shoot and kill a store clerk.

He is questioned about the gun without Miranda and without the interview being recorded.

He says he was present when the store clerk was shot, but that he was not the shooter. Eventually, he makes a recorded statement after Miranda, but the trial judge only suppress the initial statement.

He is convicted of the murder.

725 ILCS 5/103-2.1(b) requires strict compliance with the recording of murder interrogations.

This law specifically says that:

An oral, written, or sign language statement of an accused made as a result of a custodial interrogation conducted at a police station or other place of detention shall be presumed to be inadmissible as evidence against the accused in any criminal proceeding brought under [the murder sections of the code] unless:

(1) an electronic recording is made of the custodial
interrogation; and
(2) the recording is substantially accurate and not intentionally altered.

The subjective beliefs of the detectives regarding the declarant’s status as a witness or a murder suspect at the time of the unrecorded custodial interrogation is irrelevant and not determinative of the statement’s presumed inadmissibility where the detectives have not strictly complied with the videotaping requirements.

However, the recorded segment of the interrogation followed the unrecorded segment of the custodial interrogation and therefore, is presumed inadmissible.

The trial court erred by failing to recognize the second portion of the custodial interrogation in this case was presumptively inadmissible, as a matter of law, because the detectives did not record the preceding segment of the interrogation as required by section 103-2.1(b) of the Code.

…and a cigarette break is not a sufficient amount of time to remove the taint of the original Miranda violation.

Murder conviction was reversed.

The detectives’ decision not to record the first segment of the custodial interrogation had significant negative consequences on the prosecutor’s ability to introduce compelling evidence of guilt at trial; specifically, defendant’s own incriminating admissions to felony murder.

Lower down in the code, Section 103-2.1(d) of the Code provides:

“If the court finds, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant was subjected to a custodial interrogation in violation of this Section, then any statements made by the defendant during or following that nonrecorded custodial interrogation, even if otherwise in compliance with this Section, are presumed to be inadmissible in any criminal proceeding against the defendant except for the purposes of impeachment.”  725 ILCS 5/103-2.1(d).

So, regardless of the fact that the subsequent statements were recorded.

All the statements are out, unless an attenuation hearing cures the presumption of inadmissibility.

Here, defendant was allowed to smoke a cigarette before the recorder was turned on, but that ain't enough to blow away the stink of this bad interrogation.

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People v. Carter, 2016 IL App (3d) 140958 (March). Episode 157 (Duration 4:44)

The discovery of this gun exceeded the scope of the search warrant, thus it was suppressed.

Here, the police had a search warrant for the search of a duplex.

It was specifically citing the search for drugs. Drugs are found in the unit of the non-target. After that person is arrested he tells police that Defendant has a gun in his couch. However, the search of defendant's unit had already ended and the officers left the unit.

They came back a few minutes later without a new warrant.

…and found the gun in the couch.

Defendant argued that the execution of the search warrant had concluded and the officers made an illegal reentry and conducted an illegal search for an item not specified in the search warrant.

The rule is that a warrant is executed when a search is conducted, and its legal validity expires upon execution, so that after execution, no additional search can be undertaken on the same warrant.

Reentry would therefore require some other legally sound justification or a new warrant.

The State argues such justification is found in the doctrine of inevitable discovery. However, nothing in record can be used to suggest that this gun would have been found.

Further, the State's assertion that discovery of the gun was inevitable because the police were capable of acquiring a second warrant is not persuasive and also flies in the face of the purpose of obtaining a warrant.

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People v. Bradford, 2016 IL 118674 (March). Episode 155 (Duration 7:52)

Ordinary retail theft is not a burglary.

Section 19-1(a) of the Criminal Code provides, in part, that...

“[a] person commits burglary when without authority he or she knowingly enters or without authority remains within a building, *** or any part thereof, with intent to commit therein a felony or theft.” 720 ILCS 5/19-1(a).

Thus, under the statute, there are two ways to commit the crime of burglary: (1) by entering without authority and with the intent to commit a felony or theft, or (2) by remaining without authority and with the intent to commit a felony or theft. 

Defendant was charged under the second option of "remaining without authority".

He entered a Walmart and walked around stealing things. He never really did any "shopping."

He was found guilty of burglary under the theory that even if he walked into the store as a guest. Once he remained within there with an intent to steal he was “without authority.”

Any authority defendant may have had to remain in the store was implicitly withdrawn once he formed the intent to steal from Walmart.

Defendant's main beef is that all he did was commit a misdemenar class A retail theft. He contended that the State was misconstruing the burglary statute.

Indeed, the Illinois Supreme Court said Defendant's interpretation of the burglary statute was correct.

A person can only be guilt of burglary "remaining without authority with intent..." if the person lawfully enters a public building and then commits theft AND exceeds the physical scope of his authority.

In other words, burglary by remaining requires evidence that a defendant, with the intent to commit a felony or theft, is found in a place where the public is not authorized to be.

This section is not intended to apply to ordinary shoplifting scenarios.

Rather, it refers to situations in which a person lawfully enters a place of business, but, in order to commit a theft or felony:

(1) hides and waits for the building to close

(2) enters an unauthorized area within the building; or

(3) continues to remain on the premises after being asked to leave.

However, if the state can prove that a person enters with the intent to steal then a burglary under the first section can still be sustained because it is presumed that that a shopkeeper did not grant permission for someone to enter just to steal.

People v. Burns, 2016 IL 118973 (March). Episode 154 (Duration 4:58)

The “no-nights visits” rule is affirmed, can't bring the sniffer dog to your front step for a little sniff action. 

After receiving a tip that Defendant is selling wee from her apartment, the police bring a dog to her apartment door.

The dog alerts to the presence of contraband. The police then go get a warrant.

Which begs the question: does the warrantless use of a drug-detection dog at an apartment door, located within a locked apartment building, in the middle of the night, violate defendant’s fourth amendment rights?

The elephant in the room here is Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. ___, 133 S. Ct. 1409 (2013).

The State argued that the officers conducted a dog sniff on the landing outside of defendant’s apartment door and that the landing was not part of the defendant’s cartilage under the “property-based” analysis announced in Jardines.

Defendant counters that under Jardines, a search warrant is required to conduct a dog-sniff search at the entrance to a home. Indeed, the problem in Jardines, according to Scalia, was that the cops intruded physically on defendant's property in order to conduct a search.

However, the Illinois Supreme Court was not persuaded by this argument.

All the relevant factors pointed to the conclusion that this apartment stoop was part of the cartilage of Defendant's home.

These factors being: (1) “the proximity of the area claimed to be cartilage to the home”; (2) “whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home”; (3) “the nature of the uses to which the area is put”; and (4) “the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by.” Dunn, 480 U.S. at 301.

This intrusion onto her locked front stoop at 3:20 am was unconstitutional.