IL: Exclusionary rule does not apply to liquor license disciplinary proceeding arising from admin search

Petitioner had a liquor license in Chicago, and an inspection occurred under authority of state law and city ordinance. The permitted premises was the first floor, but he owned accessible property in the floors above. Upstairs, the officers found a bullet, and that led them to ask about other firearms. State law allowed no firearms in permitted premises. He argued that the search of the upstairs violated the terms of the search provision for highly regulated industries. He was also charged with crimes for the firearms upstairs. He succeeded in suppressing the evidence upstairs in his criminal case, but not in the administrative proceeding. The hearing officer said he didn’t have the authority to consider that, but the Circuit Court did, and it refused to suppress in the license disciplinary proceeding. The purpose of the exclusionary rule was served by excluding in the criminal case. The exclusionary rule doesn’t apply in administrative searches. Trying to avoid that rule, the petitioner also argued that the search was an “egregious” violation of the Fourth Amendment, but the court didn’t find it so. Essentially, the searching officers complied with state law in good faith. 59th & State St. Corp. v. Emanuel, 2016 IL App (1st) 153098, 2016 Ill. App. LEXIS 881 (Dec. 23, 2016):

In addition, the “deterrence rationale loses much of its force” when, as in this case, the actions of the police in conducting a warrantless search was objectively reasonable based on a good-faith reliance upon the then existing ordinance. Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 238, (2011); Illinois v. Krull, 480 U.S. 340, 349-53 (1987). At the time of the search of the plaintiff’s premises, the municipal ordinance and the State statute authorizing the warrantless search of a licensed premise had not been declared unconstitutional and were, therefore, entitled to a presumption of validity. As for the scope of the search, the evidence established that the stairway leading to the second floor was easily accessed from the first floor and documents relating to the operation of the first-floor store were found in the second-floor office as was a safe adapted to transmit money to, and from, the cash register area on the first floor. We conclude, therefore, that the officers could have reasonably believed that the second floor of the plaintiff’s premises was subject to a warrantless search. See Daley v. El Flanboyan Corporation, 321 Ill. App. 3d 68, 73-74 (2001). We find nothing in the record before us to support an inference that the warrantless search of the plaintiff’s premises was based upon anything other than a good faith reliance upon section 4-4-290 of the Code and section 4-4(2) of the Liquor Control Act.

On the cost side of the balance is the obvious effect that application of the exclusionary rule would have on the truth-seeking function of the LLCC in this case. On the date that the plaintiff’s premises was searched, the possession of firearms in a place licensed to sell intoxicating beverages was a violation of both section 24-1(a)(8) of the Criminal Code of 1961 (720 ILCS 5/24-1(a)(8) (West 2010)) and section 4-60-141(a) of the Code (Chicago Municipal Code § 4-60-141(a) (added May 17, 1995)). Application of the exclusionary rule would have prohibited the LLCC from considering evidence of illegal activity and hampered the City’s efforts to protect the public from the dangers attendant to the existence of guns in, or about, an establishment where liquor is sold.

Balancing the diminished deterrence that application of the exclusionary rule in this case would have had on future police misconduct against the significant social costs that exclusion of the evidence obtained by the search of the plaintiff’s premises would have had on the City’s efforts to protect the public from the obvious danger of mixing firearms and liquor, we agree with the circuit court’s conclusion that the exclusionary rule should not have been applied in the instant case.