IL explains Gant does not protect where no “standing”

Defendant hid his fake IDs in his girlfriend’s purse, which were found during a search incident of her purse after defendant’s arrest in his car. “This case presents the issue of whether an arrested occupant of a vehicle has a fourth amendment right to suppress the contents of a container that was searched without a warrant and without consent after a nonarrested occupant of the vehicle removed the container from the passenger compartment during the traffic stop. The State argues that Officer Bird’s search of Rivera’s purse was lawful as incident to defendant’s arrest.” While the SI of her purse violated Gant, this is a near replica of Rawlings, and defendant had no standing to challenge that search. People v. Frias, 912 N.E.2d 1236 (Ill. App. 2009):

Our consideration of the factors leads us to conclude that defendant lacked a legitimate expectation of privacy in the purse. Defendant presented no evidence that he had any ownership or possessory interest in the purse. Rivera testified that she owned the purse and that only she held it. Rivera held the purse on her lap while she was seated in the car, and when the officer motioned for her to exit the vehicle, she placed the purse on her right shoulder. Likewise, no evidence was adduced that defendant had ever used the purse in the past.

The trial court inferred that defendant had an expectation of privacy in Rivera’s purse because he entrusted his personal items to her, as his girlfriend, to keep in the purse. While the record shows that defendant was Rivera’s boyfriend and that they were residing together, the record does not show that defendant gave Rivera the social security cards with the understanding that she would conceal them in her purse. The trial court found that defendant could reasonably expect that Rivera would prevent the public from having access to her purse, but nothing in the record supports the inference that defendant intended or had the ability to control Rivera’s disclosure of the contents of the purse. Furthermore, defendant presented no evidence of his subjective expectation of privacy even though he could have so testified at the suppression hearing without the fear that his testimony would later be used to convict him. See Rosenberg, 213 Ill. 2d at 79.

The only fact tending to establish defendant’s legitimate expectation of privacy in the purse was his relationship with the purse’s owner. The trial court relied on their intimate boyfriend-girlfriend relationship to distinguish this case from Rawlings. In Rawlings, the defendant challenged the search of an acquaintance’s purse in which he had previously placed contraband. The court held that he did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the purse, because he had known the acquaintance for only a few days; he had never sought or received access to the purse; and he had no right to exclude other persons from access to the purse. Rawlings, 448 U.S. at 104, 65 L. Ed. 2d at 641, 100 S. Ct. at 2561. Although there is no evidence in the record regarding the length of time defendant and Rivera had known each other, their relationship admittedly appears to be more intimate than the one in Rawlings. But the nature of their relationship, standing alone, does not automatically grant defendant a legitimate expectation of privacy in Rivera’s personal belongings. We conclude that, in the absence of a legitimate expectation of privacy in Rivera’s purse, defendant is not entitled to a suppression of its contents. Therefore, the trial court’s suppression of the allegedly fraudulent social security cards must be reversed.