IL: Entry to make alleged arrest was without PC or exigency and suppressed

The officers were acting on the complaint of an alderman, and they had no probable cause that an offense occurred when they barged into defendant’s home with a person in tow who stayed there some. They didn’t ask for consent, and they were wearing masks and no markings on their clothing. The entry was without consent or probable cause, and is suppressed. At best, they were acting on some hunch, and they don’t even attempt to support the entry on appeal except by consent, which was rejected by the trial court. People v. Dawn, 2013 IL App (2d) 120025, 992 N.E.2d 1277 (2013):

[*P23] The State contends that the requirement of both exigent circumstances and probable cause is limited to when the police enter the home in order to effect an arrest. Not only does the State cite no pertinent authority for this limitation, and fail to address the aforementioned authority to the contrary, but it ignores the Supreme Court’s clear instruction otherwise. Rejecting the proposition that “an entry to search for property” should be recognized as less intrusive than “an entry to search for a person” (Payton, 445 U.S. at 589), the Court explained, “[T]he critical point is that any differences in the intrusiveness of entries to search and entries to arrest are merely ones of degree rather than kind. *** In terms that apply equally to seizures of property and to seizures of persons, the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house” (id. at 589-90).

[*P24] The importance long accorded the privacy of the home would mean little if a warrantless entry could be justified solely by the “possibility” of finding evidence of a crime where the police can only guess as to what actually happened. As the preceding authority holds, the fourth amendment does not make entry into the home so easy. Since the State does not even argue that the police had probable cause, we shall not make the State’s case for it. In any event, the most we can say is that Berke, Rossow, and Veruchi had a hunch that defendant had been involved in the suspected drug dealing mentioned in the alderman’s nonspecific, secondhand complaint. A mere hunch is not probable cause. People v. Ortiz, 355 Ill. App. 3d 1056, 1064, 823 N.E.2d 1171, 291 Ill. Dec. 585 (2005). And if the officers lacked probable cause to believe that defendant had drugs, then they could only speculate that he was about to destroy them. Thus, the State’s exigent-circumstances argument fails.

[*P25] We wish to emphasize that, at the trial level, the State did not raise officer safety as a basis to find exigent circumstances, and the State does not advance the argument in this court either. In any event, the evidence would not support any assertion that the officers’ entry into the basement was proper under the exigent-circumstances rule because defendant threatened their safety. See People v. Condon, 148 Ill. 2d 96, 103, 592 N.E.2d 951, 170 Ill. Dec. 271 (1992); People v. Morgan, 388 Ill. App. 3d 252, 269, 901 N.E.2d 1049, 327 Ill. Dec. 316 (2009) (both noting that threat to officer safety might create exigent circumstances).

[*P26] The officers did not testify that they entered the basement because they feared that defendant had a weapon or otherwise threatened them. Rossow did testify that, after he entered the basement, he became concerned for his safety, but his testimony did not explain the basis for his concern. There was no evidence that defendant was armed at the time or that, even if a weapon had been in the basement, the officers could reasonably have assumed that he would have used it. See Condon, 148 Ill. 2d at 105-06 (existence of weapon, by itself, did not create exigent circumstances allowing police executing search warrant to dispense with knock-and-announce requirement); Morgan, 388 Ill. App. 3d at 271 (exigent circumstances did not exist merely because defendant, upon seeing police officers at front of home, turned around and ran up flight of stairs).

[*P27] We turn to the primary issue on appeal: whether the trial court erred in holding that Quanda’s consent validated the entry of Berke, Rossow, and Veruchi into the basement of her home. Again, we note that we must accept the trial court’s factual findings unless they are against the manifest weight of the evidence. Johnson, 237 Ill. 2d at 88. We accept the trial court’s factual findings insofar as they are material to this appeal.