Eighteen days after a murder, the police allegedly formed PC for defendant’s arrest for murder, and they went to his house shortly thereafter to arrest him. A defense witness was found credible that the police knocked, she opened the door, and police barged past her without consent to go upstairs for “safety purposes” and they looked for defendant and seized a gun. After a consent to search was signed, they found another gun. The trial court, however, found her testimony irrelevant to what happened upstairs since she saw nothing. The Illinois Court of Appeals reversed because there was no exigency to dispense with a warrant, despite the recent formation of PC to arrest. People v. Shanklin, 367 Ill. App. 3d 569, 305 Ill. Dec. 293, 855 N.E.2d 184 (2d Dist. September 5, 2006, released for publication October 19, 2006):
The trial court believed Ruby Evans–the entry into the Evans’ home was nonconsensual. The police did not have an arrest or search warrant when they entered the house uninvited and walked up the stairs to the defendant’s bedroom. Those findings by the trial court are not against the manifest weight of the evidence. The remaining issue is whether exigent circumstances justified the arrest and seizure.
The defendant’s right to be free from governmental intrusion into his own home is “at the very core of the fourth amendment.” Payton, 445 U.S. at 589-90. To justify a warrantless entry, the circumstances must “militate against delay and justify the officers’ decision to proceed without a warrant.” Abney, 81 Ill. 2d at 168-69. We do not see those circumstances in this record.
The murder occurred on December 20, 2001. Police officers interviewed Candice Hibbler at about 9 a.m. on Monday, January 7, 2002. That interview apparently established probable cause to arrest the defendant. Police officers arrived at the Evans’ home at 10:30 a.m. or 11 a.m. They made no attempt to obtain an arrest or search warrant.
Detective Claeson, the only police officer who testified at the suppression hearing, did not attempt to explain the failure to obtain a warrant. Certainly, several judges were available to the officers on a Monday morning in Chicago. Nor did Claeson testify he had any reason to believe the defendant posed a danger to the arresting officers. There was no evidence the defendant had been seen with a weapon during the seventeen days since the shooting. The offense had not been recently committed. See Abney, 81 Ill. 2d at 159. And there was no evidence the defendant would escape if he were not swiftly apprehended. See People v. Yates, 98 Ill. 2d 502, 515, 456 N.E.2d 1369, 75 Ill. Dec. 188 (1983). That is, “the passage of time between the commission of the offense and the arrest has a significant bearing on claims of exigency.” White, 117 Ill. 2d at 217.
In White, 117 Ill. 2d at 218, our supreme court held the lapse of nearly two weeks between the commission of the crime and the discovery of the suspect’s whereabouts rendered it “extremely unlikely that an additional several hours of delay to obtain a warrant would have enabled the defendant to escape or permitted him to commit another serious crime.” In Abney, 81 Ill. 2d at 170, the court noted that the lapse of time between commission of the crime and the discovery of the suspect’s whereabouts would make it much less likely that any additional “delay to obtain a warrant would have impeded a promising police investigation and conceivably provided the added time ***needed to avoid capture altogether.”
We are dealing with a “basic principle of Fourth Amendment law that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable.” Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 559 (2004), quoting Payton, 445 U.S. at 586. To rebut that presumption we must find “the exigencies of the situation make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393-94 (1978). We see no such exigencies in this record. The State fails to offer any good reason why an arrest warrant was not obtained in this case. If the facts of this case are enough to authorize a nonconsensual entry and arrest in a private home, the “basic principle of Fourth Amendment law” referred to by the Supreme Court has little meaning. Not much would be left of the warrant requirement.
We find the trial court erred when it denied the defendant’s motion to suppress the gun.
Running “wants or warrants” on a traffic detainee is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. People v. Roberson, 2006 Ill. App. LEXIS 802 (4th Dist. August 23, 2006).
Consent at the hospital for a blood draw when an officer smelled alcohol on defendant’s breath after an accident which killed another was valid. Defendant was Mirandized before consent was sought. Manslaughter conviction affirmed. Sumrall v. State, 2006 Miss. App. LEXIS 404 (September 5, 2006).
Furtive gestures from a known drug dealer stopped for speeding justified getting defendant out of the car during the stop. State v. Stone, 634 S.E.2d 244 (N.C. App. September 5, 2006).*
Evidence supported trial court’s findings that defendant’s female roommate consented to search of the premises where evidence was found linking defendant to a rape. State v. Dock, 2006 N.C. App. LEXIS 1923 (September 5, 2006).*
Trial court’s finding that officer could see defendant’s expired inspection sticker justified stop. Defendant’s quibbling over the “conclusory” nature of the officer’s testimony was a matter for the trial court and the appellate court must defer to the factual findings. Alternatively, defendant consented to a search of the car, and the officer had probable cause already. Myers v. State, 203 S.W.3d 873 (Tex. App. – Eastland September 7, 2006).*
