People v. Pitts

51 N.E.3d 1025

402 Ill.Dec. 273

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff–Appellee

v.Michael PITTS, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 1–13–2205.

Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Fourth Division.

March 24, 2016.

Michael J. Pelletier, Alan D. Goldberg, and James J. Morrissey, all of State Appellate Defender's Office, Chicago, for appellant.

Anita M. Alvarez, State's Attorney, Chicago (Alan J. Spellberg, Matthew Connors, and Anthony M. O'Brien, Assistant State's Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.

OPINION

Justice ELLIS delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 After police searched his house and found firearms and ammunition, defendant Michael Pitts was charged with unlawful use or possession of weapons by a felon (720 ILCS 5/24–1.1(a) (West 2010)) and possessing a firearm with defaced identification marks (720 ILCS 5/24–5(b) (West 2010)). He moved to suppress the evidence recovered from his home on the basis that the complaint supporting the search warrant for his home was incomplete: the second page of the complaint, which had been signed by the judge issuing the warrant, had gone missing. The trial court denied that motion, after the State presented an unsigned copy of the complaint at the motion-to-suppress hearing. After a bench trial, defendant was convicted of both offenses, based largely on evidence that he told the police that the guns belonged to him.

¶ 2 On appeal, defendant contends that: (1) the State failed to prove the corpus delicti of defendant's offenses, because his guilt rested solely on his uncorroborated statements to the police; and (2) the circuit court erred when it failed to quash the warrant to search his house because the State failed to restore the search warrant, part of which had been lost, under the Court Records Restoration Act (705 ILCS 85/0.01 et seq. (West 2010)).

¶ 3 As we explain more fully below, we reject defendant's corpus delicti argument. There was sufficient evidence that an offense had been committed to corroborate defendant's confession that the guns in his home belonged to him, including the fact that guns were seized from a bedroom in defendant's home.

¶ 4 We also disagree with defendant's argument that the trial court erred in considering the purported duplicate second page of the complaint. The State was not required to restore the complaint under the Act, because it had what it purported to be a complete copy of the complaint. Thus, the State was simply required to authenticate that copy of the complaint under the rules of evidence. And we conclude that the State sufficiently authenticated the complaint. We affirm defendant's convictions and sentence.

¶ 5 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 6 The State charged defendant with four counts of unlawful use or possession of a weapon by a felon and one count of defacing identification marks of a firearm.

During discovery, the State produced a search warrant signed by Judge Fletcher authorizing the police to search defendant's home for firearms. But the State did not yet have a copy of the complaint for the search warrant signed by Judge Fletcher. A month later, the State still had not found the signed complaint, but it told the court that two of the police officers who executed the warrant were searching for the signed complaint.

¶ 7 Approximately 10 weeks later, the State told the court that there were actually two separate search warrants for the case: one that was not executed, which had been tendered to defendant, and one that was executed, which the State had not tendered to defendant because it could not locate the “entire signed copy.” Eventually, the State was able to locate the executed search warrant and the first page of the complaint supporting the warrant signed by Judge Fletcher, but could not locate the second page of the complaint signed by Judge Fletcher.

¶ 8 The unsigned copy of the complaint—the one that the State had given to defendant—included a handwritten legend in the left-hand margin containing an assistant State's Attorney's signed name, the warrant number, a date, and a time. The copy of both the search warrant and first page of the complaint signed by Judge Fletcher contained the same handwritten legend in the same location. The State never found the second page of the complaint that was purportedly signed by Judge Fletcher.

¶ 9 The first page of the complaint alleged that Officer Napoli of the Chicago police department spoke with a registered confidential informant, who told Napoli that he saw defendant in possession of a “black 9mm semi-auto handgun” in defendant's bedroom. This informant had provided Napoli accurate information four times over a five-month period, and the informant was a “reliable source of information concerning firearms.” The second page of the unsigned complaint alleged that defendant had been convicted of arson in 1995. It also alleged that Napoli had corroborated defendant's address by observing defendant at the address given to Napoli by the informant. The search warrant authorized the search of defendant's home to seize the handgun, any ammunition, and any other contraband which would constitute the crime of unlawful use or possession of a weapon by a felon.

¶ 10 On June 12, 2012, defendant filed a motion to quash the search warrant and suppress the evidence the police obtained in their search of his home. The suppression hearing was heard by a different judge than Judge Hill, who presided over the trial. At that suppression hearing, defense counsel argued that, because the second page of the complaint was not signed by Judge Fletcher, the circuit court should not consider that page in determining if there was probable cause to support the search warrant. Defense counsel argued that, when the court considered only the first page of the complaint, it lacked the requisite probable cause to support the issuance of a search warrant. In response to defense counsel's argument regarding the unsigned second page of the complaint, the court stated:

“Let me tell you why I say that's part of the package.

* * *

If we look at the first page of—the search warrant, the actual search warrant and on the left hand margin there is the approval. We all know the State[']s Attorney's Office goes through an approval process. Anyone who wants a search warrant has to take that to the police—to the State[']s Attorney's Office, excuse me, for approval.

The way the State's Attorney indicates [its] approval to the judge on a search warrant is to write in the left hand margin the name of the Assistant State's Attorney who approved the search warrant, give it a search warrant number, give it a date, and give it a time.

This one looks like Assistant State's Attorney—I don't [know] if that's Shawn or Leon O'Callaghan.

MR. BOERSMA [Assistant State's Attorney]: Shawn O'Callaghan.

THE COURT: Shawn O'Callaghan. The search warrant number is 11SW4679 and gives a date of 2/17/11 at 2150 hours. That legend is consistent, same signature with the same search warrant number, same date, and same time on all three pages.

So as the Court looked at this I considered this as one entire document.

* * *

So the different pages in the document, at least in the Court's mind, are bound together by that legend on the left hand margin.

So this isn't the best circumstances of the execution of a search warrant, but this Court finds that looking at the totality of this document it's not fatal as it relates to the effectiveness of this search warrant, and it includes—if we gather in that last page of the complaint that last sentence of the first full paragraph that it establishes a crime.”

The court subsequently denied defendant's motion, and the case proceeded to trial.

¶ 11 At trial, Officer Bonnstetter of the Chicago police department testified that, at approximately 9:30 p.m. on February 18, 2011, he was part of a team of 10 to 14 officers executing a search warrant at a house located on the 4700 block of West Van Buren Street. When the team arrived at the house, Officer Napoli knocked on the door, but no one answered. Another officer knocked down the door, and officers entered the house.

¶ 12 Bonnstetter described the layout of the house. On the first floor, there was a living room inside the front door, a dining room and a bedroom in the middle of the house, and a bedroom in the rear. Bonnstetter searched the dining room of the house and found an envelope with a Visa credit card inside and a voter registration card. The name on the envelope was “Michael L. Pitts Sr.,” and the name on the voter registration card was “Michael Pitts.” Both items listed the address of the house subject to the search warrant.

¶ 13 Officer Napoli detained defendant in the dining room. Napoli asked defendant “if he had anything illegal on him” and “where his bedroom was located.” Defendant responded that his room was in the “back” of the house. Napoli then performed a protective pat down of defendant, recovered his wallet, and placed the wallet on the dining room table. On cross-examination, Napoli admitted that he did not write down in his police report that defendant told him his bedroom was in the “back” of the house.

¶ 14 Bonnstetter found two forms of identification inside defendant's wallet: an Illinois commercial driver's license and a State identification card. Both the commercial driver's license and the ID card listed the name “Michael L. Pitts” and the address of the house subject to the search warrant. On cross-examination, Bonnstetter admitted that the rear bedroom on the first floor did not contain any proof of residency.

¶ 15 Officer Behrend testified that he searched the rear bedroom on the first floor along with Officer Frano. Underneath the bed, Behrend found a 12–gauge shotgun. In one of the dressers, he found live shotgun shells and what he believed to be male clothing. Frano also found a loaded blue steel semi-automatic handgun on the top shelf of a closet. On cross-examination, Behrend acknowledged that he never saw defendant in the rear...