The court rejected defendant’s reliance on People v. Palmer, 104 Ill. 2d
340, 472 N.E.2d 795 (1984), as support for the argument that the unlawful
restraint conviction was an element of the offense that had to be proved to the
jury. Palmer was decided prior to the legislature’s enactment of 725 ILCS 5/111-
3(c).
(Defendant was represented by Assistant Defender Gary Peterson,
Springfield.)
SEARCH & SEIZURE
§44-11(a)
People v. Kats, 2012 IL App (3d) 100683 (No. 3-10-0683, 3/9/12)
When the police rely on consent as the basis for a warrantless search, they
have no more authority than they have apparently been given by the voluntary
consent of the suspect. The standard for measuring the scope of a suspect’s
consent to search is that of objective reasonableness, which requires consideration
of what a typical reasonable person would have understood by the exchange
between the officer and the suspect. The scope of the search is defined by its
expressed object or purpose.
Whether a suspect’s consent to search a vehicle and its contents for
contraband allows an officer to search spaces behind interior door panels that are
not visible to the naked eye from inside the vehicle’s passenger cabin is an issue
that Illinois courts have not addressed. The majority of courts that have addressed
the issue hold that a suspect’s consent to search includes any place in the vehicle
that might reasonably contain the expressed objects of the search, including
spaces behind door panels. A minority of courts hold that a general consent to
search a vehicle for contraband does not include a consent to search behind
interior door panels or other areas that are not customarily opened or easily
accessed.
The Appellate Court concluded that an officer’s use of a tool to search
behind a door panel of the vehicle did not exceed the scope of the defendant’s
consent to search the vehicle for contraband because it would be reasonable to
find contraband hidden behind a removable door panel. A reasonable person in
defendant’s position would have understood that he had authorized the officer to
search behind the door panels, particularly because the panels could be easily
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