People v. Phillips

Case Date: 02/05/2003
Court: 5th District Appellate
Docket No: 5-01-0967 Rel

                 NOTICE
Decision filed 02/05/03.  The text of
this decision may be changed or
corrected prior to the filing of a
Petition for Rehearing or the
disposition of the same.

NO. 5-01-0967

IN THE

APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS

FIFTH DISTRICT


THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, 

     Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

STEVEN R. PHILLIPS,

     Defendant-Appellant.

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Appeal from the
Circuit Court of
Marion County.

No. 00-CF-308

Honorable
Dennis E. Middendorff,
Judge, presiding.


JUSTICE DONOVAN delivered the opinion of the court:

Steven R. Phillips (defendant) was found guilty at a stipulated bench trial in thecircuit court of Marion County of home invasion and two counts of aggravated criminalsexual assault. He was sentenced to three consecutive 10-year prison terms. Defendantappeals his conviction, contending that the court erred in issuing a warrant for the seizureof samples of his blood and pubic hair. We affirm.

During the early morning hours of August 21, 2000, defendant broke into the victim'shouse through a window, took a knife from her kitchen, and entered her bedroom. Wearinga hood to hide his identity, defendant grabbed the victim by the mouth to prevent her fromscreaming, stuck the knife up to her throat, and removed her bed clothes. He then forced herto perform oral sex and engage in vaginal intercourse. Defendant subsequently fled thehouse, leaving the knife behind, and stole the victim's car. The victim immediately calledthe police and was taken to a hospital, where a rape kit was used to collect semen samples. Approximately a month later, the police obtained a search warrant for samples of defendant'sblood and pubic hair. DNA testing conclusively established that the semen sample collectedthrough the rape kit came from defendant. Defendant was later arrested and charged withvarious counts of home invasion and aggravated criminal sexual assault. After severalcontinuances at defendant's request, defendant appeared in court and agreed to a stipulatedbench trial. At the stipulated bench trial, the State presented sufficient facts whichestablished beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant was the hooded individual who hadbroken into the victim's home and sexually assaulted the victim. Accordingly, defendantwas found guilty of home invasion and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault.

On appeal, defendant contends that the State should not have been allowed to obtainhis blood and hair samples. Defendant specifically argues that the complaint for the searchwarrant did not establish probable cause and therefore was insufficient for the trial court toissue the search warrant for blood and hair samples. According to defendant, if the State hadnot obtained the samples, the State would not have had any evidence identifying him as theperpetrator of the crimes. We disagree. The State obtained the search warrant for thesamples based on the complaint for a search warrant prepared by Centralia police detectiveSimer. In the complaint, Detective Simer stated that the victim described her attacker as awhite male, wearing gloves and a hood, between 6 feet 1 inch tall and 6 feet 3 inches tall,of medium build, and in his early forties, judging by his voice. Defendant had been releasedfrom prison on August 11 and was seen less than a block from the victim's home the nightbefore the assault. A neighbor identified defendant as the person she had seen sitting on abicycle in front of the victim's home at 8 p.m. the night of the assault. According to theneighbor, defendant was looking at the victim's house and the window by which theassailant later entered the house. The complaint also stated that the victim's car had beenrecovered two blocks from a house where defendant was known to have stayed before hislast arrest and that, during one of his arrests, defendant had been discovered wearing glovesand a black hood. The affidavit further noted that defendant had been a suspect in severalburglaries in the victim's neighborhood before he was last sent to prison for burglary. Thecomplaint concluded with the statement that defendant fit the physical description given bythe victim in that he was 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighed around 200 pounds, and was 34 yearsold. The search warrant was issued, the samples were taken and analyzed, and defendantwas charged by information with the crimes.

In reviewing the sufficiency of a complaint for a search warrant, it is only theprobability, not a prima facie showing, of criminal activity that is the standard for probablecause to support the issuance of a search warrant. People v. Beck, 306 Ill. App. 3d 172, 178,713 N.E.2d 596, 600 (1999); People v. Lipscomb, 215 Ill. App. 3d 413, 428, 574 N.E.2d1345, 1354 (1991). The affidavits or evidence presented in support of a search warrant mustbe tested and interpreted in a commonsense and realistic manner, not in a legal,hypertechnical one. Lipscomb, 215 Ill. App. 3d at 428, 574 N.E.2d at 1354. And thesufficiency of the complaint is not to rest on whether each segment is complete in itself, butit rests on whether the complaint, considered as a whole, adequately establishes fairprobability. People v. Gacy, 103 Ill. 2d 1, 22, 468 N.E.2d 1171, 1178 (1984). Finally, thedetermination of probable cause should not be disturbed on review unless it is manifestlyerroneous. Lipscomb, 215 Ill. App. 3d at 428, 574 N.E.2d at 1354. We cannot say that thetrial court's determination is manifestly erroneous in this instance.

Probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant exists when the facts andcircumstances known to the affiant are sufficient to justify a person of reasonable cautionto believe that an offense has been committed and that evidence of such offense can befound on the premises or person to be searched or from the items to be collected. SeePeople v. Griffin, 178 Ill. 2d 65, 77, 687 N.E.2d 820, 829 (1997); People v. Kneller, 83 Ill.App. 3d 325, 327, 403 N.E.2d 1252, 1253 (1980). Defendant does not dispute that theaffidavit at issue here would lead a person of reasonable caution to believe that a crime hadbeen committed. Defendant instead maintains that the affidavit was insufficient to lead aperson of reasonable caution to believe that samples of his hair and blood would providesome evidence relevant to the crime. The affidavit establishes, however, that the victim wassexually assaulted in her home and that defendant fit the physical description of the attackerand was seen sitting outside and looking at the front of the victim's home before the attack. One would expect that when oral and vaginal sexual assaults are alleged, hair, semen, and/orblood may be present, thereby establishing a sufficient nexus between the assault and theneed for such evidence. See Lipscomb, 215 Ill. App. 3d at 429, 574 N.E.2d at 1355. Inaddition, the complaint stated that defendant had been arrested previously during anattempted burglary while he was wearing a hood and gloves, and he had been a suspect forseveral burglaries in the victim's neighborhood prior to his last being sent to jail. Considering the facts in their totality, a person of reasonable caution would certainly believethat defendant's blood and hair samples would likely provide some evidence of the crimesthat had occurred.

Even if we were to find that the affidavit had not provided sufficient probable causefor the issuance of the search warrant, we still would uphold the trial court's ruling, giventhat the officer relied on the warrant in good faith. See Lipscomb, 215 Ill. App. 3d at 429,574 N.E.2d at 1355. The good-faith exception prevents the suppression of evidenceobtained by an officer acting in good faith and in reliance on a search warrant ultimatelyfound to be unsupported by probable cause when the warrant was obtained from a neutraland detached judge, was free from obvious defects other than nondeliberate errors in itspreparation, and contained no material misrepresentations. Beck, 306 Ill. App. 3d at 180,713 N.E.2d at 602. Given the totality of the circumstances here, we cannot say that thejudge was misled by any information in the affidavit, and the affidavit presented cannot bedescribed as unreasonably deficient or unreasonably lacking in probable cause. Accordingly, the trial court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress was proper.

For the aforementioned reasons, we affirm the judgment of the circuit court ofMarion County.

Affirmed.

GOLDENHERSH and CHAPMAN, JJ., concur.