Three guys are in a green Honda parked in Super 8 Motel parking lot in East Hazel Crest. Officers approach the vehicle because it is blocking part of the lot. During a brief conversation with the driver, Michael Colyar, Officer Alcott shined his flashlight into the car and sees a rifle round in a plastic bag on the center console. The defendant Colyar and two other occupants are ordered from the car and cuffed. Defendant is searched and another round is recovered from his pants pocket. The officers then recover from the console the plastic bag. It contains five rounds of .454 ammunition including the round first seen in plain view. Now believing a gun might be in the car, the car is searched and a gun recovered underneath the floor mat of the front passenger floorboard.
The Appellate Court by JUSTICE GARCIA, joined by JUSTICE HALL, affirms the suppression of the bullets and gun by the Hon Judge Simpson ruling that the “officers did not have probable cause to search the Honda based on their observation of a bullet in plain-view on the console of the Honda and the recovery of additional bullets, without first inquiring whether the defendant possessed a FOID card,…[because] it was not reasonable for the officers to conclude that their observations of a single bullet in the plastic bag on the console …was evidence of criminal activity…”
JUSTICE LAMPKIN dissents. Click here to Read People v Colyar, No. 1-09-0323, 1st Dist., 6th Div., 12/30/2010.