2021 IL 125434 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS (Docket No. 125434) THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Appellant, v. CORDELL BASS, Appellee. Opinion filed April 15, 2021. JUSTICE GARMAN delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. Justices Theis, Michael J. Burke, Overstreet, and Carter concurred in the judgment and opinion. Chief Justice Anne M. Burke concurred in part and dissented in part, with opinion. Justice Neville concurred in part and dissented in part, with opinion. OPINION ¶1 During a routine traffic stop, officers ran a name check on defendant Cordell Bass, a passenger. The name check returned an investigative alert issued by the Chicago Police Department for an alleged sexual assault. Bass was arrested and subsequently made incriminating statements to investigators. Prior to trial, Bass sought to suppress those statements. The trial court denied the motion and found him guilty of criminal sexual assault in a bench trial. The appellate court reversed and remanded for a new trial, holding that the traffic stop violated the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution because it was unlawfully prolonged. It further held that article I, section 6, of the Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const. 1970, art. I, § 6) deviates in meaning from the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution (U.S. Const., amend. IV), that it provides greater protections than the fourth amendment, and that arrests based on investigative alerts, even those supported by probable cause, violate the Illinois Constitution. We allowed the State’s petition for leave to appeal. Ill. S. Ct. R. 315 (eff. Oct. 1, 2019). We also allowed the City of Chicago to file an amicus brief. ¶2 BACKGROUND ¶3 “Investigative alerts,” formerly known in Illinois as “stop orders,” are entries in a police database of individuals that police are attempting to locate. Running a name check through this database will reveal any investigative alerts issued for that person by the department, including other information such as the facts relied on for issuing the alert. There are two types of investigative alerts: one that asserts probable cause for an arrest and one that does not. ¶4 On July 31, 2014, the Chicago Police Department issued an investigative alert for Cordell Bass alleging, effectively, that there was probable cause to arrest him for sexual assault. Police issued the investigative alert after interviewing the victim and a second witness and after both had identified Bass as the perpetrator from a photo array. ¶5 About two weeks later, sometime between 1 and 2 a.m. on August 13, 2014, officers pulled over a minivan for running a red light. Bass was one of several passengers. The order of events is not entirely clear, but at some point during the -2- traffic stop, officers ordered the occupants out of the vehicle, ran a name check on some of them, and discovered the investigative alert issued for Bass. On the basis of that investigative alert, the officers arrested Bass. The officers also completed other administrative tasks related to the …
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