Defendant was charged with the illegal possession of a firearm and other offenses. He appeals the denial of his motion to suppress a gun that police found after opening his companion's backpack without a search warrant.
Two police officers encountered the companion on the street after she and defendant got out of a parked car that had been described in a Be-On-the-Lookout (BOLO) report of a recent shooting. After defendant fled the scene, the police handcuffed the companion and put her in the back seat of a police car. The police then secured her belongings, including her backpack, in the front seat of the squad car. She told the police she thought defendant had put a weapon in her backpack at an earlier time. The police immediately opened the backpack without seeking a warrant.
The prosecution solely invoked the automobile and the exigent circumstances exceptions to the warrant requirement and did not rely on consent-to-search nor other exceptions.
In reversing the suppression denial, the court holds: (1) defendant had standing to challenge the backpack search; (2) the automobile exception to the constitutional warrant requirement does not apply because the backpack was not the fruit of the automobile search; and (3) the State failed to demonstrate exigent circumstances to justify the immediate necessity to open the backpack, which was secured in a police car and not accessible to the either the handcuffed companion or defendant.