The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that the odor of burnt marijuana alone cannot be lawfully used by police as probable cause to conduct a warrantless vehicle search.
On Thursday, justices published an opinion in two consolidtated cases—People vs. Redmond and People vs. Molina—concerning law enforcement searching the cars of people after claiming they could smell burnt cannabis. Officers discovered small amounts of marijuana and charged the defendants for improper storage, as state law requires that cannabis being transported is kept in odor-proof containers.
After reviewing the cases, justices upheld lower court decisions to grant defendants’ motions to suppress the cannabis as evidence in the trial, affirming that “the odor of burnt cannabis, alone, is insufficient to provide probable cause for police officers to perform a warrantless search of a vehicle.”
The Supreme Court opinion was delivered by Justice P. Scott Neville, with five other justices concurring. The opinion pointed out that Illinois State Police Officer Hayden Combs “did not observe any signs of impairment or signs indicative of recent cannabis use” when he pulled over Ryan Redmond in 2020, and the officer later tried substantiating the search after learning that he was traveling from Des Moines to Chicago, which he claimed to be “hubs of criminal activity.”
Neville noted that “cannabis law has changed drastically over the last decade,” with Illinois enacting adult-use legalization in 2019. While the “appellate court has reached conflicting results in cases concerning the effect of legalization on probable cause for automobile searches,” the Supreme Court has now rendered a final verdict on the issue.
Hellbound and Down 