People v. Sanders

── People v. Sanders ── Court: Appellate Court of Illinois Date: May 15, 2026 Category: General 2026 IL App (1st) 230041 No. 1-23-0041 Opinion filed May 15, 2026 Sixth Division ______________________________________________________________________________ IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS FIRST DISTRICT ______________________________________________________________________________ THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, ) Appeal from the ) Circuit Court of Plaintiff-Appellee, ) Cook County. ) v. ) No. 21 CR 12982 01 ) MICHAEL SANDERS, ) Honorable ) Ursula Walowski, Defendant-Appellant. ) Judge, presiding. JUSTICE HYMAN delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. Presiding Justice C.A. Walker and Justice Pucinski concurred in the judgment and opinion. OPINION ¶1 Michael Sanders and three others were sitting on a house stoop on a Monday evening. Suddenly, three Chicago police squad cars pulled up. A lieutenant and four officers came toward them with flashlights. The lieutenant said they had received a call: “Somebody over here got a gun.” Someone objected when the lieutenant opened the front gate, but the lieutenant did it anyway. He ordered Sanders to “step up” and frisked him. Having felt a gun, he directed another officer to frisk Sanders. That officer “cuffed [Sanders]” and “jangled his jeans,” which caused the gun to fall along his pants leg. ¶2 Sanders was indicted for unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon. He moved to suppress, arguing the police found it during an illegal search. The trial court denied the motion. ¶3 After a stipulated bench trial, Sanders was found guilty. On appeal, he contends that the police lacked a reasonable, articulable suspicion that he was illegally armed when they stopped and frisked him. We agree. No facts justified the officers’ Terry stop (see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)), and the motion should have been granted. Without that evidence, the State cannot prove Sanders possessed a gun. So we reverse. ¶4 Before proceeding, we observe that delays in the appeals of criminal cases carry consequences for defendants, their family and friends, and the people of Illinois, who incur the expense associated with incarceration. Sanders’s arrest occurred in 2021, and his conviction and sentencing occurred in 2022. Today, in 2026, he has long been released from prison. Those years cannot be restored. Constitutional protections are meant to guard against that kind of loss. Cases that take a person’s liberty should not take years to correct, especially when the sentence is a few years or less. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches must strive to find ways to minimize delays in the criminal justice system. In the words of Dr. King, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Martin Luther King Jr., Letter From Birmingham City Jail 5 (American Friends Service Committee ed., 1963). ¶5 Background ¶6 A lieutenant received notice from the Office of Emergency Management Communications (OEMC) that someone had reported a man with a gun. Based on the information from an unknown caller, the police entered the front yard of a home where Michael Sanders and three others s