United States v. Burgess, No. 13-3571 (7th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseLate on a Sunday night, gunshots were fired in northwest Chicago neighborhood. Numerous 911 callers reported from 5 to 9 shots. A dispatcher told officers to check the intersections at Wabansia and Karlov and at Armitage and Kildare, roughly a half-mile apart. Less than two minutes later, based on additional calls, the dispatcher added that shots were fired from a black car traveling south on Karlov near Wabansia. Officers driving south on Kostner Avenue, parallel to and a few streets west of Karlov, passed a black car headed north, and stopped the car. Burgess was a passenger and the officers found a revolver on his seat, five of its six rounds spent. Just over four minutes had passed from the initial dispatch to the officers’ report that Burgess was in custody. Having a 2001 conviction for second-degree murder, Burgess was indicted under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1) for possessing the gun as a convicted felon. He unsuccessfully moved to suppress on the theory that the officers lacked reasonable suspicion to justify stopping the car. The court found that, based on what the officers observed regarding the light traffic at that hour and what they knew from the dispatches, and the seriousness of the reported crime, reasonable suspicion justified the stop. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. All told, the circumstances provided ample justification for stopping Burgess’s car.. Reasonable, articulable, particularized suspicion is not a matter of certainty.
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