good morning everyone welcome to the illinois teleports first district first division we're going to guess that the lawyers who are going to argue please step up and stay training's and tell us who you re all right and will depend on the two of you to split up your time is needed right under illinois supreme court rules three fifty two b each side has twenty minutes for the main argument and the appellant his ten minutes for a total we may change that if we have a lot of questions or if the argument becomes repetitive please remember to speak loudly on microphone to really don't amplify well there are merely to record what is being said please also understand we have read the precentor for me with the facts the case as complicated as they are in this situation so please devote your time to your strongest arguments mr  responsible to the person that caused the offense even if that person is on now if the persons are no however your honour's illinois has limited account earlier it has essentially found accountability in on principle cases and basically two situations the first is when you circumstantial evidence be used to establish the sharing the same come in and accountability cases circumstantial evidence certainly can hear in this case here your client mr coward went to a party what i'm saying the in relation to where that the victim was killed got you don't know where the skull we don't know when the victim was killed all during the shooting when the when this shooting occurred over there is that the body was moved or there is that were my client i give a statement indicating that  after his friend it seems the police and him after his friend had been shot that you went and sat on the corner of congress and keeler and i believe at that point there may have been some blood there although there is no evidence that it was his blood i believe one  that killed this guy sure it trial the floyd shooter was on their own as i said this but this shooting twenty gunshots were fired at a massive party of hundreds of people or a huge fight broke out both state and defense witnesses testified that everyone just got fighting the crowd started going crazy everybody was swinging there was action everywhere and as i said state's witnesses testified that most of the males at that party were carrying guns now apart from the one gun recovered from charles howard the physical evidence as i was saying showed that at least  fired at him after which he said that he saw the victim go down now why wouldn't this be circumstantial evidence to defend the they all and surrounded this  this person who is referred to in the facts as the baby daddy then all surrounded let's call and they began to surface is of this hypothetical and they were surrounding him to do they want surrounding him to congratulate obviously there was surrounding him for something and it was not something good and it was during this according to the event and statement that key vote his home he accidentally shot the victim not that that's who he was shooting around the corner at parker when she said she's been shot now the key here on this is that the state failed to write connecting facts proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the unknown person who and one other witness testified that he saw my client firing a gun but the physical evidence contradicts or at least undermines the only those those are the only two witnesses to testify that my client first got all the physical evidence shows that there are multiple cart shot even if my client fired a gun the timing of when floyd was shot is completely unclear if floyd had been shot before my client participated in this offense to you to allegedly harm my ship parker a he could not be found state's trying to show that my client's action of firing at i should parker made him accountable for the death of his friends were you don't know who the shooter is and when these very complicated circumstances where there's hundreds of people at a party and hundreds of potentially other arm people it's hard given the number of unaccounted for guns and gunshots in this case in addition of the fact there's hundreds of potentially other identified shooters there's simply no way the state's evidence was sufficient to link the unknown principle in this case t at these women after foot already been shot in addition your honour's we have we still have five or six unaccounted for guns and gunshots and the only death identified three people there's no indication even one of those guns is somehow linked to these three  factual as to who was shot and where they were standing but i would argue that the same is true without knowing you know who was shooting at them or what direction they were in her you know who the shooter was especially in this case especially under the unique facts of this case with  for the questions thank you yes your honor of course our burden is to show that there is a common criminal to be dying but once we establish that the defendant is part of this crime common criminal the sign the common criminal design here was to retaliate for a statement that elaina riley had made we don't know the content of that friend's friend smooth throws a drink into elaina's face and then defendant slaps or and that such office series of events so the common criminal design is to attack these two women and also one of the woman's friend who was the father of her child to refer to as the baby daddy by defendant he was part of the group that was being attacked by defendant and his friends so the common criminal design began after this comment was made and escalated into a physical fight some other time yet unknown party who was on the person who was sitting in the second floor window fired the gun i mean there were so many shell casings all over who go by those simply because they were all in the same area that the common design you're describing comes from the the physical i hate it in that carry over to the gun shot well first of all the jury wasn't required to search of the men who were there were arm and not all the men were defended his friends would he be accountable for a common design of someone of the other faction who were his friends if they fired the gun with that would he well here we have a situation where defendant he's talking about the baby dead and he says all people that we know are trying to get the guy he's defending says they're in a circle and it's important when he says all people that we know that means defendant knows these people these aren't strangers so that these are people who might be a block away you found it in his own words says he knows was up to the trier of fact a jury to decide you know whether to believe all of the statements some of the statement or none of the statements and and when you when you look at this statement and combined with the other evidence just a little south and a little west but but very close very close all within very close to the intersection so it appears that he was  shot very close to when the first shots were fired but i don't need your opponent tries to get a lot of mileage out of an argument we haven't talked about yet which is the you're relying you're building your accountability structure partially out of shots that were fired after the victim was already on the ground peaceably dead right and they argue that while the crime is complete at that point so anything that happened afterwards can't be used to build up the kind of build the structure and you come back and say well accountability depends on x the error that happen either before or during the crime but as and the when other case law talks about the commission of the offense it doesn't just say when the first shot was fired here that the offense began when you found it physically east side of killer just south of bend here and it was a toward the way she was running it was slightly south of the intersection well again i want to know was it seemingly directed at her however i just wanted generally that were they in the direction of the way she was fully one could reasonably infer yes yes because if if the defendant is at the intersection of   an inference that could be drawn from the facts of this case that my question is what if mr floyd was shot by somebody else in that maybe that had nothing to do with defendant and his home with somebody else who wanted to get defend in the accountable for that under that theory i know to circumstances of this case i would say yes because defendants still at the scene armed with a gun firing the gun in the direction of other people however here's the standard of your review is when the evidence is viewed in light most favorable to the prosecution and here are rational trier of fact certainly could have found that it wasn't some but when you're when you're shooting a gun there's a number of unforeseen consequences that can occur specially when your friends are shooting guns too and there's  if the wow was to simply say well there's always a hypothetical sniper two blocks away who could have shot you know that that would allow numerous defendants  to avoid punishment i think we have when the facts of this case are a little unusual there were so many people most of them want to the teeth with this everybody was fighting everybody else this there are a lot of people in the area this incident actually said was kind of confined to a very small geographical area is there any evidence in the record about how eat point in time in defendant's own words she says they're all in a circle trying to get the baby daddy and he says you know these are all people that we know trying to get this guy so define even knows which one just in summary when the jury had a opportunity to look at the direct evidence of circumstantial evidence and based on all of that in the light most favorable to the prosecution a rational jury could have made reasonable inferences from the evidence and found that he found it wasn't gauge you know common criminal design with his friends to retaliate and that the fatal murder you mr know what what's the status of the in the supreme court of this issue yes your honor the state we found our brief on october eighth and defendant mcfadden filed his brief in response and also cross appealing in december crossfield on an excessive sentence issue our brief in reply and also in response to the cross appeal is due january twenty first we can and we're probably not going to have arguments until march unexpected issues relating to those cases this is certainly one of them but hasn't at least this district spoken on the issue a few times in always in the scene direction say that if the prior argument has some legs if it was a simple issue but when criminal law we've got different rules and that's what i'm having a hard time getting my hands or arms because you're trying to say well at the time he committed this crime in this case he had this prior and it was you know this big you know read or letter a on his forehead like in the scarlet letter and therefore it can you know what happened at the time can never be taken away but if the if they're crying their scarlet letter was s fact that you you had to actually get into court and have that prior felony conviction expunged before you possess the weapon that was and here's another way to look at your eyes is that the day after aguilar was decided the illinois department of corrections did not particular conviction vacated before he can possess a gun before he gets out of prison and that's why it matters if we follow this on the circuit even if they do then get it expunged it doesn't matter it doesn't matter he would have had to have it expunged before that date he possessed the weapon know i wrote down exactly what you said and i think it's very important on that issue because of the question of the chaotic nature of what's going on and the fact that all of us so many of those people armed with guns nobody to  case you know which opposing counsel can provide a fact after fact i mean those trying to argue that that's what that's what the evidence showed it doesn't matter because you have to show that that common design that the act of shooting at you should parker is what actually resulted in floyd shooting at each other there's no question who have bad days of those persons work but they were not accountable for the death of the person that one of one of the other shot because they were acting at cross purposes that it was clear they did not shirts and here we don't have facts of a common