good morning your honor castle may please the court my name is elaine impact appearing on behalf of defendant helen dennis clark mr clark stands convicted of armed robbery after a jury trial the state described by the occurrence witnesses was actually real because the use of a firearm carries an extra fifteen year penalty in illinois and even for accountability cases the state really went out of its way to persuade the jury that the gun like object that  gun to commit robberies during opening statements initial closing and closing rebuttal and each instance the theme was yes it is a real gun kind of guy you can believe this testimony by using a real gun in this case because he used to build gun before another recent armed robbery with a firearm you know i think both parties agree that relevance is the starting point for admissibility but the issue here is whether it was relevant for any proper purpose in the trial court so that it i think in pranks although there's something wrong language along those lines that was really that if the court got off base because the defendant in that case said the argument based on a misreading of things bold essentially completely proper for them or also disputes in that case as to whether really did it go to motive and that's where the abuse of discretion standard comes in but in this case i really think the dayton ohio standard of review is appropriate because it presents a legal question as to whether using a defendant's prior excuse me a codefendant prior to establish his propensity for engaging in similar conduct is a proper no the thing that looked like a gun during the incident it was never just charge so you have these eyewitnesses saying i saw this thing that looked like a gun you have a codefendant whose credibility is suspect for all kinds of reasons and  for armed robbery with a real firearm and so that tells you they thought it was critical to their case to convince the jury that yeah there are some questions here by and you can believe this but it's testimony because look he was a pariah in another place  cook county with a real gun just recently i think the only point home during opening statements and repeatedly during closing arguments didn't your client got to go back according to the scenario for so i think the evidence was far from overwhelming on this particular point and because evidence of nesmith's prior conviction was not relevant for any proper purpose and was in fact highly prejudicial under the facts of th believe they did because this defendant this codefendant actually testified this is not a case where a previous conviction is being entered in a vacuum independently of the actual co there are no other questions i think t and a statement about a ratchet with which which a lady witness testifies means of this is a real gun there's no there's no indication that the officer has some expertise in street might go back showing wasn't it was a challenge it was not but i think it goes to this it still goes to the strength of that piece of evidence i in addition to the at is nothing overwhelming in this case i want to reiterate that does not control number one because it's distinguishable in price the prior sets was clearly used to support the defendant's motive in this case the state did miss that there is no other reason they introduce th friends that because someone has done something before he's going to do it again doesn't it also show he has access to a real gun well i don't think there's any question in this case about access  defense opened the door some towels and created a question that the state was entitled to respond to but then that's not the case and also you know to your hypothetical about my client having a similar fire you know it would also be different if for example there was something distinctive about that guy and it supported the identity of the perpetrator in this case you know modus operandi that's a that's an established exception to the bar on the use of other crimes as propensity evidence but that's not the case here we don't have a situation where this guy was special in some way that was market as the property of either these people was this this day's theory that they witness i mean if you look at it there's little about impeaching witness credibility talks about attacking the witnesses credibility an awful story gets i don't think there's any precedent for using it in that fashion an