i'd like to reserve five three minutes for rebuttal you may be in operator for issues and i welcome questions on any of these issues but i'd like to concentrate this morning on two issues fitness and beth alexander taylor was a patient in the psychiatric ward of lincoln park hospital and was refusing medication when several nurses approached him with a mattress tried to restrain him and he resisted those efforts he was treasurer this offense there was a determination that he was not fit to stand trial because he wasn't able to assist counsel on his defense and based on this a trauma nation the judge determined that he was in fact not fit to stand trial and he was institutionalized six months later stipulated testimony showed that he was now fit to stand trial with medication finding spot it's important to note that those findings were only contingent findings of fitness they only said that he was fit to stand trial with medication the third psychiatrist we don't have any information on when that evaluation was done or what type of she had evaluated mr taylor when he was at some back they were talking before the state trial correct ok what are the criteria for that number one they have to have an understanding of the proceedings but the nature an object of proceedings and number two they have to have insisting that you know i want to plead not guilty to this charge right but the hell with it at least indicates some understanding of what the context of the hearing is all about but  yes but he also has to be able to assist counsel with the real reason the degree of rational understanding and why what's what i mean most attorneys in a situation like this would advise their client to plead not guilty and shut up and that's exactly what he did somebody who pleads not guilty puts himself in any jeopardy whatsoever with respect to the situation you're on it's not simply that he was suggesting that really on a more informal basis he might have pled guilty felt it was at his best interests to stay over where he would have been if you followed her advice this sounds to me like and then wonders what the consequences were with respect to the legal proceeding before he just disagreed with his lawyer about the outcome he felt that he could i think he said it on the record is that i don't want to go back to that place down there which is where you're going to send me if i go along with my boys advice i'm going to go back to chester and they almost killed me  but again you have to look at the totality of the saying i want to plead guilty because i don't think i did what they say i did right but if you look at his history of mental illness he was hospitalized for mental illness at the time of this offense and the scenario where the court should do more but there are actually two cases that are very very relevant number one his dream in that case there were two written reports produced   by experts and yet the court said that that bending the tie or the circumstances indicate that the defendant is not fit it's incumbent upon the trial court to hold a rest to have a fitness hearing and to make sure that he is in fact fit because the concept of fairness changes over time in fact if you look if you look at the stipulated testimony of dr cliff the run that was entered by before the hearing it said that the offending is able to assist with counsel if he chooses to do so and that she was filled with medication ok but after this report she was transferred to some back which is where he was valued the first time by dr messina and where she said he wasn't receiving his medication we don't know so the maybe things of i've even the very last written evaluation was that he was only fit with medication and that he could only cooperate with counsel if he chose to do so but there was no inkling whatsoever in the entire year after that whether or not he was taking medication and there was evidence first of all assume ak didn't provide him with medication in the past and number two that he refused medication in the past so i think it's important to at all the circumstances and not just the his behavior at the insanity defense was certainly one factor when he says that god says chester strangled me i've been bitten by a rat i need to get out of this place before i die that's indication that he does not have a sounding competent mi credence to the one inmate there that they tried to kill but if you look at it it wasn't just a fair trial take the information available to the trial judge with respect to the chester facility i'm sure track had evidence that taylor's mental state was deteriorating and therefore it was his duty to revisit that issue to a new valuation and to make a determination he couldn't just grass over all of these factors that suggested that the defendant wasn't fit to stand trial agreeing myers can turn up the pain of competency is that defendant cannot break his own competency if he's not competent and we're not going to just take his insistence his desires at face value because we have to examine if he's actually well ok proceed with your argue well all right we do have is that the trial court found that there was a prima facia case of intentional discrimination and therefore require the prosecutor to state their reasons for dismissing the jers these for the proffered reason was that they were social workers and this didn't number one it didn't make sense in the context of this case because the victims were nurses and counsellors and number two or the prosecution accepted for either social workers and number three the prosecution never accepted never questioned any of the excepted or rejected just about their profession and never asked them whether or not their profession might affect their ability to be impartial  if you look at miller allen which is really the blueprint for this case it emphasizes that crossed out that third stage bats and hearing cross comparison analysis is really the key to determining whether or not there is discriminatory intent number one if the prosecutor doesn't examine those jurors about the reason that he claims and number two he doesn't dismiss other jurors who share that same reason and that is evidence what about the trapped parts you know you're really to say anything or even indication that he was considering the evidence and making a finding that with factual detail but just simply that based upon the render an opinion that he was found within a reasonable degree of medical certainty to be fit to stand trial but he was cognizant of the charge she understood the nature of the proceedings that he showed the ability to cooperate with counsel and it discussed the medications that he him and discussed whether or not he was insane at the time and still know that still wouldn't it still wouldn't preclude his attorney from suggesting that that's what happened because ultimately it's for the trier of fact to decide whether or not he was not guilty by reason adamant that he did not want to pursue an insanity defense he was absolutely cooperating with his self defense he had the lawyer say about competency is there some mention of competency at all in that a to there has to be a getting to hearing if she believes that she wants to spend that's what the reasoning of all this fuss yes had nothing to do with that no it was the requirement that there be a hearing on the record that he knowingly and waive  knowingly and voluntarily waived his right to have or to present a not guilty by reason of insanity he didn't back down after they went to the understanding defense counsel said you know just should we get this on the record his reasons and the court got his t he was he was all he was on the phone with his mother for an hour he was screaming he was yelling he was urinating in the hallway he tried to talk him down for the hour at the very end they asked him please calm down but you please come to the quiet room would you like to purpose of the judge to put an explicit finding a fact on the record or  i don't think if another finn is hearing is this necessary there's plenty of evidence on the record that he was fit to stand trial there is no evidence that he was n people to be credible that he found a race neutral reason for striking the tube near members you know african americans rather than here there's absolutely no record of that and seen were in there no record of that and the court has no basis for making comparison between seated jurors and rejected the near members were defendant has failed to make a record of the racial makeup of the seated jury that's towns and cited by people be davis that's an illinois supreme court case from two thousand and eight so you know cases how the prosecutors believe that a potential juror has liberal views just because they're a social worker is a race neutral one that is the reason that they put forth in the trial that is the reason the judge accepted he clearly stated on the record that this was a race citing a race neutral reason for striking those jurors and  i'd just like to address a couple issues number one there was a factual misstatement there was a lot of evidence that she was refusing medication at the time of the offense to the state's witnesses said that she was shouting they want to they want to give me plays but it also includes everything necessary to assist counsel in their defense i mean to to the defendant has to be able to talk to counsel be willing to give her information in order to for her to prepare if he's not willing to talk with her on items because of the defenses that she's raising if he's not willing to cooperate psychiatry's on on these issues then she's hamstrung there's nothing she can do and that's again why we have this requirement  to go pro se because he wasn't competent to make that decision the the trial court has to make that decision before i around the defendant to make all these decisions otherwise these are competent decisions and the last thing about  occurred and the trial court was examining him defense counsel pushed for marriage examination and she says she'd like to go over the reason again because she didn't think that he was understanding and then the trucker said he just said it he thinks he doesn't want to assert the defense because he thinks chester's dangerous and he says yes dangerous extremely dangerous to try to kill me so when she was trying to press from our examination the trial court refused to do so and at that point i'm not sure what more defen state's exactly that if the stated reasons if the reasons profit by the by the prosecutor are not true if they don't apply to other jurors that he didn't dismiss them that is evidence of discriminatory there is a single discriminatory act it doesn't matter how many nondiscriminatory acts he did he could have been nondiscriminatory in plenty of aspects of the other at the trial but if you discriminate against those two potential jurors because of their race then see whether he questioned the jurors on those reasons to see if they're sincere i would look to see if there were other jurors that he didn't dismissed who bear the same characteristics here we have exactly those three things he never questioned them that i don't yours that had the same characteristics and here actually we have another one which is it to make sense in the context of this case because the victims the states when this is nurses and counsellors so with all of that under many are it's very clear that this was clearly erroneous whe