van but like this rather painting the closer you look at their testimony the less you will see who the term is whether a person is a credible witness or obviously the determinations that were that were done by the trial court this court is not here just to affirm that if that were the case then a reasonable doubt argument could never be successful appeal and that's simply not true what we unreasonable well i think the first thing to think about is that this is a court that was already sort of struggling with with the evidence as it was presented the court found the defendant not guilty of three counts of attemp experience that someone standing ten to twelve feet behind a car shooting directly at that car according to these witnesses testified he was aimed directly at but there would be no damage to that and simply firing a gun might be a different offense and start that might be reckless discharge that could be aggravated assault these these offenses while it didn't require that specific mental state of a specific intent to kill then still require the court to find that he aimed in the that's why when getting back to your honor's initial question in terms of simply giving deference or one of the credibility terminations of this court served with that's one that that troubles us and another point that the troubles us in terms of what this court is doing is that it's witnesses who were positive and were certain in their identification of the defendant as the shooter were also certain of the presence of someone at the crime who was in police custody they also worst positive uncertain fermentations might made by the trial court again reasonable people want to teach and to act on reason and so this would be a situation where we're concerned that some of these same crimes made by the same judge were on reasonable your still certain that that this evidence sustains what the state's burden is in this case and there's a final piece so we have you know the one of the aspects of the judge paid no attention  to or sort of brushed aside this notion of the game motivation and this was a serious obviously major thrust of the defense's case but they these were an eighteen and eighteen year old and a nineteen year old in the between the size of the royals in the conservative vice lords and so their claim that there was a member of the conservative eyesores and that that was the motivation for the shooting but that's at that same time is the motivation why we should look with is the one speaking to the police that night and again in one of those sort of unusual facts of this case one of those things that just doesn't sit right when you look at it when the police is in or interviewing these eyewitnesses at the scene they have them all together and they have them all together  to the surrounding area words of the van in which this this alleged firing her there are deep deep questions that come out from this case that simply don't sustain what the state is a part of proof when they're being of the tainted testimony that we're getting from the others she is fourteen years old she's in the car with two known affiliated gang members who are putting again case they're putting this case they're very they're saying that saber did she sitting in the back seat while body in the front seat saying saber did we have a fourteen year old there's a huge age difference between her and the other people in that car and she is she is scared and she is ducking down her head and so in terms of the the proof that the state is required to show that the defendant was aiming in the direction part firing direction of the car she alternately isn't going to provide that that link if we accept that the testimony of of the dia and the fox is on reasonable she can provide that that extra weight she can provide testimony that basically preston i believe in this situation it wasn't reasonable for the for the truck or to simply accept her testimony without looking into the motivations behind why the testimony made of might have appeared the way it did it was obviously there's there's something unsettling about her being seen as this independent actor who had who while she admits to affiliating with members of the same gang is somehow removed from that and from that bias  that's a motivation to lie but again the more troubling factor to me is that she's never provided her own independent accounts she's never been asked she's never been you know interviewed by the police at the scene individually about what happened she is standing there while the dia is saying saber to this and then getting her facebook page and showing him giving the police the sentence for me she that night didn't say to the police who did it she gave her contact information and she listened while the d a s who did it so i feel in this case her testimony forever was then walked in on what she was being told by the d of the eighteen year old gang member or get a gang affiliated individual sitting in the front seat along with the driver also gang affiliated on that night or removing themselves from the game but it can still claiming the next day they were affiliated or he would leave where's that where's the other witness where were the people in the park coming from left to shelves as in that show shots were fired shots were fired at some point from the back from a three eighty millimeter gun and were obviously found there on that i might order i think that obviously can be property of of shots being fired but can that be property of shots being fired by the defendant and we have no positive credible testimony linking the defendant to the shooting of that gun whereas the young respect you first said you know you have no evidence of shots being introduced i mean this was not and this was you know the responding officer is collecting the physical evidence there wasn't a forensic investigator brought out to the scene photographed the shells he has hooper riser merely said pick them up he picked them up inventory them and and that's that's what we're left with to try to connect this individual so class one felony i mean that's a very serious jump obviously we have we have testimony that that is that is suspect and we think that that same suspect testimony flowed to the fourteen year old who was listening to everything video was saying and we know you're running out of time you want to keep some time for republican absolut you're up for these reasons we asked you to reverse  meet please the court assistant state's attorney susanna book on behalf of the people of your honor's applying the jackson standard there is no question that any rational trier of fact could have found defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt the evidence in this case was more than sufficient to convict him first three eye witnesses identified defendant as the person based off holding a gun and pointing it in their direction second there was physical evidence recovered from the scene which corroborated the testimony of these witnesses and third defendant fled immediately prior to his arrest thereby providing circumstantial evidence of his guilt in light of this the people respectfully request that this court upheld the decision of the trial court and affirm defendant's conviction for aggravated discharge of a firearm the illinois supreme court has long recognized that the single identification of a credible eyewitness is sufficient to sustain a conviction and here we have the testimony not of a single witness but of three credible eyewitnesses amanda video testified that in june fourteenth two thousand and eleven she was riding in the front passenger seat of jermaine fox's grandfather's tan minivan as they approached the intersection of wanda ellen wilson she looks to her right out the front passenger window which is open and she sees someone that she recognizes she sees the defend whom she has known for over two years she attended roosevelt high school with this defendant she knew him from the park at one point in her life she testified that she would see him two to three times a week this is something that defendant overlooks in argument today she this is a person that she knew that she had known he was not a stranger she was a familiar face she sees him running towards the van holding his waistband he pulls out a weapon  fires four shots in her direction that is her testimony and her testimony alone a stand which is each of the elements of the offense in addition germane fox corroborate her testimony significantly she too knows defend nt know sin from the neighborhood knows him from albanian jensen part in fact jermaine cox had played basketball with at this park with this exact define it we've known each other for over a year and a half again this is a familiar face this is someone that he knows he too testifies he looks out the window he sees defendant he sees defendant fire multiple shots in his direction then there's and they are cornish who the trial court calls quote a phenomenal witness and better than any of the witnesses it had seen testify she to corroborate the testimony of the dia and fox as the as the car approaches wilson in lawndale she hears but you say buck he's or go he's got a gun she looks out the credibility of the what witnesses and the weight to be given their testimony falls exclusively within the province of the trier of fact and here the trier of fact resolved all credibility determinations in favor of the people specifically finding be credible furthermore there was physical evidence recovered from the scene which corroborated the testimony of these witnesses officer john guy's was testified that we arrived on the scene less than twenty minutes later he spoke with  that they were all fired from the exact same weapon and finally defendant fred immediately prior to his arrest providing additional circumstantial evidence of his guilt officer roby's testified that the day after the shooting he received a report approached them announced his office said stop police and defendant took off running the logical inference is that if officer wrote us new defendant defendant new officer august and less than twenty four hours after the shooting he sees a police officer whom he knows approaching him saying stop police and he he flees he takes off running this is certainly circumstantial evidence of his guilt ultimately the trial court found that it had quote no doubt in its mind and it was quote absolutely convinced that this defendant committed this offense this finding was not so improbable or on satisfactory as to create reasonable doubt to defendant's guilt and therefore at the people has brought up in their brief here in oregon and they the critical point that's missing from this is that for court to infer consciousness of guilt from flight there has to be some some factor for the defendant to the people the lowest on most important case the inference of guilt which may be drawn from flight depends upon the knowledge of the suspect at the offense has been committed and that he or she may be suspected so he has to be aware that he's being suspected of committing a crime and again respectfully in this case we have no linkage beyond the suspect testimony as provided by pedia and by fox at that that the defendant was in any way involved in this sense there is no credible eyewitness on the scene that places the defendant at the scene and so for the court to be inferring consciousness of guilt from his flight from the from a police officer who knows him because he's there arresting him all the time that to me and the re certain intersection you're seen running a few blocks away that's the situation we're in particularly when the police are there investigating you're running from the police within sort of that i contemporaneous moment of the effects in this situation again if there had been any indication that the defendant was aware the police were looking formulation of the shooting and then he ran great then we can be making that inference but we just don't have that extra piece we don't have that piece of knowledge but police were there that know the fans and then this police officer approaches the van and takes off right i mean why did you pick up i can think of any number of reasons why a young african american male on the cells or on the west side or west side would run from the please we know that from case law we know that from social science we know that this happens all the time and to to to correct what you're actually asking is to ignore a lot of things i mean you're asking us to ignore the flack from a this judge i'm asking you to look at every single same thing that judge looked at and i'm asking you to determine whether or not those conclusions the court reach were reasonable from or from from from just picked up reaction upon reading this record from working on this case there are serious questions that are raised and doubts that remain and i believe that these conclusions that were being reached by the court in this case were reasonable and that's what i'm asking this court to to look at the exact same of it's not to ignore any piece of it but to look at it and decide was this evidence to submission to connect our clients to the offense of aggravated destructive fire and did our client direct the fire going in the direction of of the stand where's the physical that some buddy who was near a scene of some child is killed i don't know that these people are any get these children but they don't know how to fire the gun so that's what happens so the fact that a is aiming somewhere it's not a good shot at is not necessarily evidence that maybe he did he doesn't know how to operate the gun in a proper manner when we have a one way street with cars parked on both sides of the street and we have houses have a reckless discharge if we simply have twenty gun and then shooting at the ground we might have aggravated assault but we don't have an aggravated just heard far but frankly we simply don't have that positive credible testimony with which we believe this fully believe that that's the world that we're with if you remember where the shell casings were found they were found near the corner and i believe in the street they were sort of within a few feet of each other but there was no photographic the recovery officer pick them up