Opinion ID: 2020324
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The State's Alternative Claims

Text: As noted above, the State never argued in the appellate court, or raised as an issue in its petition for leave to appeal, that the admission of Von's out-of-court statements to Weber and Officer Cure, though improper, was harmless error. Nor did the State argue below, or in its petition for leave to appeal, that respondent should be precluded from raising a confrontation clause claim pursuant to the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing. The State concedes that by raising these issues for the first time in its brief before this court, the issues may be deemed forfeited and we need not consider them. The State, however, asks that we excuse the forfeiture and consider the issues on their merits. Respondent does not contend that we should forgo addressing the State's alternative claims because they have been procedurally defaulted due to the failure to raise them below. Nor does respondent object to reaching the merits of the State's claims on the ground that the issues were not included in the petition for leave to appeal and are being raised for the first time in the State's brief before this court. Thus, respondent has forfeited any procedural default or forfeiture by the State. Nevertheless, in recently filed opinions of this court, the failure to include a claim in a petition for leave to appeal has been raised sua sponte by this court and relied upon to deny consideration of the claim. See, e.g., People v. Whitfield, 228 Ill.2d 502, 321 Ill.Dec. 233, 888 N.E.2d 1166 (2007); People v. Robinson, 223 Ill.2d 165, 308 Ill.Dec. 19, 860 N.E.2d 1101 (2006). Accordingly, one could interpret these cases as suggesting that the failure to include an issue in a petition for leave to appeal stands as an absolute bar to review by this court. Such an interpretation of these cases, however, would be incorrect. This court has long held that the failure to raise an issue in a petition for leave to appeal is not a jurisdictional bar to this court's ability to review a matter but, rather, a principle of administrative convenience. See Dineen v. City of Chicago, 125 Ill.2d 248, 265-66, 126 Ill.Dec. 52, 531 N.E.2d 347 (1988). In other words, this court always has the authority to review a matter not properly preserved, or may decline to do so, as a matter of discretion. Although that discretion should not be exercised arbitrarily, review of an issue not specifically mentioned in a petition for leave to appeal will be appropriate when that issue is inextricably intertwined with other matters properly before the court. Hansen v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 198 Ill.2d 420, 430, 261 Ill.Dec. 744, 764 N.E.2d 35 (2002). In a situation, such as here, where a court of review determines that certain evidence was improperly admitted at trial, it is entirely appropriate to consider whether any exceptions to inadmissibility apply and whether the admission of evidence, though error, was harmless. These matters are inextricably intertwined with the determination of whether the error that occurred requires reversal. Thus, we consider the State's alternative claims despite its failure to present them in the petition for leave to appeal.
The State asks us to find that respondent forfeited the right to challenge the admission of Von's testimonial hearsay statements on confrontation grounds because respondent's wrongdoing caused Von's unavailability. The State acknowledges that, in Stechly, this court was split on the proper application of the forfeiture-by-wrongdoing doctrinefour justices held that a defendant forfeits his confrontation rights only if he acts with the intention of causing the witness to be unavailable to testify and that it is insufficient to show that the wrongful conduct was causally linked to the witness' unavailability; two justices held that it was unnecessary to show that the accused intended to prevent the witness from testifying when he committed the wrong. The State contends, however, that even the Stechly plurality recognized that most courts have held that intent need not be proven and may be presumed when the wrongdoing is murder. The State, therefore, asks that we expand on this concept and hold that in child sexual abuse cases, as in murder cases, intent may be presumed. The State explains its rationale, stating, in child sexual abuse cases, the abuse may well cause the victim to be unavailable to testify at trial    because of trauma, fear, or the victim's predisposed incompetence to testify. The State also cites public policy and the high importance society places on protecting children as additional reasons for permitting courts to presume an intent to prevent the witness from testifying when applying the forfeiture-by-wrongdoing doctrine in child sexual abuse cases. As an alternative argument, the State contends that, even if we decline to hold that intent may be presumed in child sexual abuse cases, we should find that intent was proven in the case at bar. As evidence that respondent intended to prevent Von from testifying, the State points to the evidence that respondent made Von pinky swear not to tell anyone about the abuse. The State's arguments concerning forfeiture by wrongdoing were presented in its brief, which was submitted prior to the time that the United States Supreme Court released its decision in Giles v. California, 554 U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 2678, 171 L.Ed.2d 488 (2008). Giles demonstrates the proper application of the forfeiture-by-wrongdoing doctrine as it relates to an accused's sixth amendment confrontation rights and resolves the debate over the necessity of proving intent. In light of Giles, we must reject the State's arguments concerning the application of forfeiture by wrongdoing in the case at bar. In Giles, the defendant shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, Avie, outside defendant's grandmother's home. Although Avie was shot six times, the defendant claimed self-defense, testifying that Avie was jealous, that he knew her to have violent tendencies, and that Avie had come to his grandmother's that day and threatened to kill him and his girlfriend. The prosecution introduced statements Avie had made to a police officer three weeks prior to the shooting when the officer had responded to a domestic violence call. The officer testified that Avie told him defendant accused her of having an affair and had choked her, punched her in the head, and threatened her with a knife, saying that he would kill her if he found that she was cheating on him. After defendant was convicted, he challenged the admission of Avie's out-of-court statement to the officer. On review, the California Supreme Court ruled that the statement was admissible under Crawford pursuant to the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing. The court held that defendant had forfeited his right of confrontation because he committed the murder, an intentional criminal act, that rendered Avie unavailable. The United States Supreme Court reversed, finding that the theory of forfeiture by wrongdoing, which was employed by the California Supreme Court to find the out-of-court statement admissible, was not a recognized exception to the sixth amendment confrontation requirement. The Court held that at common law an unconfronted testimonial statement could not be admitted without a showing that the defendant intended to prevent the witness from testifying. Giles, 554 U.S. at ___, 128 S.Ct. at 2684, 171 L.Ed.2d at 497. In other words, according to the Court, for forfeiture by wrongdoing to apply, the evidence had to show that the defendant engaged in witness tampering or some type of conduct designed to prevent the witness from testifying, thwart the judicial process, or procure the witness' absence from trial. Giles, 554 U.S. at ___, 128 S.Ct. at 2683, 171 L.Ed.2d at 495-96. The Court further noted that it was not an accepted practice at the time the Constitution was adopted to admit statements on the ground that the defendant's crime was to blame for the witness' absence. The Court stated: The notion that judges may strip the defendant of a right that the Constitution deems essential to a fair trial, on the basis of a prior judicial assessment that the defendant is guilty as charged, does not sit well with the right to trial by jury. It is akin, one might say, to `dispensing with jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty.' Crawford, 541 U.S., at 62, 124 S.Ct. 1354. (Emphasis in original.) Giles, 554 U.S. at ___, 128 S.Ct. at 2686, 171 L.Ed.2d at 499. The Court's majority also rejected a suggestion by the dissent that special confrontation rules might be applicable based on the status of the victims, for example, where the victims are women in abusive relationships. The Giles majority stated: The dissent closes by pointing out that a forfeiture rule which ignores Crawford would be particularly helpful to women in abusive relationshipsor at least particularly helpful in punishing their abusers. Not as helpful as the dissent suggests, since only testimonial statements are excluded by the Confrontation Clause. Statements to friends and neighbors about abuse and intimidation, and statements to physicians in the course of receiving treatment would be excluded, if at all, only by hearsay rules, which are free to adopt the dissent's version of forfeiture by wrongdoing. In any event, we are puzzled by the dissent's decision to devote its peroration to domestic abuse cases. Is the suggestion that we should have one Confrontation Clause (the one the Framers adopted and Crawford described) for all other crimes, but a special, improvised, Confrontation Clause for those crimes that are frequently directed against women? Domestic violence is an intolerable offense that legislatures may choose to combat through many meansfrom increasing criminal penalties to adding resources for investigation and prosecution to funding awareness and prevention campaigns. But for that serious crime, as for others, abridging the constitutional rights of criminal defendants is not in the State's arsenal. (Emphasis in original.) Giles, 554 U.S. at ___, 128 S.Ct. at 2692-93, 171 L.Ed.2d at 505-06. The Giles majority conceded that domestic violence might be a relevant factor in determining whether the forfeiture-by-wrongdoing exception is applicable, stating: Acts of domestic violence often are intended to dissuade a victim from resorting to outside help, and include conduct designed to prevent testimony to police officers or cooperation in criminal prosecutions. Where such an abusive relationship culminates in murder, the evidence may support a finding that the crime expressed the intent to isolate the victim and to stop her from reporting abuse to the authorities or cooperating with a criminal prosecutionrendering her prior statements admissible under the forfeiture doctrine. Giles, 554 U.S. at ___, 128 S.Ct. at 2693, 171 L.Ed.2d at 506. Based on the above, the Giles majority makes clear that, regardless of how expedient or beneficial it might be to the victim to permit his or her unconfronted, testimonial hearsay to be admitted at trial, the right of confrontation guaranteed an accused by our Constitution must take precedence. The doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing may not be employed to deny an accused his confrontation right absent evidence that, when committing the crime or other wrongdoing, the accused was motivated by the desire to prevent the witness from testifying against him at trial. Applying Giles to the case at bar, we find no evidence that respondent ever committed any wrongdoing with the intended purpose that Von be unavailable to testify at trial. It is true that sexual abusers sometimes select children as their victims because children are generally more vulnerable to threats and coercion due to their age and immaturity. However, in the case at bar, there is no indication that when respondent sexual assaulted Von, his assault was motivated in any way by a desire to prevent Von from bearing witness against him at trial. We recognize that, according to the record, after respondent assaulted Von he made Von pinky swear not to tell anyone what happened in an attempt to keep his crime a secret. However, there is nothing in the record to indicate that when respondent extracted the promise from Von, he did so in contemplation of some future trial. Thus, whether Von's refusal to testify at trial was due to his embarrassment or because of his pinky swear to respondent is of no matter. Respondent's confrontation rights may not be abridged unless he acted with the intended purpose of procuring Von's absence from trial. Since there is no evidence that respondent intentionally committed any wrongdoing for the purpose of procuring Von's unavailability at trial, the forfeiture-by-wrongdoing doctrine is inapplicable to the case at bar. Having reached this determination, we will go on to determine whether the admission of the testimonial statements to Officer Cure and Jackie Weber, though error, was harmless.
As noted in Stechly, Crawford violations are subject to harmless-error review and the test is whether it appears beyond a reasonable doubt that the error at issue did not contribute to the verdict obtained. Stechly, 225 Ill.2d at 304, 312 Ill.Dec. 268, 870 N.E.2d 333, citing People v. Patterson, 217 Ill.2d 407, 428, 299 Ill. Dec. 157, 841 N.E.2d 889 (2005). When deciding whether error is harmless, a reviewing court may (1) focus on the error to determine whether it might have contributed to the conviction; (2) examine the other properly admitted evidence to determine whether it overwhelmingly supports the conviction; or (3) determine whether the improperly admitted evidence is merely cumulative or duplicates properly admitted evidence. Stechly, 225 Ill.2d at 304-05, 312 Ill.Dec. 268, 870 N.E.2d 333, quoting Patterson, 217 Ill.2d at 428, 299 Ill.Dec. 157, 841 N.E.2d 889, citing People v. Wilkerson, 87 Ill.2d 151, 157, 57 Ill.Dec. 628, 429 N.E.2d 526 (1981). In the case at bar, we find that the properly admitted evidence overwhelmingly supports the conviction and, for that reason, the admission of Von's testimonial statements to Officer Cure and Weber was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Unlike the situation in Stechly, here there was no inconsistency regarding the perpetrator's identity. The properly admitted testimony of Von's mother, Jacqueline M., revealed that, on the day in question, Von came home sometime after noon accompanied by respondent. Jacqueline heard respondent, who waited at the door, call to Von and ask him to come back outside. Uncharacteristically, Von declined and respondent left. Von, immediately upon arriving home, went directly to the bathroom and began to act strangely: coughing, spitting, and washing his mouth out with water. After returning to the bathroom a second time to wash his mouth out with water, Von spontaneously revealed to Jacqueline that respondent had made him suck his dick. Von's actions upon his return home, which Jacqueline witnessed, correlated to the type of sexual abuse Von said occurred and strongly indicated that the abuse occurred very recently, at a time when Von had been solely in respondent's company. Respondent admitted at trial that he alone walked Von home, through the wooded area. We find that Jacqueline's testimony about her observations of Von's behavior, in addition to her testimony regarding Von's statement to her, overwhelmingly supports the conviction in this case. We recognize that in Stechly, a case similar to the one at bar, a plurality of this court found the improper admission of testimonial statements by two witnesses was not harmless. However, the circumstances in Stechly were considerably different and distinguish Stechly from the case before us. In Stechly, the five-year-old victim, M.M., did not make an immediate outcry. Brenda Galete, M.M.'s babysitter, learned from M.M. on January 13, 1999, that Bob had sexually abused M.M. nearly a month earlier, in December 1998. Upon obtaining this information, Galete drove to where M.M.'s mother, Joan, worked and insisted that M.M. be taken to the hospital. At the hospital, M.M. told clinical specialist Ann Grote about the sexual abuse by Bob. Grote did not inquire into who Bob was. Instead, Joan identified Bob as defendant, Robert Stechly, who lived in Joan's apartment building and was, at that time, Joan's boyfriend. Subsequently, Stechly was arrested and charged with predatory criminal sexual assault, criminal sexual assault, and aggravated criminal sexual abuse of M.M. At trial, a serious question arose concerning whether M.M. had, in fact, identified defendant as her abuser. Prior to defendant's trial, at the reliability hearing, Joan testified that, on January 13, 1999, after Galete came to her place of employment and they were en route to the hospital, M.M. described an incident of sexual abuse and told her that Bob had been the perpetrator. Although M.M. only identified the abuser as Bob, Joan said she had understood M.M. to mean the defendant, Bob Stechly. At trial, however, Joan testified that, during the trip to the hospital, M.M. actually told her that Robert Stechly was the abuser, identifying him by name. This deviation in Joan's testimony became significant because Brenda Galete testified, in contradiction to Joan's testimony, that Bob Reilly, Joan's nephew, who also lived in an apartment in Joan's building, babysat M.M. a lot and that M.M. acted strangely around men in November 1998, long before the time in December 1998 when defendant babysat M.M. and allegedly abused her. Brenda Galete also testified that, on January 13, 1999, when M.M. told her about the abuse, M.M. never specified who Bob was. Further, Galete testified that she did not hear M.M. tell Joan anything about the abuse during the trip to the hospital and that she believed that there were others who had molested M.M., including Joan, M.M.'s mother. Also, although defendant had confessed to sexually abusing M.M. after his arrest, the confession was discredited at trial. It is clear from the facts above that, in Stechly, the testimony concerning M.M.'s hearsay statements was, with respect to defendant's identity, both inconsistent and the subject of some dispute. Also, as the Stechly plurality pointed out, defendant's original jury trial resulted in a mistrial because the jury was unable to reach a consensus on any of the counts. Though not dispositive, the plurality believed that this fact lent credence to the notion that the evidence of defendant's guilt was closely balanced, even when the improperly admitted evidence was taken into account. Following the mistrial, defendant was found guilty after a stipulated bench trial. The trial judge considered the same evidence heard by the jury, including the improperly admitted testimony of the hospital clinical specialist, Ann Grote, and the school social worker, Perry Yates. Grote had testified that M.M. identified her abuser only as Bob, but Yates had testified that when he interviewed M.M. at school, he began the interview by asking M.M. to tell me about Robert Stechly. The testimony of Yates, in particular, gave heightened support to the notion that M.M. had identified defendant as the perpetrator. For this reason, the improperly admitted evidence tended to resolve the controversy over the identity of M.M.'s abuser and, thus, was not simply cumulative to the properly admitted evidence. Certainly, then, the properly admitted evidence, standing alone, did not overwhelmingly establish the defendant's guilt. Unlike the situation in Stechly, in the case at bar, the properly admitted testimony of Von's mother, Jacqueline, was clear and uncontroverted. It overwhelmingly established respondent's guilt. The improperly admitted evidence was largely repetitive of the evidence presented by Jacqueline and did not resolve any material issue. We conclude, therefore, that the admission of Von's testimonial statements made to Officer Cure and Weber, though error, was, under the facts of this case, harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.