Court Opinion

ID: 9860533
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:25:14.029336+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:16:10.435279
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE McCORMICK, concurring in part and dissenting in part: I concur in the majority’s ruling that this case must be remanded for a hearing to determine Anderson’s competence to testify. On all other issues, I dissent. In section I of the opinion, the majority acknowledges the need for clear rules for law enforcement officials and courts to apply for determining whether police are permitted to question a suspect. The majority does not attempt to formulate a general rule still valid after this case which straightforwardly applies to most situations. Apparently persons applying this decision are to use the rule formulated in Michigan v. Jackson, as refined by later decisions, which hold that when a defendant invokes his right to counsel for proceedings on a criminal charge after his sixth amendment right to counsel has attached for that charge, police are not permitted to initiate any further questioning of the defendant related to that charge, and any subsequent waiver the defendant makes in interrogation on that charge is invalid. (Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. at 636, 89 L. Ed. 2d at 642, 106 S. Ct. at 1411; People v. Jackson, 198 Ill. App. 3d at 843.) The majority today adds the qualification that invocation of the right to counsel for an extradition hearing on a criminal charge does not constitute an invocation of the right to counsel for any other purposes on that charge. The majority offers no guidance for what other proceedings on a criminal charge may be like extradition, so that invocation of the right to counsel for those proceedings would not constitute an invocation of the right to counsel for any other proceedings on that charge. Law enforcement officers and courts are left to guess the reach of the decision announced today. The majority observes that the precise argument defendant advances on his first issue has not been decided in prior cases. (263 Ill. App. 3d at 69.) The majority then adopts the dicta from Lynch, without giving any persuasive reason for doing so. The majority suggests that because "extradition proceedings on the charges” (263 Ill. App. 3d at 67) do not constitute "a part of the underlying criminal prosecution” (263 Ill. App. 3d at 67) on those charges, invocation of the right to counsel for extradition proceedings on criminal charges does not constitute invocation of the right to counsel for any other proceedings on those charges. The majority does not explain how this holding can be reconciled with the direction in Michigan v. Jackson that we, the judges of this country’s courts, are to "give a broad, rather than a narrow, interpretation to a defendant’s request for counsel — we presume that the defendant requests the lawyer’s services at every critical stage of the prosecution.” (Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. at 633, 89 L. Ed. 2d at 640, 106 S. Ct. at 1409.) On that basis the Supreme Court said: "We thus reject the State’s suggestion that respondents’ requests for the appointment of counsel should be construed to apply only to representation in formal legal proceedings.” Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. at 633, 89 L. Ed. 2d at 640-41, 106 S. Ct. at 1409. The majority points out that some of the constitutional implications of extradition proceedings are distinct from the constitutional implications of other court proceedings on criminal charges. (263 Ill. App. 3d at 67-68.) Extradition proceedings are, however, as the majority tacitly acknowledges, part of the proceedings in court on criminal charges. The Uniform Criminal Extradition Act (725 ILCS 225/1 et seq. (West 1992); Ind. Code § 35—33—10—3) requires the State demanding extradition to attach to its demand an authenticated copy of the indictment or other charging document which must charge the person to be extradited with a crime under the laws of the State demanding extradition. (725 ILCS 225/3 (West 1992).) Where the document fails to charge a crime the extradition fails. (People ex rel. Rukavina v. Sain (1961), 22 Ill. 2d 546, 548-49, 177 N.E.2d 110.) Thus, extradition proceedings are part of the formal legal proceedings on the criminal charge. I would find that the clearest rule consistent with prior case law and the presumption restated in Michigan v. Jackson is that when a defendant invokes his right to counsel for any proceedings on a criminal charge after his sixth amendment right to counsel has attached for that charge, police are not permitted to initiate any further questioning of the defendant related to the charge, and any subsequent waiver defendant makes in interrogation on that charge initiated by police is invalid. I would not make the rule hinge on the majority’s distinction between the parts of the criminal prosecution and other legal proceedings on the criminal charge. Nor would I make a special exception for extradition proceedings. Under the rule I propose defendant invoked his right to counsel for all proceedings on this charge by accepting representation by counsel for the extradition hearing on this charge. Therefore, his subsequent waiver of counsel during interrogation initiated by police was invalid, and his statement to the police should have been suppressed. Because of the extensive use the prosecutor made of this statement in closing argument and the closely balanced evidence in this case, I would find that the improper admission of the statement into evidence could have affected the verdict, so the case must be remanded for retrial without the improperly admitted evidence. See People v. Graham (1989), 179 Ill. App. 3d 496, 508-09, 534 N.E.2d 1382; People v. Hoddenbach (1983), 116 Ill. App. 3d 57, 61, 452 N.E.2d 32. On the second issue, the majority finds that the trial court "failed to take adequate steps to determine relevance” of Anderson’s testimony. (263 Ill. App. 3d at 71.) The trial court here listened to defense counsel’s offer of proof that Anderson would testify that on October 19, 1988, he met Brandon, Brian and Jay in an apartment, and Jay said, "let’s go get some money.” They got in Brandon’s car and went to the Mobil station in Calumet City. Jay carried a large dark automatic handgun into the station. A few minutes later Anderson heard one loud shot, then Jay came back to the car and re-cocked his gun. Our supreme court ruled: "[A]n adequate offer of proof is made if counsel makes known to the trial court, with particularity, the substance of the witness’ anticipated answer. [Citation.] An offer of proof that merely summarizes the witness’ testimony in a conclusory manner is inadequate. *** The offer serves no purpose if it does not demonstrate, both to the trial court and to reviewing courts, the admissibility of the testimony.” (People v. Andrews (1992), 146 Ill. 2d 413, 421, 588 N.E.2d 1126.) Thus, counsel may apprise the court of the substance of the testimony in an adequate offer of proof, as long as the offer includes sufficient detail for the courts to determine whether it is admissible. The trial court did not err by attempting to determine the relevance of the testimony on the basis of the detailed facts presented by defense counsel’s offer of proof. The court erred only in its assessment of relevance. As the majority admits, "[t]he testimony would place Jay at the crime scene near the time of the murder with a gun of the kind used to kill Hoch. The testimony did not concern events remote in time or place, and jurors would not need to speculate to connect the shot Anderson said he heard to this crime.” (263 Ill. App. 3d at 71.) This is quite sufficient to establish relevance. When witnesses have presented similar testimony on the State’s behalf, courts have found the evidence very relevant, and prosecutors have argued that such testimony alone is overwhelming evidence of a defendant’s guilt. See, e.g., People v. Saunders (1991), 220 Ill. App. 3d 647, 658-59, 669, 580 N.E.2d 1246. The majority correctly observes that impeachment evidence the State offered goes only to the weight, not the relevance or admissibility on any other grounds, of the evidence. The court had an adequate basis for determining relevance, but it abused its discretion by holding the evidence irrelevant. (Wilson, 149 Ill. App. 3d 293, 500 N.E.2d 128.) On remand I would direct the court to determine Anderson’s competence to testify. The court could, in its discretion, take evidence concerning the relevance of Anderson’s testimony, but I would not order it to do so. The majority finally holds that the prosecutor made no improper remarks, although the majority also cites law that even improper remarks will not be grounds for reversal if the remarks were not likely to have affected the result "in light of overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt.” (263 Ill. App. 3d at 73.) The majority stops short of applying the rule to this case, as it does not hold that the evidence here was overwhelming. Nonetheless, the statement of law pertinent to cases with such overwhelming evidence appears to be the sole reason for the majority’s extended recitation of extraordinarily detailed facts which have no bearing at all on the majority’s resolution of the first two issues in this case, and little relevance to the final issue if the majority relies solely on its apparent holding that the prosecutor’s remarks were proper. The evidence in this case is far from overwhelming. The State’s case hinged largely on the credibility of Hlinko’s testimony at trial, which was inconsistent with all of his many pretrial statements, some of which he made under oath. On March 2, 1989, police arrested Todd Hlinko for selling narcotics. Hlinko was then on probation for aggravated battery. After eight hours of questioning Hlinko signed a document stating that he, Sam Ilich, and defendant drove John Miller’s car to the Mobil station on October 19, 1988, and defendant went into the station alone. They drove back to defendant’s family’s home, where both Hlinko and defendant lived. At the house Hlinko saw that defendant had a purse. Defendant said it belonged to a girl named Sam. Defendant kept the purse by his bed that night. Hlinko told several people, including his mother and his attorney, that he signed the statement because police beat him. Police arrested Hlinko again on March 16, 1989, and asked him whether his statements of March 2 were true. Hlinko first said they were true. Some hours later he said that the statement he gave on March 2 was false. Hlinko claimed that he had stayed home while defendant went out with some people Hlinko did not know. Hlinko next told police that he, defendant and Ilich drove to the Mobil station, but he stayed in the car while they went in. They drove around, and defendant and Ilich threw things out of the car. Hlinko did not see a purse. They dropped Ilich off at his home before returning to defendant’s home. Hlinko wrote to defendant on April 28, 1989, while defendant was in jail in Indiana, that the police beat Hlinko and gave him a black eye. He apologized to defendant for lying to police about defendant on March 2 and March 16. Hlinko later signed an affidavit in which he swore that the statements he made to police on March 2 and March 16 were false, and he made the statements because of police threats and abuse. When he told police that he did not know about the murder, they beat him until he signed the statements they wanted. Hlinko did not come up with the story which he told, under oath, at trial until the State began his prosecution of the narcotics charge. The State tried Hlinko first on the charge of violating probation based on the sale of narcotics. Hlinko knew that the court could sentence him for two to five years’ imprisonment on the charge. Without any agreement with the State, Hlinko pleaded guilty to violation of probation. The court sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment. The State next proceeded on the charge of selling narcotics, for which the court could sentence Hlinko to a term of 4 to 15 years’ imprisonment. Prosecutors offered Hlinko a sentence of no more than eight years’ imprisonment on the narcotics charge in exchange for testimony against defendant, but the prosecutors would not ask the court to make the eight years’ imprisonment concurrent with the term for violating probation. Hlinko refused the deal. Hlinko and defendant stayed in the Cook County Department of Corrections pending trial. Hlinko wrote a note to defendant on July 2, 1990, telling him that prosecutors asked him to lie and testify against defendant in a trial for murder. By this time a jury had acquitted Ilich on all charges related to the murder and armed robbery. Prosecutors realized that they might wind up with no convictions for a brutal crime which attracted considerable local publicity if they could not strengthen the case against one of the remaining defendants. In October 1990 prosecutors offered Hlinko, in exchange for his testimony against defendant, five years on the narcotics charge, concurrent with the probation violation, and the State would drop the armed robbery and murder charges. Hlinko agreed. The majority points out that at defendant’s trial Hlinko testified that he rejected the State’s initial offer out of loyalty to defendant. His subsequent acceptance of the better offer shows the price for that loyalty. The State could not procure Hlinko’s testimony solely by agreeing not to prosecute him for murder and armed robbery, although his new testimony would establish that he was involved closely with defendant at all stages of the crime. The State also needed to give Hlinko a deal on narcotics charges, for which Hlinko had already pleaded guilty in probation revocation proceedings, so that under the deal Hlinko would serve not one day extra for the narcotics crime itself, although he faced a prison term of up 15 years’ imprisonment on that charge. Hlinko admitted at trial that he had, throughout the investigation of this case, told many lies, some under oath, to try to avoid criminal liability. With the offer from the State, when he gave the testimony prosecutors wanted, he escaped all criminal liability for the murder, the armed robbery and the unrelated narcotics charge. The deal gave him a strong reason to lie and say that he knew something about the murder even if he knew nothing at all and faced no criminal liability for that crime. Police were unable to verify any part of the information they obtained from Hlinko with any physical evidence. The police already had the purse before they spoke to Hlinko. Hlinko did not account for the purse appearing where Mainwaring found it in any of the stories he told before he cut the deal with prosecutors; then he testified that he saw defendant put the purse in a trash container in the same area where Mainwaring discovered it. Police conducted a thorough search of the Calumet River near the bridge from which Hlinko said he threw the gun. The search spanned a large area and police uncovered several guns which were not used in this crime. Police were unable to find any gun which could have been used in this crime. Neither could the fingerprint expert find any fingerprints on items in Hoch’s purse to support Hlinko’s story. She found 16 latent prints suitable for comparison on items in Hoch’s purse. Eight prints belonged to Hoch. She testified that the remaining eight prints did not match the fingerprints of defendant, Ilich, Hlinko or Mainwaring. She made no further effort to determine who other than the victim, the defendant and his alleged cohorts, and the man who found the purse, left those eight fingerprints. The State obtained some corroboration for Hlinko’s testimony from Shane Miller, whose trial testimony matched his original statement to police. Shane Miller also swore in an affidavit that his original statement was all lies which he told police because they beat him. He testified at trial, under oath, that he did not read the affidavit retracting his original statement before signing it. Although two of Shane Miller’s statements are largely consistent with each other, they contradict Hlinko’s testimony in several respects. Shane remembered going directly from his house to defendant’s house; Hlinko remembered a stop at the Mobil station in between. Shane saw no one at the house; Hlinko remembered that they saw defendant’s father. Shane said he went straight to defendant’s bedroom, and he has never used the bathroom in defendant’s house; Hlinko said that Shane stopped to use the bathroom, and defendant first implicated himself when he was with only Hlinko in his bedroom. Brian Spodach also contradicted Shane’s testimony that Spodach gave him a ride home. Allen Martin also provided important corroboration for Hlinko’s testimony, because only Martin and Hlinko said they saw defendant near the scene at the time of the crime. Martin testified that he saw Hlinko in the driver’s seat of the car and waved. Martin admitted that Bill Ward, an attorney for defendant, asked him if he was Allen Martin because he wanted to speak to Martin about the case. Martin denied that he was Martin three times before finally admitting who he was. Ward testified that Martin told him he got into a fight with Hlinko and defendant at the Mobil station on October 19, 1988. Martin testified that he did not tell Ward he got into a fight at the station. Martin’s testimony contradicted Ward’s and Hlinko’s on most points. Martin said he waved to Hlinko, but Hlinko did not mention seeing Martin; Martin said Hlinko was driving, but Hlinko said defendant drove. The record also includes an indication that the register tape may have contradicted Martin’s testimony that he made a purchase at the Mobil station. The evidence in this case in many respects closely parallels the evidence in People v. Williams (1991), 147 Ill. 2d 173, 588 N.E.2d 983. In that case, Paula Gray testified before the grand jury that she was with the defendant when he shot the victims. At a preliminary hearing she recanted her entire grand jury testimony. She was indicted for participating in the murders and for perjury. At her trial she repeated her recantation of her grand jury testimony. She was convicted of murder and perjury, but she successfully appealed. (Williams, 147 Ill. 2d at 196-98.) On remand the State dropped the murder charges, and Gray testified for the State against defendant at his trial. Her testimony closely reflected her testimony before the grand jury. The court sentenced her to two years’ probation for perjury. (Williams, 147 Ill. 2d at 198, 206-07.) Hlinko, like Gray, at first made statements implicating defendant, then, under oath, retracted those statements, and finally, in exchange for dismissal of the murder charge, testified against defendant. Another witness in Williams testified that he saw defendant on the night of the murders in a group of people who went into the abandoned building where police later found one of the victims. When a crowd gathered to watch police investigating the crime scene, the defendant joined the crowd and the witness heard him make statements implying that he participated in the crime. Martin, like the witness in Williams, placed defendant at the crime scene near the time of the crime. Shane Miller, also like that witness, heard the defendant make statements implicating himself in the crime. In this case, as in Williams, the prosecution presented no physical evidence tying defendant to the murder scene. This case differs from Williams in three important respects. First, defendant here more extensively impeached all important witnesses for the State, and the principal witness here cut a much better deal than Gray, a deal which could have motivated him to falsely implicate himself in this crime to receive the benefit of no sentence for an unrelated crime. Second, defendant presented an alibi through largely consistent testimony of several witnesses. Third, police obtained exculpatory statements from defendant which, to some extent, undercut his alibi. Our supreme court found the evidence in Williams closely balanced. (Williams, 147 Ill. 2d at 223.) The State’s case here is no stronger. Hlinko’s testimony, like Gray’s, is sufficient to support the conviction if the jury chose to believe it, but the evidence is closely balanced. To tip the balance in their favor and obtain a conviction for this murder, the prosecutors made several remarks in closing argument which went beyond the bounds of acceptable comment on the evidence. The prosecutor argued that defendant failed to present "the nine people qualified” to support his alibi. Of the nine people defendant testified he saw at his sister’s home on the night of the murder, defendant’s sister, her ex-boyfriend, and Tony Rodriguez testified for defendant; Hlinko, his ex-girlfriend Lisa Majszak and her cousin Cory testified for the prosecution; and two of the remaining three were the small children for whom defendant baby-sat. Only one competent witness who could have corroborated defendant’s alibi did not testify here, and that one was Manny Raíces. The prosecutor misleadingly implied a far greater failure to present witnesses, apparently in the hope that with numerous witnesses giving lengthy testimony to inconsistent stories throughout trial, the jury would be unable to organize the precise evidence presented and would accept instead the prosecutor’s implicit false assertion that many of the persons who defendant said he saw on the night of the murder were not called to testify. The prosecutor further argued that defendant should have asked Pullyblank about the alibi, although the prosecutor conceded that, according to the alibi, Pullyblank remained passed out in Rodriguez’s car while Rodriguez went into Kobak’s home and talked to defendant. Defendant did present Pullyblank as a witness, and Fully-blank’s failure to remember the evening does not impeach defendant’s alibi any more than it impeaches Hlinko’s testimony that Pullyblank and his girlfriend came over to defendant’s home late that night. The prosecutor accused defense counsel of "trying to get [Shane Miller and Allen Martin] to change their testimony.” The record contains no evidence that defendant or his counsel had any contact with Shane Miller regarding this case. Shane Miller testified that he signed the affidavit which was inconsistent with his trial testimony at the behest of Hlinko’s mother. The State presented no basis for attributing Hlinko’s mother’s conduct to the defense here. The prosecutor apparently interpreted Bill Ward’s proper attempt to interview a crucial witness, Allen Martin, as a highly improper attempt to get him to alter truthful testimony. A remark which " 'charge[s] counsel with fabrication of a defense bordering on subornation of perjury’ [citation] is beyond the scope of allowable comment.” (Phillips, 127 Ill. 2d at 525, quoting People v. Emerson (1983), 97 Ill. 2d 487, 499, 455 N.E.2d 41.) Arguments charging defense counsel with such "trickery tend to deprive the accused of a fair trial.” People v. Brown (1983), 113 Ill. App. 3d 625, 630, 447 N.E.2d 1011. In light of the closely balanced evidence, I cannot say that the prosecutor’s remarks did not tip the balance in the State’s favor. I would find the remarks another basis for reversal for retrial.