Court Opinion

ID: 9742379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:12:18.270149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:32.051298
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE TULLY, dissenting: I must respectfully dissent from the majority’s view that the admission of gang-related evidence warrants reversal of defendant’s conviction. The majority’s reliance upon People v. Easley is misplaced. As the majority correctly notes, the State is not obliged to prove motive in order to sustain a murder conviction; however, where the State chooses to prove motive and the motive the State undertakes to prove is conspiracy, then “it must be shown that the accused knew of those facts” comprising the conspiracy. (Easley, 148 Ill. 2d at 326-27.) In Easley, the State proceeded on the theory that a prison inmate, Easley, acted in accordance with a gang conspiracy to murder the victim, a correctional officer. Because the State could not prove that defendant had been invited to gang meetings or otherwise prove defendant’s participation in or knowledge of the conspiracy, the admission of gang membership was held erroneous. Thus, when the State undertakes to prove facts which the State asserts constitute a motive for the crime charged, it must be shown that the accused knew of those facts. (See People v. Smith (1990), 141 Ill. 2d 40, 565 N.E.2d 908.) In Smith, the court held gang-related evidence to be inadmissible, where there was no basis to infer that defendant knew about a particular gang conflict or was in fact associated with any gang. In the instant case, the State did not undertake to prove any particular plot or conspiratorial theory, which would have required specified actions or knowledge by defendant. Rather, the State proceeded on a much simpler, straightforward theory: that defendant, who by his own admission was a member of the Imperial Gangsters, entered the territory controlled by a rival gang, the Latin Kings, and upon seeing members of the Latin Kings sitting on a car in front of Lowell School, fired a round of shots from a passing car. Aside from a gang motive, this was an otherwise inexplicable murder. Moreover, the theory of a gang-related shooting was further corroborated by the subsequent unexplained shooting of the victims by a third, unrelated gang as they left the hospital where they had been treated. The hospital was located within the territory controlled by the gang known as the Dragons. The Dragons are allied with the Imperial Gangsters and are rivals of the Latin Kings. Any evidence which tends to show that the accused had a motive for killing the victim is relevant. In order for such evidence to be competent, it must, at least to a slight degree, tend to establish the existence of the motive relied upon. Moreover, gang-related evidence has been held admissible where gang rivalry is the central motive in a case. See People v. Campbell (1992), 232 Ill. App. 3d 597, 597 N.E.2d 820. It would behoove the majority to recognize that gang members ruthlessly control and terrorize large portions of the City of Chicago and have brought about the demise of many decent neighborhoods. Gangs engage in the bloodthirsty, senseless killing of rival gang members simply because of their status in a rival gang or because they have entered territory controlled by a rival gang. The motive of the State in this instance is a general motive of territorial gang warfare unlike the very specific motive in the Easley case, where the State alleged the existence of a specific plot to kill the victim. The evidence presented at trial sufficiently proved that defendant was a member of the Imperial Gangsters, that the victims were members of the Latin Kings and that the shooting took place on the territory of the Latin Kings. The State also sufficiently proved that defendant was aware of all of these facts. Therefore, evidence as to gang membership and territorial control was properly introduced to show that this was a gang-motivated shooting.