Court Opinion

ID: 9717937
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:13:04.663235+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:56.188702
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE McMORROW, dissenting: The primary issue presented in this case is whether the admission of evidence concerning gang membership and the State’s use of that evidence was so prejudicial as to deprive defendant of a fair trial and due process. The majority today holds that evidence of gang membership and the occurrence of the crime in the territorial turf of a rival gang to that of which defendant is a member is relevant to show motive for an otherwise inexplicable crime. The appellate court in this case held, "We reverse defendant’s conviction because the State improperly introduced extensive gang evidence without the proper showing of relevancy and continually promoted a gang motive for the shooting so that evidence of gang membership completely pervaded defendant’s trial and deprived defendant of a fair and impartial hearing.” (Emphasis added.) 249 Ill. App. 3d 141, 143. The majority reverses the appellate court, holding, in effect, that even in the absence of a showing that gang evidence was relevant, the mere fact, established by police testimony, that defendant was a member or past member of a gang, and that the crime occurred in rival gang territory, is sufficient to justify the introduction of extensive prejudicial gang testimony, jury instructions, and argument to provide a motive for the crime. On the law applicable to the facts of this case, the majority holding is contrary to established precedent of this court. Further, the erroneous admission of gang evidence and jury instructions to support the State’s theory was not harmless error. For these reasons, I dissent. The gang evidence admitted at trial, and noted in the majority opinion, was comprised of the following: the State witnesses to the crime were all members of the Latin Kings street gang; the murder victim was not a member of any gang; the defendant told a police officer the day before the shooting that he was a member of the Imperial Gangsters street gang; and the second day after the shooting the defendant told another officer that he was a former member of the Imperial Gangsters gang; the shooting occurred in front of a school which was located in Latin Kings gang territory; defendant’s home was located in Imperial Gangsters territory; the hospital where the murder victim was taken was located in Imperial Gangsters territory; and the Latin Kings and Imperial Gangsters gangs are rivals, or in opposition to each other. On the basis of the foregoing, the trial court and majority of this court conclude that a gang motive for the murder may be established. However, the record is devoid of any evidence that this crime was gang motivated: at no time — before, during, or after the shooting in the instant case — was there any indication that the crime was gang related or motivated. There was no evidence of gang signs or gang symbols. There was no evidence of defendant’s participation in or knowledge of a gang conspiracy or prior meetings with gang members. There was no evidence that the shootings or killing was planned by a gang; there was no evidence of gang retaliation for rival gang members’ aggression or violence. There is nothing in the record to indicate or remotely suggest that the shootings were gang endorsed. Thus, the evidence of gang membership and the territorial turfs of the opposing gangs was not legally relevant and should have been excluded. In the instant case, the evidence connecting defendant to gang activity was admitted through the testimony of two officers who claimed that defendant admitted being a past or current member of a gang which is rival to that of the victims. Does the circumstance that defendant’s home or the hospital to which the victims were taken happened to be in a location that was "controlled” by the Imperial Gangsters, or that he belonged to that gang, provide a proper basis on which to permit the jury to infer that defendant participated in an Imperial Gangster-related drive-by shooting of a group of Hispanics in a Latin King neighborhood? Stated another way, the ultimate question is whether it is relevant to admit police officers’ opinion testimony, derived from their general knowledge of gangs’ territories and hostilities, as bearing on a given defendant’s state of mind, i.e., motive, for an act such as a drive-by shooting, in the absence of any independent evidence of that defendant’s motive. In People v. Smith (1990), 141 Ill. 2d 40, this court held that the State was required to prove the defendant’s knowledge of the gang’s plan before the State could use gang-related evidence as bearing on defendant’s motive for the crime charged. In the case at bar, the State offered no evidence that defendant had knowledge of a gang plan. No gang plan evidence was introduced at trial. The existence of generalized gang rivalry over territory and the unstated assumption that some gang members engage in drive-by shootings to carry out gang wars have been substituted by the majority for the concrete link, established in Smith, that must be made between this defendant and the crime of which he is accused. (See also People v. Easley (1992), 148 Ill. 2d 281, 324-32 (where this court held that evidence relating to prison gangs should not have been admitted because the State failed to establish defendant’s participation in and knowledge of an alleged gang conspiracy to kill the victim); cf. People v. Lucas (1992), 151 Ill. 2d 461, 479 (holding that the State adequately demonstrated the relevance of defendant’s gang-related motive by presenting evidence that defendant admitted his membership in the gang, he knew of the plan to retaliate against prison officials for the death of another gang member, and he had attended a meeting where the conspiracy was discussed).) In People v. Maldonado (1992), 240 Ill. App. 3d 470, 476-77, the court cited to Smith, Easley and Lucas and noted that, in cases where evidence of gang membership has been held to be admissible, the factual circumstances "revealed substantial gang-induced involvement in the crime coupled with the accused’s knowledge of those facts.” In People v. Goldsberry (1994), 259 Ill. App. 3d 11, the appellate court reversed a defendant’s conviction for second degree murder because of the trial court’s erroneous denial of the defendant’s motion in limine to exclude his notebooks, which contained depictions of gang insignia and rap lyrics with gang themes. The court noted that the State failed to show how the notebooks, which implied gang membership, established a motive for the murder. The majority opinion held that the challenge to evidence which is purportedly offered to prove motive requires the circuit court to determine "whether defendant’s gang affiliation is related to the crime charged.” (Emphasis in original.) (Goldsberry, 259 Ill. App. 3d at 16, citing Smith, 141 Ill. 2d at 58; People v. Rivera (1986), 145 Ill. App. 3d 609, 618.) The court found that even though the contents of defendant’s notebooks were, according to a State’s expert, "consistent” with defendant’s membership in a gang which was rival to that of the shooting victim, no evidence linked a gang motive to defendant’s shooting of the victim. The majority’s holding in the case at bar is couched in terms of deferring to the trial court’s discretion in admitting the gang testimony. The majority cites Smith in support of its holding that evidence of gang motive was admissible because the evidence "provided a motive for an otherwise inexplicable act.” Smith does not stand for such a sweeping principle. On the contrary, the Smith court reversed a conviction obtained by the State’s introduction of gang-related evidence to support its motive theory. Moreover, the majority selectively fails to state that in the sentence immediately following that upon which the majority relies, the Smith court stated: "Such evidence, however, is only admissible where there is sufficient proof that such membership or activity is related to the crime charged. ” (Emphasis added.) (Smith, 141 Ill. 2d at 58, citing, e.g., People v. Hairston (1970), 46 Ill. 2d 348, 372.) The majority opinion’s omission of the second sentence leaves the impression that if a shooting appears to be random or motiveless, all that is required to establish the relationship of a gang motive to the crime charged is evidence that the shooting occurred on the turf of one gang, and that the defendant was affiliated with a rival gang. The Easley and Smith cases have rejected the automatic assumption of guilt based on membership in undesirable groups. In a proper case, gang-related evidence should be admitted. If the prosecutor introduces evidence linking the crime with which defendant is charged to specific gang action, and if the evidence shows that defendant was aware that gang activity was involved, then the gang-related evidence is admissible. (Lucas, 151 Ill. 2d 461; People v. Johnson (1994), 159 Ill. 2d 97.) Conversely, where the evidence does not link the crime in any way to specific gang antisocial activity, or where the evidence does not show that defendant was aware that gang activity was involved, then introduction by the State of gang-related evidence to supply a gang motive to an otherwise inexplicable act is improper and highly prejudicial to defendant. See 1 S. Gard, Illinois Evidence Manual Rules 4:03, 4:04, at 152-54 (2d ed. 1979). Not only is the probative value of such evidence outweighed by its prejudicial impact, this inflammatory evidence permits the jury to draw insupportable inferences of guilt by association. Such evidence may be violative of defendant’s first and fourteenth amendment associational rights under the Federal Constitution, if defendant’s gang association had no bearing or connection to the crime (see Dawson v. Delaware (1992), 503 U.S. 159, 117 L. Ed. 2d 309, 112 S. Ct. 1093). In Dawson, the United States Supreme Court, with eight Justices concurring, noted that the first amendment protects an individual’s right to join groups and associate with others holding similar béliefs. After noting that a defendant’s right to associate with a gang is constitutionally protected, although not without limitation, the Court held that defendant’s membership in the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremist gang active in many prisons, including where defendant Dawson was imprisoned, was not tied in any way to the murder and shooting of which he was convicted. The defendant’s Aryan Brotherhood membership proved nothing more than the defendant’s abstract beliefs. The Court held that defendant Dawson’s first and fourteenth amendment rights were violated by the admission of evidence that defendant was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood and that the evidence had no relevance to the issues being decided in the proceedings. 'Was admission of gang membership, rival gangs, and gang territory evidence harmless error in this case? Clearly, it was not. The majority characterizes the evidence in this case as "overwhelming.” (162 Ill. 2d at 32.) I disagree. The first trial resulted in an acquittal on the attempted murder charge, and a hung jury on the murder charge. No physical evidence against the defendant was introduced at trial to tie defendant to the crime. The murder weapon was not produced. When defendant was stopped while driving his car and asked to go to the police station, police described him as polite and cooperative; he informed them he wished to notify his employer that he would be detained. The record discloses no inculpatory statements by defendant regarding the shooting incident. The only statements police attributed to defendant related to his current and past membership in the Imperial Gangsters street gang. The identification evidence was conflicting, unconvincing, and its credibility questionable. Particularly troublesome is the evidence regarding identification of the defendant as the shooter. The crime took place close to midnight, and the evidence with respect to lighting at the scene was conflicting. The defendant was identified as the driver of the car, under questionable circumstances, by members of a rival gang. The occurrence witnesses’ ability to observe the driver of the car and the other occupants was disputed. After the shooting, the occurrence witnesses drove the victim to the hospital and spoke to police investigators. The statements the witnesses gave to the police at the hospital were inconsistent in many respects from their testimony at trial. None of the State’s witnesses knew the defendant, and none described, in the aftermath of the shooting, such features as his moustache and rather long hair. The State’s witnesses merely testified that the shots came from the driver’s side window of the car. Deandre Jackson testified he saw the barrel of the gun, but not the handle. He admitted he did not see the actual shooting. Jackson’s identification of defendant as the driver was supported by his claim that he saw defendant’s face, before the shooting, for four to five seconds, from 10 to 12 feet away. However, Deandre Jackson was not able to provide the investigating police officers with a description of the offender, or even his race. Deandre Jackson testified at the first trial he saw other people in the car, but was not able to identify them. At the first trial, Jackson admitted he could not see others in the car "because everything happened too fast.” In the instant trial, Jackson insisted he was able to observe defendant in the driver’s seat, because after the multiple shots rang out, those at the scene of the crime fell to the ground or fled, but he, Jackson, stood up, in full view of the car and shooter, to observe while the car remained there for approximately 10 seconds before leaving the shooting scene. This testimony appears to be highly questionable, in view of other testimony that the car sped off and travelled about 21h blocks in the seconds following the shooting. It is also difficult to reconcile Jackson’s claim of observing defendant for 10 seconds following the shooting with his statement to Detective Johnson that he could not even determine the race of the driver of the car. At the hospital following the shooting, Daniel Rivera told Detective Johnson that he saw "two male white Hispanics in the front seat with the driver shooting.” At trial, Rivera testified that he saw a man whom he did not recognize put his head out the window of the car from which the shooting occurred, and that he viewed him for approximately 10 seconds. However, during cross-examination, Rivera’s credibility was impeached by his conflicting answers when asked whether he saw who was firing the gun: he said he saw the driver stick his head out of the window; he claimed that he saw who was firing; then he said he saw the gun, but not the face of the individual who was firing the pistol. Rivera was further impeached by his statements from the prior hearing, that he did not see any shots being fired. Nathan Iverson, another witness to the shooting, was unable to make an identification. All of the State’s occurrence witnesses admitted to having robbery convictions or pending charges, and all admitted their membership in the Latin Kings, a rival gang of the Imperial Gangsters street gang, to which defendant may have belonged. The police conducted two lineups in this case. In the first lineup, which was conducted on September 4, the day following the shooting, the lineup consisted of five black males. There were no Hispanics in this lineup. The record indicates that Gabriel Gonzales, who did not testify at Colon’s trial, identified one of the men in this lineup as a passenger in the rear of the car involved in the shooting. On September 5, the police conducted a second lineup, which included defendant and other Hispanic males. Defendant was identified in that lineup by Rivera and Jackson, even though their opportunity to view the shooter had been extremely limited, and even though the day prior to the lineup identification, Jackson could not describe the shooter, or even identify the race of the shooter. Over defense objections at trial, the court allowed the State to ask Officer Paulnitsky whether Gabriel Gonzales and Marvin King, individuals who were at the scene of the shooting but who did not testify at trial, made an identification during the second lineup on September 5. The police officer responded, "Yes.” Since the defendant was charged and on trial for the murder, the jury would be prompted to believe that King and Gonzales had identified the defendant in the lineup. This hearsay identification of defendant, which was not subject to cross-examination, was error capable of causing significant prejudice to defendant. The evidence was not closely balanced, and the error should not be characterized as harmless. The majority opinion in the instant case, without identifying the basis for its conclusion that the evidence against defendant was overwhelming, and without discussing the discrepancies and impeachments in the evidence, merely states that the evidence against Colon was "overwhelming.” The appellate court did not think so. The first jury (the "hung” jury that acquitted Colon of attempted murder) apparently did not think the evidence was overwhelming, either. Nor do I think the evidence was overwhelming. The evidence linking Colon to the shooting does not appear so overwhelming as to render harmless the State’s injection of gang evidence into the trial. I agree with the majority that the evidence of the second alleged drive-by shooting, at the hospital, was improperly introduced because the defendant was not charged with that shooting, and there was no evidence connecting defendant to that shooting. I agree that the introduction of this evidence was error, but I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the error was harmless. I agree with the appellate court majority’s reasoning that the trial court committed error in its instructions to the jury with regard to statements made by the defendant. No purpose is served for me to elaborate further on that error in this opinion. The issue before this court is whether defendant received a fair trial. The appellate court majority’s review of the record led to its conclusion that the improperly admitted gang evidence pervaded the entire trial. The prosecutor in his opening statement told the jury that the shooting happened because of gang rivalry and asked the jury "by your verdict to stop the senseless killing.” In rebuttal closing, the State told the jury that its verdict "will tell the defendant and the other gangs that this conduct is not tolerated in our city.” The jury was invited to put gangs on trial, rather than the individual accused of the crime. The State’s theory of gang-related motive was not supported by the evidence presented at trial. There was nothing in the evidence which, even to a slight degree, establishes the existence of the motive for the crime charged. The cumulative impact of the incompetent evidence of gang membership, territorial gang rivalry, erroneous instructions, and the prosecutor’s comments may have prejudiced the jury and constituted a factor in defendant’s conviction. In reversing defendant’s conviction on grounds of trial error, the appellate court majority in the case at bar stated: "We follow the supreme court’s rulings in Lucas, Easley and Smith that find there must be sufficient evidence demonstrating that the crime at issue was related to gang involvement or gang activity and that the defendant was aware that gang activity was involved. Lucas, 151 Ill. 2d at 480; Easley, 148 Ill. 2d at 326; Smith, 141 Ill. 2d at 58.” 249 Ill. App. 3d at 146-47. If the majority now rejects this court’s own prior analysis concerning the necessity to show the relevance of gang activity on motive, and the defendant’s knowledge that gang activity is involved, the majority should state that intention directly. To reverse the appellate court, when it explicitly relied upon precedent of this court, without even explaining why the appellate court erroneously followed this court’s reasoning, muddles the law that applies to the admission of gang-related evidence. Smith, Easley, and Lucas provide the architecture for a solid analytical structure, designed around basic principles of evidence and fair trial, to guide the courts of this State in ruling on the admissibility of gang-related evidence. The majority ignores the rationale of these cases by simply declaring the challenged evidence in the case at bar admissible as relevant to provide a general motive of gang warfare. However, the existence of generalized gang rivalry over territory has been improperly substituted by the majority for the concrete link that must be made between the particular defendant on trial, the crime of which he is accused, and gang connection. The Supreme Court of Illinois has in the past acknowledged that the highly prejudicial nature of gang evidence requires that a proffered gang motive must be tied to the crime charged, instead of appealing to the public’s fear and general loathing of gangs. (E.g., Smith.) Given the climate of the times and the serious gang problems in Chicago, it is easy to recite in the instant case, as did the majority, that the trial court did not "abuse its discretion.” But that merely begs the issue presented in the instant case. By failing to analyze this court’s heretofore controlling precedents on the admissibility of gang-related motive evidence and failing to provide a reasoned ground for departing therefrom, the majority abdicates its guiding role and leaves the courts and lawyers of this State uncertain as to whether this court is adopting a new, ill-defined — or totally undefined — standard which permits the admission at trial of gang-related evidence, based solely on a defendant’s alleged membership in a gang and his location in a rival gang’s territory during the commission of the crime, to supply a motive for the crime. The uncertainty created by. the majority’s ruling is exacerbated by the fact that the appellate court, in its explicit reliance upon this court’s pronouncements in Smith, Easley and Lucas, has been reversed. The principles and viability of those cases has now become questionable. When a case such as the one at bar presents itself for judicial evaluation, the bar and bench deserve a more thorough analysis than the ruling by judicial fiat presented in the majority opinion. This court’s rulings in Smith, Easley, and Lucas are consistent with principles of due process and fair trial. Unlike the majority, I adhere to the prior rulings established by this court in those cases. The appellate court’s holding that defendant is entitled to a new trial should be affirmed. For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.