Court Opinion

ID: 9745871
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 13:38:04.661755+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:05.517495
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE GARCIA, concurring: While I agree completely with Justice Wolfson’s opinion, because I find the prosecutor’s use of previously suppressed statements borders on prosecutorial misconduct, I comment on the prosecutor’s rebuttal argument to the jury to make clear it should not happen again. See People v. Gilmer, 110 Ill. App. 2d 73, 79, 249 N.E.2d 129 (1969) (State’s intent in its argument to the jury was immaterial; “what is material is the consequence of his action”). A hearing was held on the defendant’s motion to suppress statements that she gave at the time of her arrest. An evidentiary hearing was held before the same trial judge that presided over the jury trial. The State vigorously challenged the defendant’s claim; it lost. The trial judge entered an order excluding the defendant’s statements from the use at trial. The State did not appeal; the order became final. The final order of the trial court barred the evidence from any use by the State in the prosecution of the defendant no less so than the final order bars this court from considering suppressed evidence in assessing the sufficiency of the evidence as to the aggravated kidnapping charge. To reinforce that the suppressed statements were out of bounds in the State’s argument to the jury, to quote the defendant from her main brief, “Ms. Gonzalez made a motion in limine regarding the suppressed statements to preclude the State from referring to evidence from the statement during the trial.” With or without the motion in limine, the State was bound by the trial court’s suppression order. Yet, the State used the substance of the suppressed statements in its rebuttal argument. Before us, the State seeks to have it both ways regarding the offending comments made in rebuttal. It contends the offending comments “should not have been made” while pointing to a remark attributed to the trial court “that [the comments] were inferences that could be drawn from the evidence.” I agree with the former and reject the latter. See People v. Edwards, 49 Ill. App. 3d 79, 83, 363 N.E.2d 935 (1977), rev’d on other grounds, 74 Ill. 2d 1 (1978) (prosecutor’s repeated references to excluded clothing despite objections by defense counsel being sustained went “far beyond the usual legitimate inferences from facts proved in the trial” and denied the defendant a fair trial). Even if the State could present a hare-thread claim that the comments were based on reasonable inferences from the evidence, which I conclude the State does not argue, the State was well aware of the precise statements of the defendant that were suppressed. I submit that prior to the State’s rebuttal argument, it should have sought a ruling of the propriety of its intended use of nearly identical statements that were suppressed. The State did not. The State was bound by the suppression order and absent a ruling by the trial court that nearly identical statements were admissible on other grounds, we can only take a negative inference from the State’s use of suppressed statements. Justice Wolfson is correct; the prosecutor “apparently was concerned about the paucity of secret confinement proof. During rebuttal argument the prosecutor reached into the defendant’s previously suppressed statement to add two facts [that were not in evidence].” 392 Ill. App. 3d at 327. See People v. Crossno, 93 Ill. App. 3d 808, 822-23, 417 N.E.2d 827 (1981) (prosecutor’s “reconstruction” of the testimony of witnesses, including a witness’s testimony offered solely to impeach the defendant’s testimony but used “to demonstrate that defendant had the requisite state of mind to commit murder and aggravated battery,” constituted plain error). Nor were the improperly added facts in the State’s rebuttal argument remedied by the trial court’s action. After the error was brought to the attention of the trial court, the judge gave the assistant State’s Attorney an opportunity to address the jury once more. The assistant State’s Attorney did not take back her improper comments based on the defendant’s suppressed statements in her supplemental rebuttal argument. In response to further objections by the defense, the trial judge concluded that an instruction to the jury to disregard comments not based on the evidence was adequate to remedy any remaining error. I find the remedy invoked by the trial judge did nothing to address the error. On the one hand, the trial judge concluded that a supplemental rebuttal argument by the assistant State’s Attorney was warranted. On the other hand, according to the State’s brief, the supplemental rebuttal argument “gave the ASA the opportunity to clarify the comments without highlighting to the jury what they may have been.” How could the jury understand the reason for the supplemental rebuttal argument without being told the reason for the supplemental argument? The State offers no answer. See Crossno, 93 Ill. App. 3d at 824 (no excuse for State “misinforming the jury” during its rebuttal argument “when it cannot be challenged by the defense, except by way of an interjected objection”). I submit more was required of the trial judge. He should have identified and struck the offending comments from the record, pointing out to the jury that no evidence supported those comments, and instructed the jury accordingly. See Nickon v. City of Princeton, 376 Ill. App. 3d 1095, 1104, 877 N.E.2d 776 (2007) (judge’s instruction to the jury to disregard portion of witnesses testimony that violated motion in limine cured any prejudice that may have occurred). It will never be known whether that would have cured the error; I am certain that the step the trial court took did not. See People v. McCarroll, 168 Ill. App. 3d 1020, 1026, 523 N.E.2d 150 (1988) (defendant deprived of a fair trial where prosecutor, knowing that the jury would not be instructed on accident in intentional murder case, argued that “if the judge did not tell them accident was a defense, it was not one”). Given that the State did not address the error in its supplemental rebuttal argument to the jury, an opportunity given to the State only because it committed error in its initial rebuttal argument, the trial judge should have directed the jury to disregard the precise statements attributed to the defendant that were nowhere to be found in the evidence presented to the jury. I submit that anything short of that left the error unaddressed, to the prejudice of the defendant as to the charge of aggravated kidnapping and as an affront to the final order of the trial court suppressing the defendant’s statements obtained in violation of her Miranda rights.