Court Opinion

ID: 9526929
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:26:05.131392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:18.843017
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE BARRY, dissenting: In my opinion, the majority gives lip service to the appropriate standard of review and the law respecting the factors that support or enhance the inference that narcotics áre possessed with the intent to deliver. But, in reversing defendant’s conviction, the majority does a disservice to those principles recited. The trial court found the residence at 1032 Charlesworth to be a “drug house” — that is, a residence in which the unlawful procurement, delivery and/or use of controlled substances is tolerated by the owner(s), tenant(s), resident(s) and/or their agents or guests. The record on appeal certainly supports that determination. Shortly after an undercover officer purchased a white powdery substance alleged to be cocaine at 1032 Charlesworth, police officers returned to the house with a search warrant and found defendant and others busy in and about the bathroom near a flushing toilet and a hamper containing a packet of cocaine. Defendant had $850 in his jeans pocket, and- testimony at trial indicated that defendant was neither currently nor recently employed. $250 of this money was the marked money used by the undercover officer for the earlier purchase. A further search of the house revealed documentation of defendant’s relationship with the residence and its leaseholder, Kim Cherry. It also revealed drug paraphernalia in plain view. To hold under these circumstances that the evidence of defendant’s intent to deliver was so unreasonable, improbable or unsatisfactory as to create a reasonable doubt is blinking reality. It appears that the majority has chosen to reject as circumstantial evidence of defendant’s “intent to deliver” all evidence beyond the area of the flushing toilet where defendant was found “shuffling” around when the police gained entry into the house. I am aware of no rule of law that requires a finding that defendant possessed, constructively or otherwise, every item of circumstantial evidence of his guilt. The trial court was satisfied on the basis of evidence properly admitted-including two packets of white powdery substance in the hamper, $250 in marked bills and $550 more in unexplained cash in defendant’s jeans, paraphernalia for free-basing cocaine in the bathroom and in plain view in the kitchen, defendant’s furtive activity near the flushing toilet, the prior drug transaction at the house, and documentation of defendant’s relationship to the residence and its lessee — that defendant was guilty of the offense of possession with the intent to deliver. While another trier of fact may have found otherwise, it bears repeating that it is not our purview to retry defendant, but rather to determine whether, after viewing all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia (1979), 443 U.S. 307, 319,, 61 L. Ed. 2d 560, 573, 99 S. Ct. 2781, 2789; People v. Young (1989), 128 Ill. 2d 1, 538 N.E.2d 453; People v. Collins (1985), 106 Ill. 2d 237, 478 N.E.2d 267. In this case, as the trial court stated, circumstantial evidence of defendant’s guilt was “overwhelming.” Applying the appropriate standards to our review of the evidence, a reasonable inference is that defendant did, indeed, possess cocaine with the intent to deliver, and not as a mere casual user. I would affirm the judgment of the circuit court of Will County.