Court Opinion

ID: 9739481
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:16:00.779744+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:12.594451
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE McDADE, dissenting: The majority has affirmed the conviction of defendant, Todd Saxon, for first degree murder, arson, and concealment of a homicide. Because he was convicted of those crimes solely on the basis of sexual misconduct — with which he was not charged, of which he was not convicted, and which, according to forensic evidence, may have occurred three days before the murder — and because there is no evidence that he actually committed them; I respectfully dissent from that decision. Defendant has admitted having anal sex with the victim. Because she was only 12 years old at the time, such sex was nonconsensual as a matter of law. Defendant confessed to the sexual misconduct. This confession should never have been before the jury because it was irrelevant to the crimes actually charged. Although the State had a “confession,” defendant was never charged with sexual assault (as-sertedly because the statute of limitations had run) and his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt was never proven in court. This fact did not stop the State from using that crime as the sole fount of all inferences “proving” the crimes charged. The victim, O.W, was stabbed to death, and her partially charred body was found in a burned-out garage. Defendant was charged with her murder and with a possible arson that has been characterized as an attempt to conceal the homicide. There is exactly zero direct evidence tying defendant to any of the charged crimes. Looking first at the murder, the police found no weapon, no fingerprints, no DNA evidence, no bloodstained clothing, no witness who saw the victim and defendant together that night, no witness who put defendant at or near the garage at relevant times, and no testimony from O.W.’s grandmother (with whom she shared the bedroom) about when or with whom O.W may have gone out. In short, there was no direct evidence that this defendant had anything to do with O.W.’s murder. What about the arson/concealment of a homicide? There was no accelerant container, and, necessarily, no fingerprints on such a container, no witness who placed defendant at or near the garage at any relevant time, no clothing with accelerant stains, no clothing reeking of smoke or with signs of burning, nothing to suggest that defendant had been in the garage with the victim at the relevant time or, indeed, at any time. The concealment charge is yet another inference — this one from the apparent arson. The State argues and the majority apparently agrees that this complete lack of evidence is offset by the State’s argument that defendant’s sexual assault of O.W. yields sufficient inferences to support his convictions for murder, arson, and concealment of a homicide. Certainly, reasonable inferences are tools that have long been used to supplement weak evidence in criminal cases. Here, however, the majority — as did the State and the trial court — finds that it is reasonable to draw inferences from no evidence relating to the crimes charged. But that is not the law in Illinois nor apparently in the federal courts. In People v. Davis, 278 Ill. App. 3d 532, 663 N.E.2d 39 (1996), the court stated: “A reasonable inference within the purview of the law must have a chain of factual evidentiary antecedents. If an alleged inference does not have a chain of factual evidentiary antecedents, then within the purview of the law it is not a reasonable inference but is instead mere speculation.” Davis, 278 Ill. App. 3d at 540, 663 N.E.2d at 44. See also United States v. Jones, 371 F.3d 363, 366 (7th Cir. 2004) (“although a jury may infer facts from other facts derived by inference, ‘ “each link in the chain of inferences must be sufficiently strong to avoid a lapse into speculation.” ’ United States v. Peters, 277 F.3d 963, 967 (7th Cir. 2002) (quoting Piaskowski v. Bett, 256 F.3d 687, 693 (7th Cir. 2001))”). Accord United States v. Cruz, 285 F.3d 692, 699 (8th Cir. 2002); United States v. Rahseparian, 231 F.3d 1257, 1262 (10th Cir. 2000); United States v. D'Amato, 39 F.3d 1249, 1256 (2d Cir. 1994). The facts on which the State relied in the instant case are fully recounted by the majority. As can initially be seen, the State was allowed to present evidence to, in essence, “try” defendant for the sexual assault of O.W — despite the facts that he was not charged with that crime and that his prosecution for it was admittedly barred by the statute of limitations. His tacit “conviction” of that crime then served as the sole “factual” predicate for his actual conviction of the charged crimes. As to those convictions: although the State presented evidence that O.W. was murdered and that the garage burned as a result of arson, it presented no evidence that tied defendant to either of those crimes. The defense presented a motion for directed verdict at the close of the State’s evidence and it was, in my opinion, gross error for the trial court to deny it. As the Davis court concluded: “It follows that without a single factual evidentiary antecedent to support it, the State’s alleged inference that Davis had the opportunity to commit the homicide cannot bear water. It also follows that the State’s alleged derivative inference that Davis was the one who used the gun at the time of the homicide is not a reasonable inference within the purview of the law but is, instead, mere speculation. A person’s liberty is an endowment that is too valuable to be lost on speculation of wrongdoing. Our system of government demands more: proof! Moreover, the proof must be beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not exist in this case. [Citation].” Davis, 278 Ill. App. 3d at 541, 663 N.E.2d at 45. Nor does it exist in the instant case. The State has clearly established that O.W. was a victim of murder followed by arson; has plainly shown that defendant sexually assaulted her; has made weak and ineffectual stabs at showing that defendant had motive1 and opportunity to commit the crimes; but has presented no evidence and no reasonable inferences to show that he, in fact, did commit them. If defendant’s fingerprints had been found on an accelerant container or if a knife with even trace evidence of blood of OW’s type had been found in a place where he lived or frequented or if defendant had been the only outsider at the house that night rather than one of numerous others, I might still be uncomfortable about the correctness of the conviction but would most likely be writing a special concurrence rather than this dissent. But with no actual, forensic or tenable circumstantial evidence, I simply cannot see how a jury could fairly or validly conclude that defendant was guilty of murder, arson, and concealment of a homicide beyond any reasonable doubt. But the majority has another prong to its decision to affirm. Citing John Henry Wigmore (1863-1943), it sets up the premise that: “The commission of a crime leaves usually upon the consciousness a moral impression that is characteristic. The innocent man is without it; the guilty man usually has it. Its evidential value has never been doubted. The inference from consciousness of guilt to ‘guilty’ is always available in evidence.” 1A J. Wigmore, Evidence §173, at 1840 (Tillers rev. 1983). Despite its undeniable whiff of mysticism, divination, and the occult, courts have long accepted the concept of consciousness of guilt as probative of guilt. Fortunately, some courts, including our supreme court, have required that there at least be some concrete manifestation of this consciousness. One of those accepted manifestations is false exculpatory statements made by the defendant. People v. Milka, 211 Ill. 2d 150, 178, 810 N.E.2d 33, 49 (2004). Viewed in the abstract, “consciousness of guilt” is itself a circular and therefore flawed logical construct. Its application requires the fact finder to assume the ultimate fact — that the defendant committed the murder — in order to conclude that a particular act or statement of the defendant was motivated by his knowledge that he had committed the murder and is, therefore, evidence of his guilt. The concept presumes guilt to prove guilt and also impermissibly shifts the burden to the defendant to disprove that it was his/her awareness of guilt that caused the doing of the act or the making of the statement. It has no place in a system of law that presumes the innocence of the defendant until actual conviction by the finder of fact. Beyond pointing out this weakness, I will forgo indulging in any discussion of significant but more amorphous concerns such as how someone who is not a close friend or associate of defendant could actually know or correctly interpret the meaning and messages of his or her body language and evasions. What does require discussion in the instant case is that we know that this defendant engaged in sexual misconduct; we know he lied about it; and we know that he tried diligently for over two years to avoid being charged with it. How could the police or the prosecutors or the jurors (who could not observe it but only heard about it from others) possibly know that his denials of the sexual assault constituted a consciousness of guilt — if indeed he felt and/or communicated such an emotion or awareness — that was totally related to the sexual misconduct and totally unrelated to the child’s death? More importantly, how can we as an objective reviewing court find that this “consciousness of guilt” coupled with guilt of sexual assault, but also with a complete absence of any direct, forensic, or tenable circumstantial evidence proving any element (let alone all of them) of the charged crimes somehow creates an inference strong enough, inevitable enough, compelling enough, to say that it supports defendant’s conviction for first degree murder, arson, and concealment of a homicide beyond a reasonable doubt? I am well aware that the public and the media frequently say that a case was reversed “on a technicality.” And I can well imagine the ridicule — even in our courts — that attends discussions of logical constructs, flawed logic and circular arguments. But the technicalities are constitutional guarantees, supreme court rules and legislative directives designed to ensure, as much as possible, that the person who is convicted of a crime is, in fact, the person who committed it. And the mental evaluations are necessary to tease out flaws in the bases on which we deprive people of their liberty and their lives. These are not intellectual exercises undertaken in a vacuum. There are people attached to them. According to the Innocence Project of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, as of July 12, 2007, there have been 203 postconviction exonerations since the availability of DNA testing in 1989. That means that there are at least 203 innocent people who were convicted, whose convictions were affirmed at least once on review, and who were incarcerated for periods of time ranging from 1 year to 26 years, with the average sentence being 12 years.2 Fifteen of those found innocent were on death row. Of the persons exonerated, approximately 70% are members of minority groups, with the vast majority of those being African-Americans. Despite these horrific statistics, the people involved are actually “lucky.” There was physical evidence in their cases which could be tested for DNA. We have, of course, no way of knowing how many other residents of the nation’s prisons have been falsely convicted and, perhaps, executed. The Innocence Project has also attempted to document the causes of wrongful convictions and has concluded they result from systemic defects that are a catalog of “tried and true” forms of what we consider to be the “best” evidence. Over 75% are attributable to erroneous eyewitness identification.3 Of particular concern in the present case, more than one-third of the wrongful convictions were linked to the misapplication of forensic disciplines — which the Project defines as where “forensic scientists and prosecutors presented fraudulent, exaggerated, or otherwise tainted evidence to the judge or jury which led to the wrongful conviction.”4 www.innocenceproject.org. The instant case is, in my opinion, a prime example of the manipulation and exaggeration of data to cover up the complete lack of any competent evidence that the defendant actually committed the crimes with which he was charged. I do not believe that the nation’s appellate and supreme courts can shrug off our responsibility for wrongful convictions. It is easy to say that the police did not do an adequate investigation, that the trial attorneys conducted themselves improperly or performed inadequately, or that the trial judges glossed over something required of them by rule, statute or case law. But the bottom line is that we — the reviewing courts — are the ones who exculpate those shortcomings. We decry prosecutorial argument that is violative of the rules but persist in finding it to be “harmless.” When we turn ourselves in knots and defy logic to affirm convictions rather than requiring that the process be done correctly, we are not doing our jobs. To put it bluntly, we have met the enemy of justice and it is us. This defendant is not a nice man. He molests little girls and he needs to be punished for that. But we pervert the system and rule of law that is the foundation of our principles of justice when we validate his conviction for crimes he has not been proven to have committed. Beyond that we set a precedent that can be used to support further erosions and reduce the protection against wrongful conviction that our nation and our system promise to the innocent. Of equal importance in a system that substitutes the rule of law for personal retribution, if the convicted defendants did not commit the crimes, the victims have not gotten justice because their violators go unpunished. For all of the foregoing reasons, I cannot concur with the majority’s decision. I agree that the jury apparently concluded that the State’s smorgasbord of non-evidence was sufficient to find defendant, Todd Saxon, guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, of murder, arson, and concealment of a homicide. I dissent from the majority’s finding that People v. Collins, 106 Ill. 2d 237, 261, 478 N.E.2d 267, 277 (1985), requires us to hold that the jury’s conclusion was supported by the evidence presented by the State, was based on evidence that was sufficient to prove any of the elements of the crimes charged, even when viewed in the light most favorable to the prosecution, or that the conviction is reasonable or sustainable on appeal. If Collins does so require, then I, with the utmost respect, would suggest to the supreme court that the decision has created a standard for validating rather than revealing erroneous judgments and it should be revisited and clarified.  The State complains in its brief about the trial court’s exclusion of evidence that defendant had committed eight other sex offenses against children, one of which “involved defendant taking the victim to a garage,” presumably for sex. There is no assertion that defendant murdered and burned any of those other victims (or that he attempted to do so). Moreover, the testimony of O.W.’s brother suggests that there had been prior sexual conduct between O.W. and defendant, but clearly he had not previously killed and burned her (or attempted to do so). It appears to me that the reasonable inferences to be drawn here militate against any notion that this defendant feels a need to kill the victims of his sexual perversions.   Twenty-seven of those exonerated are from Illinois. Of those, 5 served between 20 and 26 years; 19 served between 10 and 19 years; and 3 served between 6 and 9 years. None served less.   I personally know of several cases where the procedures for securing these identifications were so flawed that the convictions should never have been affirmed.   Other principal factors identified as leading to wrongful convictions are false confessions; the use of jailhouse informants, especially in exchange for deals, special treatment, or the dropping of charges; and bad lawyering, including failure to investigate, failure to call witnesses, and the inability to prepare for trial (due to caseload or incompetence).