Court Opinion

ID: 9709377
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:46:21.823501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:48.234787
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE FREEMAN, partially concurring and partially dissenting: I concur with the majority affirmance of defendant’s conviction for first degree murder. I disagree, however, with the majority ruling that defendant’s death sentence was appropriate. Death sentencing is always a difficult and burdensome decision, and I respect the difficulty of the task which confronted the trial court here. I do not, however, believe that the circumstances of defendant’s past life and this crime warrant that she be put to death, rather than incarcerated for the balance of her natural life. There was sufficient mitigation here, some of which was not properly valued, to preclude the imposition of death. The record reflects the following evidence. Defendant was born to an alcoholic mother who died by falling from a window when defendant was 14 months old. Defendant’s father apparently abandoned both mother and child at or about this time. Defendant was raised in the home of her maternal, grandparents and sexually abused by one of several uncles from around the age of six years until adolescence. She developed a "problem” with alcohol at around the age of 11. She apparently attended school until the second year of high school, but had many fights and other interpersonal difficulties. She also had intense conflicts with her grandparents. During childhood and adolescence, defendant experienced at least three "closed head” injuries, one requiring hospitalization. According to a psychiatric examination conducted March 27, 1992, defendant appeared to have had "many, many traumatic experiences” within her life. At the age of 16 years, defendant’s grandfather gave written consent for her to be married to Simon Falakassa, aged 28 years, a student from Iran, who at the time was seeking to gain permanent residency status in the United States. Falakassa gave defendant at least $1,500 at the time of their marriage. Defendant was introduced to Falakassa by Abraham Solumani, her boyfriend. Defendant and Falakassa lived together for about 18 months and, at least some of the time, as husband and wife. During this period, defendant, still 16 years old, became pregnant and on September 18, 1976, bore Solumani’s child, Sara Swan. Defendant stopped living with Falakassa, perhaps sometime in 1977, and began living or staying with Steve Garber, an older man. On or about August 8, 1977, while 17 years old, and on probation for prostitution, defendant took her child from her grandmother’s care to Garber’s apartment. Defendant and Garber argued, and when he left the home, she suffocated the child by placing a plastic bag over its head. She later agreed with police that she had suffocated the child because her grandparents would try to take the child away from her. The death was subsequently considered an accidental death and the police investigation of the matter closed shortly thereafter. Less than a year later, defendant was convicted of the armed robbery of Falakassa and his live-in girlfriend. Falakassa, who had promised defendant that he would bear the costs of their divorce, refused to press charges and subsequently paid for their divorce. Sometime in August 1981, a police fire investigator noticed that defendant had been present at the scene of several fires he investigated. The officer questioned defendant and she promised to telephone him, which she did. Throughout a series of telephone conversations and meetings, defendant told police that "Maurice,” her pimp, had started four fires at her various residences because he wanted to intimidate her to continue prostituting. Defendant told police that she had witnessed Maurice kill another prostitute by setting her on fire. Defendant told police that Maurice had doused the prostitute with accelerant and then thrown a match on her while they and another man were sitting in an auto. Maurice then threw the woman over the front seat of the auto, and the woman "scratched” defendant as she burned. The two men then placed the body in a plastic bag and decided to give her a religious burial, as she had said she always wanted. The trio then drove to St. Mary’s cemetery, climbed the fence and buried the body in someone else’s grave. Defendant told police that the name on the headstone was "Sara Garber,” and she related that the stone showed birth as September 18, 1976, and death as August 8, 1977. Police conducted an investigation of the grave and learned that the child buried there was named Sara Swan, although the headstone said "Sara Garber.” They also learned that a listed address for the child had been one of defendant’s addresses. Police found no other body in the grave and could find no pimp named "Maurice.” At the time that police attempted to contact defendant with this information, she left a message for the investigating officer that he should look for a note under a garbage can, located a few blocks from the police station. The officer found the note. In it, defendant confessed to suffocating her child and setting the four fires. Two of the fires were set around the anniversary of the child’s birth (September 24 and 29, 1980) and two of the fires were set around the anniversary of the child’s death (August 14 and 18,1981). According to defendant’s transcribed statement to police, which was admitted into evidence at sentencing in this case, she set the fires because she was "upset” about her baby. She also admitted that the fires "were done when [she was] feeling remorseful about killing [her] daughter” and agreed that was why she was "motivated” to start them. Defendant subsequently served a term of 10 years imprisonment. Sometime during this period (April 1984), she married and divorced George Garcia, aged 52 years, a former prostitution client of hers. Although another prostitute testified that Garcia treated defendant well, defendant testified that her prior relationship with him involved physical abuse, including one episode, supported by medical records, where Garcia had allegedly placed glass inside her vaginal cavity. Defendant’s medical records for the period unbelievably state that a two-inch-long laceration of defendant’s vaginal and rectal wall was caused by a disposable douche. Within a month after defendant’s release from prison, she remarried Garcia, but left him after about two weeks when he slapped her. On the evening of the murder, defendant had been drinking all day and had gotten into an argument with the uncle who had sexually abused her. Mike Garber was present and stepped between the uncle and defendant, who was holding a knife. According to the State’s witness, defendant was drunk both right before Garcia’s murder (at around midnight) and afterwards (at around 3 a.m.). Dr. Lyle Harold Rossiter, Jr., a forensic psychiatrist, testified at sentencing that defendant suffered from a borderline personality disorder with sociopathic features, chronic depression of many years duration, and alcoholism (supported by other medical records). Rossiter evaluated defendant to determine whether she was insane at the time of the murder. While Rossiter readily determined that defendant met the first prong of legal sanity, by appreciating the wrongfulness of her acts, he could not readily conclude that she met the second prong, by having the ability to conform her conduct to the requirement of law. Rossiter indicated that, although the decision was a difficult one, he had concluded that defendant was not legally insane at the time of the murder. Rossiter’s opinion, based on a reasonable degree of psychiatric certainty, was, however, that defendant suffered from a very serious mental disorder and was under the influence of an extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time of the crime. Three deputy sheriffs employed at the Du Page County jail also testified at sentencing. They testified that defendant was made a "trusty,” who assisted inmates and jail officers, based on her exemplary behavior. They testified that she was a "model inmate” and had had no violations. They described two instances where defendant had taken over gratuitously from them the task of removing both maggots and roaches from the sores of new inmates who were formerly homeless persons. They also testified that in their opinion defendant would make a peaceful adjustment to prison life. The trial court at sentencing found that defendant was not remorseful about her child’s death, only depressed. The trial court also did not find the statutory mitigating factor that defendant was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time of the crime. Inasmuch as I believe that both of these conclusions are clearly wrong, I cannot agree that the trial court engaged in a proper balancing of factors in mitigation and aggravation. Although each death penalty case must be decided on its individual facts, this court has previously found sufficient mitigation to preclude the imposition of death where the defendant had been drinking heavily; had a history of shooting a revolver between his son’s legs and stabbing a woman with a knife; and had then killed his wife and child by fire in a fit of rage, triggered by her alleged infidelity. (See People v. Buggs (1986), 112 Ill. 2d 284; see also People v. Leger (1992), 149 Ill. 2d 355 (physically deteriorating middle-aged defendant, previously convicted of battery against ex-wife, with history of abuse of both ex-wife and current wife, and threats against others, killed wife and ex-wife, while intoxicated and taking many prescription medications); People v. Carlson (1980), 79 Ill. 2d 564 (physically and mentally deteriorating middle-aged defendant, without prior criminal history, killed ex-wife, set arson fire and killed police officer after realizing that wife actually had boyfriend).) This court should be sensitive to the fact of female pathologies as mitigation just as well as male pathologies. Defendant here was long-suffering from a mental disturbance of a nature which was just as compelling as that of these other defendants. Her chaotic troubled life and her good adjustment to structured incarceration indicate that she need not be put to death. JUSTICE McMORROW joins in this partial concurrence and partial dissent.