Court Opinion

ID: 9524067
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:49:42.979654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:08:49.050822
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE TURNER, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. When a defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence, the reviewing court does not retry the defendant. People v. Janik, 127 Ill. 2d 390, 401-02, 537 N.E.2d 756, 761 (1989). The jury possessed the responsibility to choose between competing versions of fact, assess the witnesses’ credibility, draw inferences from the evidence, and decide whether the evidence as a whole ultimately proved defendant to be guilty of the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt. See Janik, 127 Ill. 2d at 401, 537 N.E.2d at 761; People v. Anderson, 325 Ill. App. 3d 624, 634, 759 N.E.2d 83, 92 (2001). To avoid intruding upon the jury’s prerogative as the finder of fact, we are to use a deferential standard of review. See Janik, 127 Ill. 2d at 401, 537 N.E.2d at 761. Thus, looking at all the evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution, we address whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Anderson, 325 Ill. App. 3d at 634, 759 N.E.2d at 92. A rational trier of fact could have found (1) the first push sufficiently informed defendant of R.H.’s withdrawal of consent and (2) defendant did not immediately disengage. It is a reasonable conclusion defendant wrote all of the letters following the September 27, 2004, incident. In these letters, she confesses wrongdoing, deplores the “scary side” of herself, admits that she “get[s] mean sometimes,” and asks R.H. if she is going to “send [her] to jail.” The jury could have reasonably inferred defendant knew, from the start, at the very moment of penetration, she was being “way to[o] rough” and that when R.H. first pushed her (signifying her withdrawal of consent), defendant already knew she did not consent to this violent manner of penetration. Because someone had once done the same thing to defendant (as she revealed in People’s exhibit No. 2), defendant knew she was inflicting excruciating pain upon R.H. and that the first push meant “Stop!” Nevertheless, she continued ramming her hand into R.H.’s vagina until R.H. succeeded in pushing her away. Looking at the evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution, I conclude a rational trier of fact could have found the elements of aggravated criminal sexual assault beyond a reasonable doubt.