Court Opinion

ID: 9741830
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:02:39.959994+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:26.558723
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE CLARK, dissenting: In affirming the defendant’s convictions and his death sentence, the majority reaches two conclusions with which I must disagree. First, it holds that the State, as part of its case in chief, properly placed before the jury evidence that the defendant committed an attempted murder and armed robbery that occurred four days after the charged crimes. Second, the majority holds that it was harmless error for the State to then place before the jury evidence of the defendant’s arrest for yet another armed robbery, this one occurring over two years after the offenses for which the defendant was on trial. The majority accurately recites the rules governing the admissibility of other-crimes evidence. Evidence of offenses for which a defendant is not on trial is inadmissible if relevant only to show the defendant’s disposition or propensity to commit crimes. (People v. McKibbons (1983), 96 Ill. 2d 176, 182; People v. Lindgren (1980), 79 Ill. 2d 129, 137.) The rationale for the general rule of exclusion is that “[t]he law distrusts the inference that because a man has committed other crimes he is more likely to have committed the current crime.” (People v. Lehman (1955), 5 Ill. 2d 337, 342.) The admission of other-crimes evidence thus overpersuades the jury, creating the risk that it will convict a “bad man” who deserves to be punished not because of the crimes charged, but because of his other criminal misdeeds. Evidence of other crimes is, however, admissible if it tends to prove a fact in issue; e.g., motive, intent, identity, or modus operandi. People v. McDonald (1975), 62 Ill. 2d 448, 455. The majority holds that the extensive evidence the State presented concerning the April 5, 1980, attempted murder and armed robbery was properly admissible because it tended to identify the defendant as the perpetrator of the murder four days earlier, the crime for which the defendant was being- tried. According to the majority, the State properly introduced detailed evidence of the April 5 crimes because its ballistics expert “established that the same gun” fired the bullet which killed the murder victim and the bullet which wounded the victim of the April 5 crimes. (123 Ill. 2d at 339.) The majority’s assertion is entirely without force. The record shows that the State’s expert testified only to the various class characteristics which the two bullets shared. Class characteristics are those characteristics, like bullet caliber, which can establish that bullets are of the same type and have thus been fired from the same type of weapon, but which cannot establish that two bullets have been fired from the same weapon. The witness stated that he examined the bullets for individual characteristics. The witness explained that microscopic imperfections in a barrel of a particular weapon will impart unique impressions, or individual characteristics, on fired bullets such that two bullets fired from the same gun will exhibit uniquely identical individual characteristics. Then, and without testifying to what, if any, identical individual characteristics were observable on the two bullets, the witness stated that in his opinion they had been fired from the same gun. In my view, the complete absence of any factual basis on the record for the opinion of this witness renders it an opinion without foundation, and one wholly unreliable and unverifiable in its conclusion. Further, the State’s failure to establish what, if any, individual characteristics there were common to the bullets cannot be deemed a technical omission, excusable under the circumstances. The evidence which the witness never testified to was absolutely crucial to the opinion the State elicited from him and without it there was no reliable basis or foundation for that opinion. The record thus belies the majority’s claim that the State “established” that the gun used to murder the victim was the same gun used in the April 5 armed robbery and attempted murder. Because the State failed to establish the very evidence essential to prove that the bullets had been fired by the same gun, it was error for the State to call the victim and an occurrence witness to the April 5 crimes, both of whom testified that the defendant was the assailant. Exposing the jury to the details of these irrelevant crimes could only have prejudiced the defendant. In fact, the full magnitude of the State’s error in so doing can only be appreciated when viewed, as it was by the jury, together with the evidence the State introduced to show that the defendant was arrested over two years later for an unrelated, third armed robbery. The majority concedes that there was “no justifiable basis” for the State’s introduction of evidence of the May 4, 1982, armed robbery. (123 Ill. 2d at 342.) Indeed, the evidence did not tend to prove identity, knowledge, motive, opportunity, or any other fact in issue. Nor was the evidence of the May 1982 offense admissible to show how the defendant was apprehended, as the State otherwise argues. Our decisions have never recognized such an exception to the general rule requiring that other-crimes evidence be excluded. I therefore agree with the majority that the admission of this evidence was error. Unlike the majority, however, I cannot agree that the error was harmless. In People v. Lindgren (1980), 79 Ill. 2d 129, 140, this court observed that because the erroneous admission of other-crimes evidence carries a high risk that the jury will view the demonstrated propensity to crime as evidence that the defendant is guilty of crimes charged, the error “ordinarily calls for reversal.” Only if the record affirmatively shows that the error was not prejudicial will the defendant’s convictions be allowed to stand. (Lindgren, 79 Ill. 2d at 141.) The majority acknowledges that Lindgren holds that the erroneous admission of other-crimes evidence will ordinarily require a new trial, and then attempts to offset the Lindgren rule by quoting a part of Supreme Court Rule 615(a), this court’s codification of the plain error rule. (123 Ill. 2d at 343.) The majority’s reliance on Rule 615(a) to blunt the requirements of Lindgren is woefully misplaced. The majority notes that, unlike the evidence of the April 5 crimes, the State’s evidence of the defendant’s arrest for the May 1982 armed robbery was not an “extensive discussion” of its details. (123 Ill. 2d at 343.) Nevertheless, the jury was permitted to hear the evidence of both collateral armed robberies, and the one cannot be viewed in isolation of the other. Viewed together, these irrelevant crimes demonstrated the defendant’s propensity to commit armed robberies, the very same offense underlying the murder for which he was being tried. Because evidence of more than one collateral crime was admitted, I find the error here far more egregious than that present in People v. Lindgren (1980), 79 Ill. 2d 129, where -evidence of only one other crime was erroneously allowed to go to the jury. The evidence of these irrelevant and unrelated crimes formed a sideshow, serving to distract the jury from the real issues in this case. The evidence, moreover, was devastating in its portrayal of the defendant as a malignant “bad man” deserving of punishment. Having reviewed the record, I cannot with any confidence agree that the prejudicial errors did not work an injustice or materially contribute to the jury’s verdicts. The prejudice resulting from the State’s parade of irrelevant other-crimes evidence in this case was extreme and served to deny the defendant a fair trial. For the reasons stated, I would reverse the defendant’s convictions and vacate his sentence of death. I therefore dissent.