People v. Fair

238 N.E.3d 1119

2024 IL 128373

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee,

v.Darrell FAIR, Appellant.

(Docket No. 128373)

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Filed February 16, 2024

Appeal from the Appellate Court for the First District; heard in that court on appeal from the Circuit Court of Cook County, the Hon. Peggy Chiampas, Judge, presiding.

Russell Ainsworth and Debra Loevy, of The Exoneration Project, of Chicago, for appellant.

Kwame Raoul, Attorney General, of Springfield (Jane Elinor Notz, Solicitor General, and Katherine M. Doersch and Joshua M, Schneider, Assistant Attorneys General, of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

Kwame Raoul, Attorney General, of Springfield (Alex Hemmer, Deputy Solici- tor General, and David E. Neumeister, Assistant Attorney General, of Chicago, of counsel), for amicus curiae Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission.

David M. Shapiro, of Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, Joey L. Mogul, of People’s Law Office, Steven Drizin and Laura Nirider, of Center on Wrongful Convictions, and Charles F. Smith, Alexander J. Kasparie, William S. Edwards, Serena Patel, Michael T. Morrell, and Kathleen C. Schmidt, of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, all of Chicago, for amici curiae The Innocence Project et al.

Cindy Eigler, Aislinn Pulley, and Mark Clements, of Chicago Torture Justice Center, and Nicholas J. Siciliano, Natalie R. Salazar, Leah M. Beukelman, and Alexandra B. van Doren, of Latham & Watkins, LLP, both of Chicago, for amicus curiae Chicago Torture Justice Center.

OPINION

JUSTICE HOLDER WHITE delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

[1] ¶ 1 In this case, we confront for the first time questions of what constitutes a claim of torture under the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission Act (Act) (775 ILCS 40/1 et seq. (West 2018)) and what standards apply when a circuit court reviews a claim referred by the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (Commission). Petitioner, Darrell Fair, appeals the circuit court’s denial of his claim of torture, following an evidentiary hearing. After construing the Act and clarifying the standards at issue, we hold that a court analyzing a claim of torture referred for review under the Act must consider the totality of the circumstances—including any allegations of constitutional violations that would not by themselves support a freestanding claim of torture under the Act. In other words, in reviewing a torture claim upon referral from the Commission, the circuit court must consider the entirety of the circumstances occurring in connection with a claim that a petitioner has been tortured into confessing. However, we ultimately conclude that the circuit court’s determination in this case that petitioner failed to prove his claim of torture was not manifestly erroneous, Thus, we affirm the appellate court, on other grounds, and affirm the circuit court.

¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 3 An extensive recitation of the facts can be found in the appellate court order. 2021 IL App (1st) 201072-U, 2021 WL 6071512. We summarize the facts necessary to resolve the issues presented.

¶ 4 A. Underlying Events

¶ 5 Outside a bar around midnight on July 22, 1998, Chris Stubblefield and William Jones were robbed at gunpoint. Stubblefield was shot and killed as he attempted to flee. Chicago police arrested petitioner in connection with the robbery on September 1, 1998. Petitioner was transported to Area 2 for interrogation. During interrogation, petitioner made an inculpatory statement indicating that he, Chris Thomas, and Lamont Reaves were driving around searching for someone to rob. According to petitioner, he obtained a gun from a friend, which Reaves used to rob Stubblefield and Jones. When Stubblefield attempted to flee, Reaves pursued him, took his money, and shot him in the back. Shortly after he made the inculpatory statement, a handwritten statement was prepared by Assistant State’s Attorney (ASA) Adrian Mebane, which petitioner refused to sign or initial,

¶ 6 The written statement detailed petitioner’s involvement in the murder, stating he provided a gun to Reaves, who proposed they rob someone, Eventually, with Thomas driving petitioner’s car, all three men went to a bar, where Reaves robbed Stubblefield and Jones and shot Stubblefield as he tried to flee. Petitioner admitted giving Reaves a ride to the bar to meet friends but otherwise claimed he was not involved with what happened there.

¶ 7 The parties agree that several police officers were involved in petitioner’s initial arrest or interrogation at Area 2. Detective Ted Przepiora took part in the arrest of petitioner at his mother’s house and brought him to the Area 2 police station, where he had brief interactions with petitioner. At the station, Detective Michael McDermott initially interrogated petitioner before Detectives Maverick Porter and Al Brown took over and conducted most of the interrogation. Mebane arrived toward the end of this period and participated in taking statements from petitioner but was not present for most of his time in custody.

¶ 8 Petitioner was indicted on September 28, 1998, on three counts of first degree murder and one count of armed robbery. Prior to trial, petitioner filed three motions to suppress statements. The first two versions, filed in August 1999 and March 2000, contained no allegations of specific conduct. Instead, the motion contained "boilerplate" language indicating "the statements sought to be suppressed were obtained as a result of physical, mental, and psychological coercion." The third version of the motion, filed October 25, 2000, stated that petitioner "specifically asked for an attorney to speak with but the police did not allow this request" and alleged that "a short White police officer with cowboy boots kicked defendant on his shins." The motion also alleged the statements were obtained as a result of "psychological and mental coercion" from the officers’ denial of petitioner’s "asthma medication" and food. None of the motions named McDermott as an officer involved in the arrest or interrogation of petitioner.

¶ 9 On January 30, 2002, petitioner appeared in court with counsel, who asked to withdraw the final motion to suppress statements. When the court asked petitioner if he understood that the motion to suppress was being withdrawn, petitioner replied, "yes ma’am." When the court continued and asked petitioner, "is that your agreement," petitioner stated, "that’s fine." Years later, at his hearing upon referral of the matter from the Commission to the circuit court, petitioner testified defense counsel advised him that the judge might suppress the unsigned written statement but not the oral statement that preceded it and that the best available trial strategy was to argue the written statement was a fraud.

¶ 10 B. Petitioner’s Trial, Posttrial Proceedings, and Direct Appeal

¶ 11 A pretrial disclosure listed Mebane and Detectives Przepiora, Brown, Porter, and McDermott, among others, as potential witnesses in the case. Mebane, Przepiora, and Porter testified at trial, but McDermott and petitioner did not.

¶ 12 Mebane testified that he arrived at Area 2 around 6 p.m. on the evening of September 2, 1998, and sometime after that first spoke with petitioner, after police had already been interviewing petitioner for hours. Mebane stated he wrote out a statement with petitioner as part of a back-and-forth conversation. Mebane relayed that petitioner said he had been treated "good" by everyone, he had something to eat, and no threats or promises had been made in exchange for his statement. He testified that they reviewed the statement together "throughout as we went along and also at the end." Strikethroughs and changes were made in various places throughout the statement, and Me- bane placed his initials by the changes, but petitioner refused to add his initials or to sign the statement without first talking with a lawyer. Mebane signed the statement.

¶ 13 Mebane testified that he read out loud a preprinted section listing an arrestee’s Miranda rights (see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966)), then wrote petitioner’s name on a signature line underneath it, but petitioner refused to sign his own name. On cross-examination, Mebane stated that he thought petitioner would sign somewhere close to where he printed petitioner’s name on the Miranda form, "[w]hen we were finished with the statement." Mebane stated that petitioner "told me *** at some point during the statement" that he would not initial or sign and "also said it again at the end" but did not say so at the beginning. When asked on cross-examination why changes made early in the statement were not initialed by petitioner, Mebane responded, "I didn’t ask him to yet." Mebane agreed that one of the changes he made on the first page of the statement would have occurred "early" on in the discussion with petitioner, at which point Mebane added his own initials, but he did not ask petitioner to add his initials at that time.

¶ 14 A jury convicted petitioner on one count of first degree murder by accountability. In his statement in allocution at sentencing, petitioner stated that, while being interrogated, he was

"chained to a wall *** and I was kicked and beaten repeatedly. *** And I asked for a lawyer repeatedly, and I was constantly refused. And the only time I was fed was when I said that I would talk to one of the police officers, a Mr. Porter. The statement that they claimed that I said *** wasn’t the facts."

The trial judge responded by stating that she believed petitioner’s assertions were "an absolute lie." The court expressed confidence that petitioner was not abused and that ASA Mebane had not made up the statement. Ultimately, the court sentenced petitioner to 50 years in prison. When petitioner appeared before the circuit court seeking reconsideration of his sentence, he tendered a letter indicating his untreated drug addiction...