People v. Garcia

2021 IL App (1st) 190026

220 N.E.3d 309

468 Ill.Dec. 1

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Valentin GARCIA, Defendant-Appellant.

1-19-0026

Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, SECOND DIVISION.

Filed December 28, 2021

James E. Chadd, Douglas R. Hoff, and Anna C. Carlozzi, of State Appellate Defender's Office, of Chicago, for appellant.

Kimberly M. Foxx, State's Attorney, of Chicago (Alan J. Spellberg, Brian A. Levitsky, and Tasha-Marie Kelly, Assistant State's Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.

OPINION

JUSTICE HOWSE delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 Defendant Valentin Garcia was arrested in November 2017 and charged with gun-related offenses. He was released on electronic monitoring (EM) pending his trial on those charges. In February 2018, he was arrested and charged with two counts of escape for failing to comply with the conditions of the Cook County Sheriff's Electronic Monitoring Program. Following a bench trial, the trial court found defendant guilty of escape and sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment. This sentence was consecutive to the one year sentence imposed pursuant to his guilty plea in the underlying gun case. In this direct appeal, Garcia contends that his trial counsel was ineffective because counsel did not file a motion to suppress evidence obtained from the search of his home. We affirm.

¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 3 Defendant was charged with two counts of escape under section 4.1(a) of the Electronic Monitoring and Home Detention Law (730 ILCS 5/5-8A-4.1(a) (West 2016)). The indictment alleged that defendant knowingly violated conditions of the Cook County Sheriff's EM program by being absent without leave from his home and removing his EM transmitter.

¶ 4 At trial, Investigator Frank Anson testified regarding defendant's participation in the sheriff's EM program. Anson worked in the EM unit administering the contracts for persons eligible for pretrial home detention. On November 16, 2017, Anson helped defendant enroll in the EM program. Anson explained the conditions stated on the participation agreement and equipment responsibility agreement. He identified those agreements in court. As a condition of participation, Garcia agreed "to admit representatives of this program into [his] residence twenty-four hours a day to ensure compliance with the conditions of the program." Garcia initialed the conditions and signed both agreements. Anson also gave Garcia handouts with phone numbers for the court branches, requesting movement outside the home, and assistance with EM equipment. Anson identified those handouts in court.

¶ 5 On cross-examination, Anson testified that he explained the conditions of the EM program to a group that included defendant and made clear they cannot be released on pretrial home detention without agreeing to the conditions of the EM program. He did not ask Garcia about his educational background or first language. The agreements were printed in English, but the handouts were printed in English and Spanish. After Garcia initialed and signed the participation and equipment responsibility agreements, Anson fitted a large EM band around defendant's ankle using a special pair of pliers. He conceded that someone could use regular pliers to remove the device.

¶ 6 Investigator Brian Shedor testified he and his partner, Investigator Vasquez, were assigned to investigate a device tampering alarm at Garcia's address on December 15, 2017. The person who answered the door on the first floor told them Garcia lived "around the back" and the person who answered the door on the second floor said Garcia lived on the third floor. However, when he went to the third floor and knocked on the door, no one answered.

¶ 7 Then, according to Shedor,

"I went back down to the second floor and I guess his sister or other family member lives there *** went up there with me. The male relative knocked on the door and asked if anyone was there but no one answered. They opened the door and then I proceeded in there and then that's when I found the box and the band."

Shedor conceded he asked one of them to open the third floor door. Additionally, the serial numbers on the EM box and band that were found inside the apartment matched the serial numbers assigned to Garcia.

¶ 8 Shedor further testified that he wore a body camera that recorded his investigation. However, before the State played that footage, defense counsel asked the court to exclude any information about defendant given by the persons on the video. The court reserved ruling on defense counsel's objection and the State played the footage, which included dialogue in Spanish between defendant's sister and brother-in-law.

¶ 9 After the footage was played, the trial court sustained defense counsel's objection to "any hearsay statements made by anybody in the home." The court also sustained defense counsel's objection to any information that Shedor gleaned from an EM tracking program that he was shown using. Shedor then testified the clip on Garcia's EM band was broken.

¶ 10 On cross-examination, Shedor conceded he did not know how the clip was broken. He also stated that he activated his body camera when he arrived at Garcia's address after 7 p.m.

¶ 11 Investigator Wilson Reyes, who worked in the fugitive investigations unit, testified he arrested Garcia at his home on February 1, 2018. Garcia was not wearing an EM band at the time. The State introduced certified statements of disposition in Garcia's underlying gun case, which showed Garcia entered the EM program in November 2017 and an arrest warrant was issued when he failed to appear in court on December 22, 2017.

¶ 12 The State rested its case in chief and defense counsel moved for a directed finding, arguing there was no indication Garcia understood the conditions of the EM program because Investigator Anson did not ask him about his educational background or first language. In denying the motion, the trial court noted that Garcia initialed and signed the participation and equipment responsibility agreements, there was no indication he did not understand the conditions of the EM program, and he never requested a Spanish interpreter throughout the proceedings.

¶ 13 Garcia testified that his first language is Spanish. He attended public school and was taught in bilingual classrooms. After completing the eighth grade, he attended high school but was kicked out because he was failing a lot of classes. When asked whether he understood the EM participation agreement that he signed, Garcia replied, "Honestly, I didn't—I read a lot of it but they told us to hurry up so we could go home. I just wanted to go home." Garcia testified he did not understand everything in the agreement but an officer answered a question he had.

¶ 14 Garcia testified that several days after the EM band was placed around his ankle, sheriff's deputies came to his home and replaced it because the clips would not close tightly. The band often fell off and each time he "just put it back on." He did not intentionally remove the band.

¶ 15 On cross-examination, Garcia acknowledged he was testifying in English and understood the questions being asked. When he enrolled in the EM program, he gave his home address for placement on pretrial home detention. According to Garcia, "my family lives there." His mother's name was on the apartment lease. The building had three floors. He lived on the third floor, and his sister lived on the second floor with her husband, their four children, and another sister. Other people lived on the first floor.

¶ 16 Garcia identified the participation and equipment responsibility agreements that he had initialed and signed. The address he provided on the equipment responsibility agreement specified he lived in Apartment 3. After he signed the agreements, sheriff's deputies took him to his apartment and set up the EM box. He stayed home and only left when ordered to appear in court. Eventually, a warrant for his arrest was issued when he failed to appear in court on December 22, 2017.

¶ 17 Meanwhile, on Friday, December 15, 2017, Garcia's EM band fell off his ankle, but he did not put it back on. Instead, he went to a temp agency around 5 p.m. and was out for at least three hours. When he returned home, his EM band and box were gone. He knew investigators had removed the EM equipment and there would be a warrant issued for his arrest because he was on the phone with his sister when the investigators were at his apartment. He called a phone number on one of the EM handouts, but no one answered, and he did not appear in court on December 22, 2017, to explain there was a problem with his EM band.

¶ 18 Defense counsel called Investigator Shedor as a rebuttal witness. Shedor did not know whether the EM box that he recovered from Garcia's apartment was the original box assigned to Garcia.

¶ 19 Upon the State's request, the trial court admitted the footage from Investigator Shedor's body camera into evidence "for the nonverbal actions of the officer in going to the house and the lack of the defendant being there, [and] not for any statements that were made on the video." The court also admitted the EM participation and responsibility agreements that defendant signed.

¶ 20 Following closing argument, the trial court found defendant guilty on both counts of escape. The court noted defendant initialed and signed the EM agreements, the investigators testified about defendant's placement in the EM program at his apartment on the third floor, and Investigator Shedor testified that defendant was not home when he knocked on his door in the evening on December 15, 2017. The court also noted the footage of Shedor's body camera showing his recovery of the EM equipment inside defendant's apartment but made clear it did not consider "any testimony of any statements of anybody in the house that defendant left." The court stated that defendant testified in English and responded to questioning without...