People v. Garcia

2019 IL App (2d) 161112

125 N.E.3d 455

429 Ill.Dec. 749

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

v.Ricardo A. GARCIA, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 2-16-1112

Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.

Opinion filed March 26, 2019

James E. Chadd, Thomas A. Lilien, and Kerry Goettsch, of State Appellate Defender’s Office, of Elgin, for appellant.

Tricia L. Smith, State’s Attorney, of Belvidere (Patrick Delfino, David J. Robinson, and Cora Moy, of State’s Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor’s Office, of counsel), for the People.

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

¶ 1 Following a trial in the circuit court of Boone County, a jury found defendant, Ricardo A. Garcia, guilty of first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of Giovanni Galicia ( 720 ILCS 5/9-1(a)(1), (a)(2), (a)(3) (West 2012) ). Defendant was also found guilty of mob action ( 720 ILCS 5/25-1(a)(1) (West 2012) ). He was found not guilty, however, of the attempted murders of Jesus Casas and Fermin Estrada. The court sentenced defendant to 35 years in prison for first-degree murder, to be served consecutively to a 2-year sentence for mob action. On appeal, defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence. He also argues that certain examples that the prosecutor used in his closing argument to illustrate the concept of accountability constituted plain error. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 3 Galicia, Casas, and Estrada were all members of the Sureños 13 street gang. Around midnight on the evening of November 29-30, 2013, they arrived together at Estrada's girlfriend's apartment at 2019 Lake Shore Drive in Belvidere after a trip to a McDonald's restaurant. Galicia was in the driver's seat of his Chevrolet Impala, Casas sat in the front passenger's seat, and Estrada was sitting in the back behind Casas. As they waited near the apartment in the Impala, Casas and Estrada noticed a Lincoln Navigator driving slowly down Lake Shore Drive. Two masked men exited from the backseat of the Navigator and approached the Impala while the Navigator continued to drive slowly. One man proceeded to the driver's side of the Impala, and the other went to the passenger's side. Casas saw the man on the passenger's side tap a revolver on the glass, and Estrada noticed that the man on the driver's side was carrying a black handgun. After a brief exchange of words between the masked men and the occupants of the Impala, the man on the driver's side opened fire, peppering the Impala with bullets. Four of those bullets struck Galicia, and he was killed by a shot to the head. Neither Casas nor Estrada was injured by the gunfire. Casas and Estrada then watched as the two men jumped back into the Navigator and drove away from the scene. Estrada called 911.

¶ 4 Police officers drove around the area in an attempt to locate the Navigator. Sergeant Daniel Reid of the Boone County Sheriff's Office located and began to follow a Navigator, which turned out to be driven by defendant. Defendant led Reid on a high-speed chase through Boone and Winnebago Counties. In the course of that pursuit, defendant ignored traffic signals, jumped a raised median, and at one point accelerated in reverse directly toward Reid's vehicle. By the time defendant came to a stop on Perryville Road in Rockford, near the intersection with Spring Creek Road, his driver's-side wheels were on rims. The four occupants of the Navigator—defendant, Anthony Perez, Ricardo Figueroa, and Cheyanne Patton—then fled on foot.

¶ 5 Reid shot defendant in the knee, and defendant was quickly apprehended by a different officer. The police subsequently apprehended Figueroa, Patton, and eventually Perez. Upon searching the Navigator, the police found a .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic handgun with an extended magazine sitting on the driver's seat. An Illinois State Police firearms examiner determined that the casings that were found at the scene of the shooting at 2019 Lake Shore Drive were fired from the Glock. Police also found two masks in the Navigator and a revolver lying nearby on the street.

¶ 6 Defendant was charged by indictment with first-degree murder under three different subsections of the murder statute. He was also charged with mob action, two counts of attempted murder, and several offenses that were nol-prossed prior to trial. At defendant's trial,¹ the State introduced evidence that defendant, Perez, Figueroa, and Patton were all members of the Latin Kings street gang, which had a rivalry with the Sureños 13 street gang. A gang expert, Sergeant David Dammon of the Belvidere Police Department, testified that members of the Sureños 13 street gang lived in or around an area of Belvidere that was known as "Little Mexico." In her testimony, Patton referred to a "Little Village," but defendant acknowledges in his appellant's brief that this was the area known as Little Mexico ("The evidence is undisputed that [defendant] drove Perez to ‘Little Village’ (a.k.a. ‘Little Mexico’) and drove Perez away after the shooting."). According to the State's theory at trial, Figueroa was the person who approached the passenger's side of Galicia's Impala, Perez was the shooter on the driver's side, and defendant was criminally responsible for the actions of Figueroa and Perez under principles of accountability.

¶ 7 On appeal, defendant does not dispute that the State proved that Perez and Figueroa committed the offenses of murder and mob action. Instead, defendant argues that the State did not prove that he was legally accountable for the actions of Perez and Figueroa. We therefore focus at this point on certain evidence that sheds additional light on the alleged common criminal design among defendant, Perez, and Figueroa.

¶ 8 Patton, who testified for the State upon a grant of use immunity and after being threatened with contempt, testified as follows. On the evening of November 29-30, 2013, defendant, who was her boyfriend at the time, drove her in his Lincoln Navigator to a house party on Strawberry Lane in Belvidere. She had been to that house before, and, at some point in the past, somebody had fired gunshots at her outside of that house. There were a lot of people at the house on the night of November 29-30, including Figueroa, whom she knew as "Jock," and a person whom she knew as "Shadow." (Shortly after the shooting, Patton identified Perez as "Shadow" from a police lineup, and an officer also testified at trial that Perez was known on the streets as "Shadow.")

¶ 9 Patton explained that she noticed at the party that Shadow was taking pictures with a black gun that had an extended clip. At some point that night, Patton decided to leave the house with defendant in his Navigator to go get cigarettes. Defendant was in the driver's seat, and she was in the passenger's seat. As they were pulling out, a man whom she knew as "Kuete" or "Daniel" asked them to get beer. Jock and Shadow then got in the back of defendant's Navigator and told him to "take them to Little Village."

¶ 10 Patton testified that she did not know why Jock and Shadow wanted defendant to drive them to Little Village. Asked by the prosecutor what, if any, statements "they" made (presumably, Jock and Shadow), Patton responded: "He wanted to go get at somebody. I don't know." She added, "I don't know—we didn't know what their intentions were though." According to Patton, defendant took Jock and Shadow where they asked him to take them, which was just a few minutes away from Strawberry Lane. At some point the Navigator came to a stop. Jock and Shadow then got out and told defendant "[t]o go around the block, like, to drive." Defendant then started to go, and Patton heard multiple gunshots "real quick."

¶ 11 Patton explained that, when Jock and Shadow got back in the Navigator, Shadow said that he "shot that n*** in the face." Shadow had a gun in his hand—the same gun that Patton had seen earlier at the house party. Patton claimed that Jock and Shadow told defendant to drive and that one of them said to go to Rockford. After defendant drove out of Belvidere, a police car came up behind them. Jock and Shadow kept telling defendant to drive. According to Patton, defendant was driving normally when the police had their lights and sirens on. When the Navigator came to a stop, all of the occupants got out and ran. Patton had outstanding warrants at the time and was apprehended close by.

¶ 12 On cross-examination, Patton testified that she did not know what time she arrived at the house party that night, but she said that she was with defendant for most of the time she was there. After Shadow took pictures with the gun with the extended clip, she saw Shadow again at the house over the next hours, and he did not have the gun. She and defendant were at the party for a few hours before they decided to get cigarettes. Both of them were in the Navigator pulling out when Daniel waved them down and told them that he wanted them to pick up beer from a Mobil station. As Daniel was talking about getting beer, Jock and Shadow got in the Navigator. Patton had not heard any discussions between Jock and Shadow before they got in the Navigator. She did not know what Jock's and Shadow's intentions were when they said they wanted to go to Little Village.

¶ 13 Patton continued on cross-examination to testify that it took a few minutes to go from the house on Strawberry Lane to Little Village. She figured that they would go to Little Village first, because it was right by the Mobil where she was going anyway. She did not hear any discussions about guns during that time, nor did she see any guns. When they got to Little Village, "somebody" told defendant to stop the Navigator. Defendant did so, and Jock and Shadow got out and started to walk away. When defendant stopped, Patton did not see anybody outside on the streets. Jock and Shadow said something about meeting them around the back, and defendant started to drive away. Defendan...