People v. Walker

2020 IL App (4th) 180774

180 N.E.3d 156

449 Ill.Dec. 742

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

v.Alfred Roland WALKER, Defendant-Appellant.

NO. 4-18-0774

Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District.

Filed October 22, 2020

James E. Chadd, Catherine K. Hart, and Janieen R. Tarrance, of State Appellate Defender's Office, of Springfield, for appellant.

Don Knapp, State's Attorney, of Bloomington (Patrick Delfino, David J. Robinson, and Lara L. Quivey, of State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor's Office, of counsel), for the People.

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

¶ 1 In a bench trial in the McLean County circuit court, defendant, Alfred Roland Walker, was convicted of home invasion ( 720 ILCS 5/19-6(a)(3) (West 2016)), armed robbery (id. § 18-2(a)(2) ), aggravated battery with a firearm (id. § 12-3.05(e)(1)), and aggravated discharge of a firearm (id. § 24-1.2(a)(2)). He appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence. Viewing all the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution and resolving all reasonable inferences in the prosecution's favor, we conclude that a rational trier of fact could find the elements of those offenses to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, we affirm the judgment.

¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 3 A. The Home Invasion and the Shooting of Kevin Powell

¶ 4 Darla Powell lived at 1528 Julie Drive, in Bloomington, Illinois, with her husband, Kevin Powell. Around 6:30 p.m. or 6:45 p.m. on November 9, 2016, she was home alone when the doorbell rang. She was not expecting any visitors. She turned on the porch light and asked who it was. "[P]izza delivery,’ " a man outside answered. Intending to tell the supposed deliveryman that he was at the wrong address, she opened the door.

¶ 5 Three men were standing inside the screen door. One of the men, who was holding a pizza box from Casey's General Store (Casey's), pointed a pistol in Darla Powell's face. He asked her where her husband was. She answered that he was not home. The three men barged into the house. The man with the pistol told Darla Powell, " [‘S]it down here, [b]itch.[’] " She sat down on a swivel chair by the door. Using a roll of duct tape they had brought with them, the intruders taped her ankles together and taped her mouth shut. They also intended, apparently, to tape her hands together behind her back, but, instead, they ineptly taped her left hand into a fist, leaving her right hand free.

¶ 6 In her testimony, Darla Powell described all three men as African-American. Two of them were of a darker complexion, and the third was of a lighter complexion. One of the men was taller than the other two. The first man was of a darker complexion and had a goatee. He was wearing a black top, black pants, and no mask. The second man had a lighter complexion and was wearing black pants and maybe a track jacket. He had no mask on, either. These first two men were not much taller than Darla Powell, who was five feet four inches. The third man was taller than she. He wore camouflage pants, a white shirt, and a ski mask that covered the bottom half of his face.

¶ 7 While one of the three men stood watch over Darla Powell, the other two rifled through the contents of the house, asking her over and over again where the money was. As they were tearing through the house, there was a bump in the basement. The furnace always bumped against the wall when it turned on. One of the men ran up the hallway and said, " [‘]Mack, somebody is in the basement.[’] " Darla Powell assured them that no one was in the basement.

¶ 8 After searching the house, overturning things, one of the men cautioned to the other two that they had been there for about 20 minutes and that they had best be on their way. The intruders then loosened the tape from Darla Powell's mouth and, holding her cell phone to her face, commanded her to persuade her husband to return home by telling him that a lamp had fallen and broken. Kevin Powell did not answer his phone. Then Darla Powell's mother called. While one of the men stood next to Darla Powell with a pillow and a pistol, she told her mother she would call back. Soon Kevin Powell called. Foreseeing that a broken lamp would be insufficient to induce him to come home, Darla Powell told him, instead, that their big-screen television was falling off the wall.

¶ 9 As Kevin Powell was on his way home, the three men carried Darla Powell to the garage and shut her in the trunk of the car. While in the trunk, she heard three gunshots. Then she heard Kevin Powell calling out to her, asking her if she was all right. She pulled the emergency release latch inside the trunk and got out. Kevin Powell, his face bloody, was elbowing himself forward along the kitchen counter.

¶ 10 Believing that the intruders had taken her cell phone with them (it later was found on a footstool in the house), Darla Powell ran across the street and asked the neighbors to call 911. The 911 call was made at 7:39 p.m. on November 9, 2016.

¶ 11 Kevin Powell testified that he was in the car-detailing business and that he owned two shops, side by side, right around the corner from where he and his wife lived. He had a conviction, from 2010, for dealing cocaine, but he had reformed himself (although he still smoked marijuana), and now his passion was cleaning cars. (When responding to the incident, the police noticed a smell of fresh and burnt marijuana in the house, but they saw only a minimal amount of marijuana, consistent with personal use.) Commonly, Kevin Powell worked at his car-detailing trade seven days a week. On November 9, 2016, he went to work, as usual. Around 7 p.m., just as he was leaving a chicken restaurant, he received a call from his wife urging him to come home because the television was falling off the living room wall.

¶ 12 He came home, and as he was walking up the driveway, he was approached by three masked men armed with pistols. They rushed him into the house. The apparent ringleader demanded from Kevin Powell a specific sum, $40,000, pistol-whipping him and telling him, " ‘We know you got it. You got them shops right around the corner.’ " But Kevin Powell did not have $40,000 in the house. Not even in his drug dealing days did he have that kind of money lying around.

¶ 13 The ringleader tried, futilely, to beat the information out of Kevin Powell, who was unable to give up what he did not have. Getting hit in the face and head with the butt of a pistol caused him to fall onto the living room couch. One of the men then duct-taped his ankles together. Kevin Powell had his work hoodie on, and the man who had pistol-whipped him picked up a pillow and commanded him to cover his head with his hood. Perceiving that the plan was to shoot him in the head, Kevin Powell refused to cooperate with his own execution. He stood up from the couch, saying, " ‘If [y]ou're going to shoot me, you're going to have to shoot me to my face.’ " One of the three men commented that he was tough, and they opened fire on him—three shots, one after another—shooting him in the leg and the arm. Kevin Powell fell to the living room floor. The three men then ran out of the house, taking his cell phone with them.

¶ 14 On June 13, 2017, Kevin Powell went to the Bloomington Police Department for an interview. He was shown a photographic array. He circled one of the photographs simply because he recognized the person in that photograph. It was a man whom he knew as " ‘Big Mack’ " or " ‘Fat Mack.’ " He knew this man as a friend of his brother-in-law. About three months before the incident, he saw Fat Mack in a Kreg Therapeutics truck, next door to the shops. He flung up his arm, and Fat Mack flung up his arm. Big Mack or Fat Mack was defendant, and Kevin Powell identified him as such in court. Kevin Powell did not know, in the police station, that the purpose of the photographic array was to identify the perpetrators. He just thought the purpose was to identify people whom he recognized. Initially, it did not occur to Kevin Powell that defendant was one of the men who had invaded his home. All three of the intruders had been wearing masks. But after watching a surveillance video from Casey's, which showed defendant buying a pizza from Casey's and wearing the same black clothing that one of the intruders had worn, Kevin Powell was convinced that defendant was, in fact, one of the masked intruders—because the clothing matched. But, the night of the incident, Kevin Powell did not think, " ‘[Defendant is] in my home.’ "

¶ 15 B. Fingerprints on the Casey's Pizza Box

¶ 16 The Casey's pizza box was left behind on the living room couch of the Powell residence. The fingerprints of both defendant and Jamal Parks were found on the pizza box.

¶ 17 C. Defendant's Account to the Police

¶ 18 Upon being informed that his fingerprint was found on the Casey's pizza box and upon being shown the surveillance video of him buying pizza from Casey's at 5:35 p.m. on November 9, 2016, defendant admitted to the police, right away, that it was he who was pictured in the surveillance video. He then gave the police the following account. Within five minutes after defendant bought the pizza at Casey's, two men, one of whom defendant knew as "June," bludgeoned him with a pistol and robbed him of the marijuana he had on his person. They then forced him into a car and dropped him off near the intersection of Main and Lincoln Streets, near a Freedom gas station. When defendant was let out of the car, he ran. Afterward, defendant spoke with June by phone, threatening to exact revenge for the taking of his marijuana.

¶ 19 D. What Is Known About Parks, Other Than That He, Along With Defendant, Handled the Pizza Box

¶ 20 A Bloomington detective, John Atteberry, testified he had been informed by police in the Chicago area that Jamal Parks was a member of a rip-off crew, the modus operandi of which was arranging to buy drugs as a ruse to rob the drug dealer.

In January 2017, Parks...