People v. Ward

226 N.E.3d 659

2023 IL App(1st) 190364

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

v.Micheail WARD, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 1-19-0364

Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, SIXTH DIVISION.

Filed March 31, 2023

Appeal from the Circuit Court of Cook County. No. 13 CR 5242, Honorable Nicholas Ford, Judge Presiding.

James E. Chadd, Douglas R. Hoff, and Jennifer L. Bontrager, of State Appellate Defender’s Office, of Chicago, for appellant.

Kimberly M. Foxx, State’s Attorney, of Chicago (Enrique Abraham, David Iskowich, and Tyler J Cox, Assistant State’s Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.

OPINION

PRESIDING JUSTICE MIKVA delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 A jury found defendant Micheail Ward guilty of first degree murder (720 ILCS 5/9-1(a)(1) (West 2018)) and aggravated battery with a firearm (id. § 12-3.05(e)(1)) and also determined that he personally discharged a firearm that caused great bodily harm or death to another person (730 ILCS 5/5-8-1(a)(1)(d)(iii) (West 2018)). The trial court sentenced Mr. Ward to a total of 84 years in prison. On appeal, Mr. Ward argues that (1) the evidence was insufficient to find him guilty of the offenses beyond a reasonable doubt, (2) the trial court erred in not suppressing his custodial statements because the detectives who interrogated him violated his right to remain silent, (3) the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motions to admit two expert witnesses relative to these custodial statements, (4) it was plain error for the trial court not to ask the potential jurors whether they accepted the principles set out in Illinois Supreme Court Rule 431(b) (eff. July 1, 2012), (5) several statements in the prosecutor’s rebuttal at closing argument deprived Mr. Ward of a fair trial, (6) Mr. Ward’s arrest, pursuant to an investigative alert, should have been quashed as a constitutionally unreasonable seizure, and (7) we should remand to the trial court to determine whether his 84-year de facto life sentence was unconstitutional as applied to him because he was 18 years old at the time of these crimes.

¶ 2 We conclude, for the following reasons, that the evidence was sufficient to support Mr. Ward’s convictions. We also find that the trial court should have sup- pressed Mr. Ward’s inculpatory statements to detectives because he clearly and unequivocally invoked his right to remain silent, that invocation was not scrupulously honored, and the error was not harmless. We therefore reverse the trial court’s ruling on that motion and remand for a new trial.

¶ 3 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 4 This case stems from the January 29, 2013, shooting of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, and 17-year-olds Lawrence Sellers and Sabastian Moore. Mr. Sellers and Mr. Moore survived their injuries, but Ms. Pendleton died as a result of her wounds. Mr. Ward and his codefendant Kenneth Williams, who is not a party to this appeal, were charged with the first degree murder of Ms. Pendleton, as well as the aggravated batteries of Mr. Sellers and Mr. Moore. The State also alleged that Mr. Ward personally discharged the firearm that proximately caused Ms. Pendleton’s death.

¶ 5 A. Pretrial Motions

¶ 6 The defense moved to quash Mr. Ward’s arrest and suppress any resulting evidence on October 7, 2014. The trial court denied the motion, concluding that the police had probable cause to arrest Mr. Ward.

¶ 7 On February 18, 2016, the defense also moved to suppress Mr. Ward’s statements to the police, arguing that he had invoked his right to remain silent three times, but that "his invocations were never scrupulously honored by Detectives." The trial court denied that motion. It found that Mr. Ward did not invoke his right to remain silent and that his statements were not involuntary. The court made clear it had watched the recordings of Mr. Ward’s interrogation and concluded that "[t]he nature of [Mr. Ward]’s actions [did] not point to an unequivocal assertion of his right to remain silent."

¶ 8 On August 28, 2017, the trial court allowed the defense to reopen the motion to suppress and present the testimony of Dr. Richard Ofshe, an expert on the "impact of interrogation methods on [a] suspect[’]s decision making." After hearing Dr. Ofshe’s testimony and additional argument, the court again ruled that Mr. Ward’s statements were admissible.

¶ 9 Defense counsel filed pretrial motions to admit at trial Dr. Ofshe’s testimony "regarding the phenomenon of false confessions" and testimony from retired detective James Trainum "regarding police procedure and interrogation methods." The trial court denied both motions.

¶ 10 B. Trial

¶ 11 The witnesses agreed that the shooting occurred at Harsh Park, at approximately 4462 South Oakenwald Avenue in Chicago. Harsh Park is bordered on the east by Oakenwald Avenue and on the west by a fence and an alley. At approximately 2:15 p.m. on January 29, 2013, a group of students from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School (King High School) were at the park when a Black man opened fire on the group from the alley. The students ran, and three of them—Ms. Pendleton, Mr. Sellers, and Mr. Moore—were hit by gunfire.

¶ 12 1. The State’s Case

¶ 13 The State introduced the testimony of nine King High School students who witnessed the shooting, another eyewitness who lived across the street from the park, and multiple law enforcement and other witnesses who participated in the case investigation. The State also called four witnesses whom the State maintained had spoken with Mr. Ward in the days after the shooting. Each of these witnesses made statements about the events that incriminated Mr. Ward to detectives, to assistant state’s attorneys (ASAs), and before the grand jury, but recanted all or part of those statements at trial. Because the sufficiency of the evidence is at issue in this case, we will describe the trial evidence in some detail.

¶ 14 a. The King High School Students

¶ 15 The King High School students ranged in age from 15 to 18 years old at the time of the shooting. Each testified that on January 29, 2013, they had final exams and were released from school early—between 12:45 and 2 p.m. The day was unseasonably warm, and the group walked to Harsh Park to hang out and smoke marijuana. They were sheltering from the rain beneath a canopy at the park when a Black man fired a gun in their direction from the adjoining alley. The students scattered and ran to Oakenwald Avenue. The students each heard between three and six shots and gave limited and varied descriptions of the shooter. Several of the students were facing the alley when the shooting began.

¶ 16 Stephen Abdul was the only student who positively identified Mr. Ward as the shooter, though he did not become certain of that identification until trial. He identified three individuals he thought had "similar characteristics" to the shooter from the photo arrays he was shown on January 31, 2013. Those arrays did not include Mr. Ward, and Mr. Abdul told the detectives he did not see the actual shooter in the photos. Mr. Abdul testified that, on February 10, 2013, he picked Mr. Ward out of an in-person lineup as the shooter and it was "a pretty solid answer," although he was not 100% sure. Mr. Abdul also later agreed on cross-examination that he did not actually make an identification at the in-person lineup, but instead made a statement of similarity.

¶ 17 Mr. Abdul’s testimony was that he had seen "something move" in his peripheral vision, had noticed "some image moving towards the alley," and, when he looked over, "there was a guy with a gun who raised the gun and started to shoot." Mr. Abdul said the shooter was between 5 feet, 11 inches, and 6 feet, 1 inch, tall, "[m]edium size," with dark skin. He also remembered "dreadlocks of some sort," a "blue top and a blue jacket," and "khaki pants, maybe cargo pants," with "a hood or a hat."

¶ 18 Mr. Abdul was shown a blue hoodie and a black and gray hat at trial. He identified the color of the hoodie as the same blue color he had seen the shooter wearing. As to the hat, he said, "I do remember a black garment on his head." On cross-examination, Mr. Abdul agreed that he told a detective on January 30, 2013, that the shooter had worn a black hat or cap over dreadlocks, in addition to having dark skin and long arms, and that Mr. Ward did not have dreadlocks. Mr. Abdul agreed that the whole thing happened very quickly; he saw the shooter as shots were being fired and then fled from the park. Mr. Abdul also agreed that most of his friends discussed what had happened later on Facebook, that he had kept up with the case on social media, and that he had seen photos of Mr. Ward and Mr. Williams on the news.

¶ 19 Of the remaining students, some viewed both a photo array and an in-person lineup in the days after the shooting, while others viewed only an in-person lineup. Mr. Ward was not included in the photo arrays shown until February 5, 2013, but was included in all of the in-person lineups. The students viewed the arrays and lineups independently from one another and were all either unable to identify anyone from the lineups or pointed out Mr. Ward as someone who looked similar to the shooter. Three (Klyn Jones, Mr. Moore, and Mr. Sellers) were unable to make any identification, and one (Jordan Dillon) selected Mr. Ward from a photo array as looking similar to the shooter but was unable to pick him out at the lineup. Two of the students (Lazerick Bowdry and Danetria Hutson) picked Mr. Ward from the lineup as looking similar to the shooter, and two (Kyra Caldwell and Veronica Hansberry) picked out both Mr. Ward and another individual from the lineup as looking similar to the shooter.

¶ 20 b. Ronald Evans

¶ 21 The only eyewitness who was not a student at King High School was Ronald Evans, a former police officer with the Chicago Police Department from 1994 to 2007. Mr. Evans was not asked to and did not identify Mr. Ward in open court. At...