People v. Whitfield

2017 IL App (2d) 140878

78 N.E.3d 1015

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

v.Hezekiah D. WHITFIELD, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 2-14-0878

Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.

Opinion filed March 3, 2017

Michael J. Pelletier, Thomas A. Lilien, and Kerry Goettsch, of State Appellate Defender's Office, of Elgin, for appellant.

Michael G. Nerheim, State's Attorney, of Waukegan (Patrick Delfino, Lawrence M. Bauer, and Diane L. Campbell, of State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor's Office, of counsel), for the People.

OPINION

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

¶ 1 In this direct appeal from his conviction of first-degree murder, the defendant, Hezekiah Whitfield, raises three arguments: (1) the trial court should have suppressed his unrecorded custodial statement to police pursuant to section 103-2.1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963 (Code) ( 725 ILCS 5/103-2.1 (West 2010) ), which renders such statements presumptively inadmissible in a murder trial; (2) the trial court erred in limiting his ability to present evidence of other crimes committed by someone else who had been convicted of the same murder (a conviction that was later overturned); and (3) the trial court should have allowed him to present evidence explaining his travel to Indonesia shortly after the police obtained a DNA sample from him. Although we agree with certain of these arguments, we affirm on the basis that the trial court's errors were harmless in light of the compelling DNA evidence against the defendant.

¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 3 On December 9, 1994, Fred Reckling was found dead in a Grand Appliance store in Waukegan. His head had been beaten in. Four small droplet-type stains were found on the carpet near the door. Pieces of the carpet containing the stains were removed and sent for testing. Reckling's car was recovered 10 days later in Chicago; there were stains on the driver's seat, the steering wheel, and the threshold between the door and the driver's seat. Later testing showed that all of the stains on the carpet pieces and the car were blood.

¶ 4 A little over a year later, James Edwards, who had been arrested for a series of robberies in the Waukegan area, told Waukegan police that he had murdered Reckling. He was convicted of the murder in 1996. However, in 2010, the supreme court granted Edwards's request for DNA testing of the blood evidence in the case. The DNA from the blood stains did not match either Reckling's or Edwards's DNA. Edwards was subsequently cleared of the charges relating to Reckling's death.

¶ 5 The DNA test ordered by the supreme court took place in May 2011. A comparison of this DNA with the CODIS DNA database indicated a probable match with the defendant. On June 24, 2011, the Waukegan police pulled over the truck that the defendant was driving. Shamiya Mathis, a woman whom the defendant had begun dating a few months earlier, was with him. The police took the defendant to a hospital and obtained a DNA sample from him. They then released him.

¶ 6 On April 13 of the following year, the Chicago police issued a warrant for the defendant's arrest in connection with an assault on a woman named Ebony, who appears to have been known to Mathis. Four days later, on April 17, 2012, the Chicago police department received a report of an assault involving the defendant and Mathis. Two patrol officers, Christopher Erickson and his partner, Jacquelyn Spaargaren, responded. They found the defendant outside in an alley with a wound to his head. He told them that Mathis had struck him in the head with something heavy. Both he and Mathis were transported to the police station (the defendant was taken first to a hospital for examination). The police questioned both Mathis and the defendant. The circumstances of that questioning are disputed, and we will address them in depth later in this opinion. Mathis and the defendant were then released.

¶ 7 On May 2, 2012, the defendant was indicted for the murder of Reckling. He was arrested on that charge on May 15, 2012. Trial was eventually set to start on April 21, 2014.

¶ 8 A. Motion in Limine to Bar Evidence of Defendant's Statement

¶ 9 In January 2014, the defendant filed a motion in limine seeking to bar the State from introducing any evidence regarding the defendant's statement while in police custody on April 17, 2012. His motion was based on section 103-2.1 of the Code (recording statute), which provided as follows:

"When statements by accused may be used.

(a) In this Section, ‘custodial interrogation’ means any interrogation during which (i) a reasonable person in the subject's position would consider himself or herself to be in custody and (ii) during which a question is asked that is reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response.

In this Section, ‘place of detention’ means a building or a police station that is a place of operation for a municipal police department or county sheriff department or other law enforcement agency, not a courthouse, that is owned or operated by a law enforcement agency at which persons are or may be held in detention in connection with criminal charges against those persons.

In this Section, ‘electronic recording’ includes motion picture, audiotape, or videotape, or digital recording.

(b) An oral, written, or sign language statement of an accused made as a result of a custodial interrogation at a police station or other place of detention shall be presumed to be inadmissible as evidence against the accused in any criminal [homicide] proceeding * * * unless:

(1) an electronic recording is made of the custodial interrogation; and

(2) the recording is substantially accurate and not intentionally altered.

* * *

(e) Nothing in this Section precludes the admission * * * (ii) of a statement made during a custodial interrogation that was not recorded as required by this Section, because electronic recording was not feasible, * * * (viii) of a statement given at a time when the interrogators are unaware that a death has in fact occurred, or (ix) of any other statement that may be admissible under law. The State shall bear the burden of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence, that one of the exceptions described in this subsection (e) is applicable. Nothing in this Section precludes the admission of a statement, otherwise inadmissible under this Section, that is used only for impeachment and not as substantive evidence.

(f) The presumption of inadmissibility of a statement made by a suspect at a custodial interrogation at a police station or other place of detention may be overcome by a preponderance of the evidence that the statement was voluntarily given and is reliable, based on the totality of the circumstances." Id.

The defendant argued that, under the recording statute, his statement to police on April 17, 2012, was inadmissible in any murder trial against him because it was the result of custodial interrogation at a police station and it had not been electronically recorded. The State did not file any written response to the motion.

¶ 10 The hearing on the motion commenced on March 27, 2014, and stretched over portions of four days. The State presented three witnesses, all of them Chicago police officers: Erickson, Spaargaren, and Juan Cardenas. Before testifying, all of the officers had reviewed Spaargaren's written report regarding her conversation with the defendant on April 17, 2012.

¶ 11 Erickson testified that he had been patrolling with Spaargaren at about 8:15 p.m. on the evening of April 17, 2012, when they received a call regarding a domestic battery. He and Spaargaren responded to the call. Cardenas and his partner also responded, arriving a few minutes later.

¶ 12 Erickson found the defendant walking in an alley with a laceration on his head and blood on his shirt. The defendant said that he had been hit in the head with a blunt object, and he identified two women (Mathis and another woman) as having been involved. There was no odor of alcohol on the defendant's breath and, except for some agitation due to the assault, he was calm. Cardenas took the defendant to a hospital to have his injuries examined, per police protocol. Erickson and Spaargaren took Mathis to the police station.

¶ 13 Just before 9 p.m., the defendant was brought to the police station. Erickson described the defendant's manner as "normal, a little bit agitated," because he was "in a police station with the injuries still to his head." The defendant was brought to the rear processing room, where he was chained to a bench along one wall. (Mathis was not in that room at that point.) The room was about 12 feet by 20 feet, with four desks and computers, and a holding cell that was about 8 feet by 8 feet. There was no video recording equipment in that room. Erickson believed that there was "video in the back lock up area where offenders [were] fingerprinted" but not in any of the rooms where offenders were processed.

¶ 14 Erickson sat at a desk and began entering an incident report regarding the assault upon the defendant by Mathis. Spaargaren began questioning the defendant. She was sitting near Erickson, "no more than five feet approximately" away from him. Erickson did not read the defendant his rights under Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and he did not hear any other police officer do that. Spaargaren did not say anything to Erickson about the defendant being a suspect in a murder investigation.

¶ 15 In response to a question about when the defendant had last encountered the police, Erickson heard him say something to the effect of "I was recently stopped by Waukegan" and "something about DNA." The defendant then said, "My lawyer said don't talk about anything." Erickson did not hear the defendant say anything else. Erickson specifically denied hearing the defendant say anything about leaving for Indonesia after being DNA tested, when "they" were going to "find out that I did it," or...