People v. Coleman

Citation374 Ill.Dec. 922,2013 IL 113307,996 N.E.2d 617
Decision Date03 October 2013
Docket NumberDocket No. 113307.
PartiesThe PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Christopher COLEMAN, Appellant.
CourtSupreme Court of Illinois

2013 IL 113307
996 N.E.2d 617
374 Ill.Dec.
922

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee,
v.
Christopher COLEMAN, Appellant.

Docket No. 113307.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Oct. 3, 2013.


[996 N.E.2d 620]


Karen L. Daniel, of Chicago, and Kathryn Couey, Sharon Makowsky,

[996 N.E.2d 621]

Amber Montague and Lindsey Sieling, law students, for appellant.

Lisa Madigan, Attorney General, of Springfield, and Jerry Brady, State's Attorney, of Peoria (Michael A. Scodro, Solicitor General, and Michael M. Glick and Eric M. Levin, Assistant Attorneys General, of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.


Gary M. Elden, Pei Y. Chung, Paul A. Sheldon and Justin R. Donoho, of Grippo & Elden LLC, of Chicago, for amici curiae 40 Concerned Illinois Attorneys.

Justice THEIS delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.
[374 Ill.Dec. 926]OPINION

¶ 1 The central issue in this appeal is whether the circuit court of Peoria County's decision to deny relief to defendant Christopher Coleman following an evidentiary hearing on his second successive postconviction petition, which raised a claim of actual innocence, was manifestly erroneous. In resolving that issue, we also must address whether People v. Washington, 171 Ill.2d 475, 216 Ill.Dec. 773, 665 N.E.2d 1330 (1996), which announced the standard in Illinois for evaluating postconviction claims of actual innocence, should be discarded in favor of a more rigorous standard with roots in federal law.

¶ 2 Today, we reaffirm our holding in Washington, and reverse the judgments of the circuit court and the appellate court (2011 IL App (3d) 100419–U, 2011 WL 10468157) and remand for a new trial.

¶ 3 BACKGROUND

¶ 4 On August 22, 1994, several men entered a house in Peoria, where Bertha Miller lived with her two daughters, Tequilla and Tekelia, and her two sisters, Myre Lott and Angela Stimage. The men demanded money, then threatened and beat the occupants of the house. Two of the men took Tekelia into a bathroom, and one of them sexually assaulted her. She was 17 years old. When the police arrived, some of the men escaped. James Coats, Tekelia's assailant, and Robert Nixon were arrested at the house. At the police station that night, Tequilla saw Nixon and the defendant, who had been arrested at his girlfriend's nearby apartment in connection with the attack, walking with police officers. Tequilla subsequently identified the defendant in a photo array and a lineup as one of the men. He was indicted for armed robbery, aggravated criminal sexual assault, home invasion, and residential burglary. Several months later, the defendant was tried before a jury.

¶ 5 Because our decision ultimately rests on the evidence presented at the defendant's trial and his postconviction evidentiary hearing, a thorough review of the record is necessary.

¶ 6 The State's case consisted of testimony from several of the victims, as well as two police officers and a 13–year–old named Anthony Brooks.

¶ 7 At trial, the State called 10 witnesses, and offered stipulations from 4 other witnesses.

¶ 8 Lott testified that there were six men wearing bandanas and a boy in the house during the attack. Though Lott described what happened throughout the house, she was in the living room with her head wrapped in a blanket for most of that time. Her account was based largely on what she heard for approximately two hours. She only saw the face of one of the men, whom she did not recognize, and she did not identify any of them.

¶ 9 Tequilla testified that on the night of the attack she was sleeping in her bedroom when she heard a noise. She awoke and ran to the living room, where she saw seven men, six of whom had guns, standing [374 Ill.Dec. 927]

[996 N.E.2d 622]

over Lott. The men pointed a gun at Tequilla, frisked her, and threw her to the floor, where they attempted unsuccessfully to put a leather couch pillow over her head. They wore dark clothes and bandanas, so Tequilla could see only their eyes. According to Tequilla, the men ordered her to lie still on the floor, then started beating her and Lott and demanding money. A tall man came into the living room, grabbed Tequilla by the hair, threatened to harm her if Lott did not give the men money, and cut Lott's leg. Tequilla stated the men kicked Lott in the face and pushed Tequilla back to the floor, where “a little boy” tripped over her on his way to run outside to serve as “a watch-out.” The boy announced that he was tired of waiting outside, and that he did not see anyone coming.

¶ 10 Tequilla testified that two of the men took the bandanas off their faces. She did not recognize “the kind of light skin one” because she did not know him, but she recognized “the dark skin one” as “Fats” because her family had grown up with him over a five- or six-year period. Tequilla stated that she saw his face for a “good three minutes.” In court, she identified this man as the defendant.

¶ 11 Tequilla testified that the boy returned to the house and said “5–o,” meaning the police were coming to the house. The light-skinned man and the dark-skinned man, the defendant, fled together out the front door. The remaining five men locked the door and ordered the victims to go upstairs to Stimage's bedroom. Tequilla sensed the police were inside the house when the men began to hide their guns by wrapping them in Stimage's clothes. Prior to the police entering the house, two of the men jumped out the upstairs window, and “[t]he other one was trying to get into the closet,” then “some of them” tried to jump out again, but “didn't get to.”

¶ 12 Tequilla further testified that she did not know whether Fats had a gun on the night of the attack because she was looking at his face. He was telling the other men what to do, and when he asked them to hurry and get the money, they beat the victims. Tequilla stated that on the day after the attack, she went to the police station, where Peoria Police Detective Rabe showed her “a whole bunch,” more than a hundred, of photographs of possible suspects. From the photographs she picked out “[e]veryone that was there,” including Fats. Later, Tequilla viewed a line-up of African–American men. From the line-up she picked out “[t]he ones that were there that night that I picked out in the photo[s],” including Fats. Tequilla stated that she picked him out “because his face stood out from the other ones.” His face stood out because she remembered it; she remembered it because she knew him.

¶ 13 On cross-examination, Tequilla testified that the attack lasted approximately 30 minutes. She confirmed that there were seven men, who were all wearing bandanas. When she came into the living room, it was ransacked. According to Tequilla, Lott and two family friends were lying on their chests on the floor, but their heads were not wrapped in blankets. Six of the men were standing, and one was sitting, while the boy repeatedly exited and entered the front door. Tequilla stated that once the boy yelled “5–o,” he and two men ran out the front door. After that, when the police knocked on the door, five men remained in the house. Tequilla explained that she did not count the boy among the men. But later she stated that during the attack, “It was six dudes left in the house, and one went outside, which he was a little boy.”

[996 N.E.2d 623]

[374 Ill.Dec. 928]¶ 14 Tequilla testified that only two of the men removed their bandanas, and only for three minutes, then they left. Tequilla stated that Fats, the defendant, stayed in the living room chair “most of the time” during the attack. He only removed his bandana when he was in the living room. According to Tequilla, Miller was not in the living room during the attack. Defense counsel asked Tequilla how she could have picked out all of the men if only two had removed their bandanas, and she stated that the two men who fled out the front door had removed their bandanas in the living room, but the remaining men did so upstairs.

¶ 15 Tequilla testified that at the police station she did not disclose she had seen the faces of two of the men. She stated that several weeks after the attack she testified before the grand jury, where she was asked if she recognized any of the men, and answered that she recognized one of them, Nixon. According to Tequilla, she did not give the grand jury the defendant's name “because I didn't remember until then—until now, I mean.” She “just forgot” his name. Tequilla acknowledged that she picked out Elbert Nickerson in the photographs and the line-up at the police station, and told the police that he was one of the men. Tequilla insisted that she mentioned to police at the line-up that she was unsure about whether Nickerson was one of the men. Looking at the photographs again on the day before trial, she said that Nickerson was not one of the men “because he looked different from it personally face-to-face.”

¶ 16 Tequilla testified that she identified six of the men in the line-up, including the defendant, Nickerson, and Mark Roberson. According to Tequilla, the police told her that in the line-ups they had “volunteers, and then there were people that I named out that were in the line-up.” When asked whether it was easy for her to pick out suspects from the line-up because she had already seen their photos, Tequilla answered, “Yes, it was, because, hey, this, people have a look similar to what the people in the picture.”

¶ 17 Defense counsel turned his questioning to the boy and asked whether the boy wore a bandana. Tequilla stated that she got “a real good look” at him when he tripped over her, but she could not determine whether he had a bandana over his face, even though he was a few inches away from her. She was lying down, and her eyes were looking at his eyes. Tequilla testified that she could look at the defendant's face without the bandana from the floor, and she saw it again when she was pulled off the floor to go upstairs. At that point, she “got to see him before he left because he was sitting in the...

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