People v. Adkins
| Decision Date | 21 October 2010 |
| Docket Number | No. 107309.,107309. |
| Citation | 940 N.E.2d 11,346 Ill.Dec. 11,239 Ill.2d 1 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee,v.Rodney ADKINS, Appellee. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Michael J. Pelletier, State Appellate Def., Charles M. Schiedel, Deputy Def., Allen H. Andrews, Asst. Appellate Def. of Office of the State Appellate Def., of Springfield, for appellant.Lisa Madigan, Atty. Gen., of Springfield, Anita Alvarez, State's Atty., of Chicago (Alan J. Spellberg, John E. Nowak, Asst. State's Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.
Following a jury trial in the circuit court of Cook County, defendant Rodney Adkins was found guilty of first degree murder (720 ILCS 5/9–1(a) (West 2002)), home invasion (720 ILCS 5/12–11(a)(2) (West 2002)), and residential burglary (720 ILCS 5/19–3(a) (West 2002)). He waived a jury trial for the sentencing phase. In a subsequent bench trial, he was sentenced to
[346 Ill.Dec. 15 , 940 N.E.2d 15]
death. He filed a motion for a new trial, which was denied by the trial court. His appeal lies directly to this court under Supreme Court Rule 603 (134 Ill.2d R. 603). For the reasons set forth below, we affirm his conviction and sentence.
On July 31, 2003, two burglaries and one murder were committed at 936 Washington Boulevard in Oak Park. When Frank Perino, a resident of the building, returned from work that afternoon and entered through the rear entrance, he noticed that the back door of Catherine McAvinchey's condominium unit had been forced open. He called the police and let them inside the building when they arrived. Officer Michael Kelly and two other officers entered the unit that had been broken into and found McAvinchey, face down on the floor. Firefighters who responded detected no vital signs.
The officer who processed the scene observed that the rear door to the apartment had been kicked in. The footprint on the door was upside down, with the heel at the top of the print and the toe at the bottom. On a kitchen counter just inside the door, the officer found a plastic cap shaped like a cap for a soda bottle but “four or five inches around” with a slot in it, as if a large bottle had been used as a bank. In the kitchen sink, he found a large knife with a bloodstain beneath it. The knife matched a set of knives stored in a wooden block on the counter. At trial, a State Police DNA analyst testified that she compared blood samples collected at the crime scene to samples from defendant, his girlfriend Romanette Norwood, and the victim. Blood found on the handle and blade of the knife was consistent with the victim's.
In the living room, the officer found the victim lying face down on the floor with a large pool of blood around her head and neck. The pool of blood had begun to dry at the edges. Clear fluid found when the body was moved was later determined to be spinal fluid. A bloodstain on the back of her shirt appeared to have been made by wiping the knife blade on the shirt.
The apartment had been ransacked. Desk drawers and dresser drawers were pulled out. Two purses appeared to have been rifled through. An empty space on the desk, near a printer and power cord, was the size of a computer. A large plastic bottle with a picture of a football helmet on it was lying on a chair near the desk. The bottle had no cap and it appeared to match the bottle cap found in the kitchen.
Christine Callahan was the victim's neighbor. The two women, along with Perino and a fourth resident of the building, used the same locked entrance in the rear of the building to access their units. The lock did not always work. The back door to Callahan's apartment was approximately 20 feet from the victim's back door. Callahan's apartment was also burglarized on July 31. Several pieces of jewelry were taken, along with a large plastic bottle with a Cleveland Browns logo in which she saved coins. She identified the bottle found on the chair in the victim's apartment as the one that had been taken from her apartment. At trial, a State Police fingerprint analyst testified that she compared latent fingerprints from the crime scenes to exemplars from defendant, Norwood, and the victim. She found one fingerprint belonging to the defendant on the plastic bottle.
The same officer who processed the murder scene processed Callahan's apartment. He observed that her back door had also been kicked in and her apartment
[346 Ill.Dec. 16 , 940 N.E.2d 16]
ransacked. He found a cigarette butt on the floor at the bottom of a spiral staircase that led to the upper level of Callahan's unit. He collected the cigarette butt and sent it to the crime lab for processing. The State Police DNA analyst testified at trial that the male DNA profile found on the cigarette butt would be expected to occur in approximately one in 650 billion black individuals, one in 2.1 trillion white individuals, and one in 2.5 trillion Hispanic unrelated individuals. The profile matched defendant's DNA profile.
On September 8 and 9, 2003, Norwood was interviewed by the Oak Park police. She was wearing a Gucci watch and a pair of prescription eyeglasses, which were taken from her and inventoried as evidence. Information from this interview led police to a pawn shop and to the apartment of Fanny Roberts, defendant's mother. At the pawn shop, police obtained pawn sheets dated July 31, 2003, containing defendant's name. The police recovered a pair of sunglasses from Roberts' apartment.
On September 10, 2003, Norwood gave a videotaped statement to Assistant State's Attorney Jamie Santini. In this statement, she said that she had been defendant's girlfriend for 13 years and that she was then living with him. She stated that around June 24 or 25, they were in Oak Park and “he had me ring somebody's bell” to see if the person was at home “[s]o he could burglarize it.” She walked back to the corner, where defendant was waiting, and told him that no one was home. He went to the house and kicked the door in as she watched from the alley. She said that she did not enter the house. She left and did not see him again until he came to his cousin's house later with “some tapes, VCR, DVD, a couple of movies,” which he said he got from the house he had burglarized.
Norwood described their activities over the next several days. On July 31, 2003, she slept until noon. Earlier that morning, she briefly awoke when defendant left. He kissed her on her jaw and said he was leaving and would be back. He returned at about 12:30 p.m., while Norwood and defendant's mother were watching television together. He was “sweating heavily” and he carried a black duffle bag. Defendant pulled two pairs of glasses from his pocket and gave them to Norwood. He took a watch from his other pocket and gave it to her. Santini showed her photographs of the glasses and the watch that she had been wearing earlier and of the sunglasses found in Roberts' apartment. She identified them as the same items defendant had given her. Defendant also gave a gold chain necklace to his mother. He opened the bag and “took out a black screen monitor” that was “like a computer” and put it on the bed. He also took out a laptop computer in a case and a bag full of coins. She had never seen any of these items in his possession before that date. She identified the laptop and the duffle bag from photographs she was shown by Santini.
According to Norwood, defendant left for a “couple of minutes,” taking the computers to the next-door neighbor's to try to sell them. He returned with the computers, which he placed in his mother's room.
Norwood and defendant took a bus and a train to a pawn shop in Forest Park, where he pawned two rings for “about $70.” Then they went to a liquor store so that he could convert the “[c]oins into money.” Defendant purchased a “scratch out” lottery ticket and collected $500 in winnings. They bought some heroin and some “rocks” (cocaine), ate tacos, and walked to the Grand Hotel, where they
[346 Ill.Dec. 17 , 940 N.E.2d 17]
checked into a room and remained for about eight hours.
The next morning, August 1, 2003, they went to Roberts' house to sleep. That evening, defendant's Uncle Kary came over with a friend. Defendant brought out one of the computers to show the friend. Norwood turned it on for him and clicked on the “My Computer” icon. A name appeared on the screen, “[t]he lady name that was on the news, Catherine's McKen—I don't know.” The television was on at the time and the victim's picture was on the screen with the name “Catherine McKenzie, something like that.” She was “in a state of shock” and turned the computer off and closed it. Defendant then brought out the other computer to show the friend, who ended up buying both computers in a “package deal.”
Later that night, she and defendant were at her mother's house when another news story about the murder came on the television. She Norwood's mother glanced at defendant and asked him if he would do “something like that.” He told her that he would not. A bit later, Norwood asked him again and he said “he didn't want to talk about it now,” but he agreed to talk about it later at the hotel.
They purchased more drugs and went to another hotel, The Ritz. She identified the hotel from a photograph. When they were in the room, she asked defendant “did he do that to that lady.” He said that He told her They took some drugs, which made him tell her “more about it because he was just saying that he hit her, he didn't do all that other stuff to her.” After he started smoking crack, “he broke out crying and stuff...
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