People v. Anderson

• Citation: 2017 IL App (1st) 122640,72 N.E.3d 726
• Decision Date: 31 January 2017
• Docket Number: No. 1-12-2640,1-12-2640
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Robert ANDERSON, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

2017 IL App (1st) 122640
72 N.E.3d 726

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff–Appellee,
v.
Robert ANDERSON, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 1-12-2640

Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, SECOND DIVISION.

January 31, 2017

Stephen L. Richards, of Chicago, for appellant.

Anita M. Alvarez, State's Attorney, of Chicago (Alan J. Spellberg, Jeffrey Allen, Matthew Connors, and Noah Montague, Assistant State's Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.

OPINION

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

¶ 1 Defendant Robert Anderson was convicted of four counts of first degree murder (720 ILCS 5/9–1(a)(1) (West 2012)) related to the shooting deaths of Moises Reynoso and Robert Lilligren. Defendant was subsequently sentenced to life in prison. Defendant now appeals and raises eight issues: (1) the State failed to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; (2) the trial court erred in admitting hearsay testimony; (3) the trial court erred by precluding defense counsel from questioning Officer Jeong Park as to whether he would describe defendant as "black"; (4) the trial court erred when it excluded evidence of defendant's prior acquittal for an unrelated

72 N.E.3d 731

charge; (5) the trial court erred in denying defendant's motion in limine for expert testimony on eyewitness identification; (6) the trial court abused its discretion in denying defendant's motion for new trial in light of allegedly newly discovered evidence; (7) the prosecutor's remarks in closing argument were prejudicial and denied defendant a fair trial; and (8) the trial court erred in denying his request for a new trial based on his allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel. For the following reasons, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

¶ 2 BACKGROUND

¶ 3 On March 6, 2003, Moises Reynoso and Robert Lilligren were shot to death as they sat in a vehicle in the parking lot behind Leader Liquors, just north of the intersection of Irving Park Road and Sacramento Avenue in Chicago.

¶ 4 Shortly before midnight on March 5, 2003, Chicago police officers Paul Sedlacek and Jeong Park received a call requesting a well-being check on the attendant of the Clark Gas Station at the intersection of Sacramento Avenue and Irving Park Road. The officers arrived at the gas station in less than a minute. As the officers got out of their car, they heard gunshots coming from a parking lot on the west side of Sacramento Avenue across from the gas station.

¶ 5 Officer Sedlacek heard five or six shots initially. The shots came from the center of the parking lot behind Leader Liquors where a silver car was parked. A man, who was later identified as defendant, was standing near the rear passenger's side, next to the trunk, firing approximately five shots into the vehicle. Defendant then moved around the back of the vehicle, stood next to the tire on the driver's side, and fired one shot at the driver who appeared to be trying to exit the vehicle. Defendant was 60 to 65 feet away from the officer in a well-lit area. There was a six-foot tall chain link fence between Officer Sedlacek and defendant, but he could easily see through it. Officer Sedlacek saw defendant's face but not clearly enough to make an identification. Officer Sedlacek testified defendant was wearing a dark jacket and dark pants. Reynoso was the driver of that car, and Lilligren was the passenger.

¶ 6 After firing the last shot at Reynoso, defendant ran east along the alley toward the gas station where the officers were. A chain link fence enclosed the area, and the officers had to find a hole in the fence so that they could access the alley. The officers also ran east, parallel to defendant, until they found the opening in the fence, at the far northeast corner of the gas station parking lot. The officers had to run around the mini-mart, which was about 20 feet wide, and could not see the defendant while he was behind it.

¶ 7 When defendant ran past the officers, he turned his head and looked at them. Officer Sedlacek was able to see defendant's face from approximately 10 to 15 feet away for about a second. Defendant's hood had fallen from his head when he turned, giving Officers Sedlacek and Park a full-frontal view of his face. There were street lights in the alley. Officer Park also saw the defendant was wearing gloves and holding a gun in his right hand. Officer Park radioed that defendant was running eastbound in the alley north of Irving Park Road. Defendant had a gun in his right hand. Officer Sedlacek testified that he "fixated on that gun [and] did not observe his left hand." Officer Sedlacek testified that at the time of the shooting, he recognized defendant's face but could not remember his name.

¶ 8 The officers chased defendant east through the alley to Richmond Street,

72 N.E.3d 732

where defendant turned north. By the time he turned, defendant was 25 to 30 feet in front of Officer Sedlacek and about 15 feet ahead of Officer Park, who saw defendant heading east into a gangway about mid-block on Richmond Street. When the officers reached Richmond Street, they heard "panicked shrieking" that was "[e]xtremely loud, as loud as someone could shriek." The officers turned around and ran back to where the shrieking came from. When they arrived back at the scene of the shooting they found Roberta Stiles screaming "my cousin, my cousin." Officer Park broadcasted defendant's description over the police radio as a "male black, [wearing] all black—or all dark clothing." Officer Park testified that in the "heat of the moment, I saw a person wearing all black, running eastbound, carrying a gun. That's what I went [with] on the air."

¶ 9 The officers observed Reynoso, the driver of the car, lying on the ground next to the car, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Lilligren, who was seated in the passenger's seat of the vehicle, was also bleeding. Officer Sedlacek testified that he recognized Officer Reynoso from previous interactions.

¶ 10 Chicago police officer Joseph Castillo arrested defendant about four minutes after Officers Park and Sedlacek stopped chasing him. He was apprehended by Officer Castillo after a foot chase through a gangway and a parking lot. During the chase, Officer Castillo saw defendant throw something down, which he recovered and identified as a pair of black gloves. Along with the gloves, Officer Castillo recovered a checkbook that did not bear defendant's name.

¶ 11 Approximately 15 minutes after the shooting, defendant was placed in a squad car and brought back to the scene. Officer Sedlacek was instructed to look inside the car to see if he could identify defendant as the shooter. Officer Sedlacek "looked inside, the offender looked at me, I said, ‘Yes, that's the person I saw shoot.’ " After Officer Sedlacek identified defendant as the shooter, defendant vomited in the car. Officer Park viewed defendant in the back of the police car separately and also identified defendant as the shooter. Defendant again vomited after he was identified as the shooter by Officer Park.

¶ 12 Officer Sedlacek testified that he recognized the defendant but could not initially recall his name. He later discovered that he had arrested defendant, along with Reynoso and Terry Hill, in an unrelated case in July 2001. Officer Sedlacek testified and identified defendant at the trial for defendant's unrelated case, which took place a little less than a year before the shooting in this case. He knew defendant as "Nookie." Officer Sedlacek also identified photographs of Hill, whom he knew as "Terry," and a photograph of Jesus Quinones, whom he knew as "Blood." He stated he saw defendant, Reynoso, and Hill in the early morning hours of July 1, 2001, when he arrested all of them for aggravated battery in an unrelated incident. Officer Sedlacek testified that during the prior investigation he was face-to-face with defendant several times and was within several feet of defendant for about two hours in a lit police station.

¶ 13 Between the time Officer Sedlacek observed the shooting and the show-up identification of defendant, he did not report on the radio that the shooter was defendant or that the shooter was nicknamed "Nookie." He did not tell the superior officers at the scene that he knew defendant and had previously arrested him. Officer Park also testified that Officer Sedlacek never indicated that he knew defendant from a previous arrest.

72 N.E.3d 733

¶ 14 In Officer Sedlacek's incident report, he listed himself and Officer Park as people who discovered and reported the crime but did not check the box indicating they witnessed the crime. Officer Sedlacek wrote that he "saw an individual standing next to a silver car, firing a handgun into the vehicle," and that person was "a male black in his 20's wearing a dark jacket." The report did not include the fact that Officer Sedlacek saw the front of the man's face as he was running past the officers in the alley. The report also did not include that the man was wearing gloves and did not detail that the man was "wearing a parka with the hood up and fur trim around the hood." Officer Sedlacek did not include the information that the man stood near the rear passenger's side tire or that he...