People v. Coleman
| Decision Date | 03 February 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 83-1569,83-1569 |
| Citation | 534 N.E.2d 583,179 Ill.App.3d 410 |
| Parties | , 128 Ill.Dec. 401 PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Maurice COLEMAN and Joseph Barnes, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
Steven Clark, Deputy Defender, Patricia Unsinn, Asst. Appellate Defender, Chicago, for defendants-appellants Maurice Coleman and Joseph Barnes.
Richard M. Daley, State's Atty. of Cook County, Michael E. Shabat, Mary Ellen Dienes and Phillip J. Bartolementi, Asst. State's Attys., of counsel, Chicago, for plaintiff-appellee.
A jury found the defendants, Maurice Coleman and Joseph Barnes, guilty of the August 2, 1981 armed robbery and murder of Terrell Jackson. Both defendants were sentenced to imprisonment for 30 years for the armed robbery and to natural life for the murder. Both defendants appeal.
The issues presented for review are: (1) whether the trial court erred in overruling the defendants' motion to suppress, and in admitting evidence of their lineup identifications; (2) whether the death qualification of the jury for the innocent-guilt phase of the case violated the defendants' right to an impartial jury representative of a fair cross-section of the community, guaranteed by the sixth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States; (3) whether the defendant Barnes was denied due process by the prosecutor's failure, in violation of the discovery rules, to timely reveal the existence and contents of, and the witnesses to, a statement made by the defendant Barnes; (4) whether the prosecutor's closing argument was improper and denied the defendants due process; and (5) whether during deliberation the trial court erred in denying the jury's request for a trial transcript of a witness' trial testimony.
The trial testimony presented by the State revealed the following facts of the robbery-murder.
On Sunday, August 2, 1981, at about 5 p.m., the deceased, Terrell Jackson, age 33, was enjoying the peace and tranquility of his home where he lived with his wife and five children on the south side of Chicago. He fell asleep on the floor while watching television in the second-floor bedroom. Jackson's young brother, Arlander Adamson, age 18, was watching television in the first-floor living room of the residence. Jackson's stepdaughter, Gwen Thomas, age 19, was in a second-floor bedroom with her baby, either watching television or sleeping.
Two men burst through the rear door of the premises. Each man had a gun in his hand. The men put their guns to Adamson's head and commanded Adamson to tell them who else was in the house. Adamson told them that his brother, his niece and her baby were upstairs and that no one was in the basement. One of the men checked the basement because a radio was playing there. The two men asked Adamson if there were any drugs or money in the house. One of the men suggested that they should kill Adamson. The other man disagreed. The two men bound and gagged Adamson and forced Adamson to accompany them upstairs.
Adamson indicated to the two men that his niece and her baby were in the room where the door was closed. The men with Adamson went down the hallway to the room of Terrell Jackson, who was asleep on the floor with the television playing. The men ordered Adamson to lie on the floor and Adamson did so. The men told Jackson to get up and asked him, "Where is the s--t at?" As Jackson awakened, the two men fired six shots into Jackson's body. One of the men took Jackson's jewelry and money and the other looked through various drawers in the room while asking, "Where's the s--t?"
One of the men left the room and went to the room of Gwen Thomas, and with the gun in his hand, the man told Gwen Thomas to come with him. The man directed Gwen Thomas to her father's, Jackson's, room which was only about eight or nine feet away. Gwen Thomas saw Jackson lying in the floor, shot, and Adamson was lying beside him.
One of the men told Gwen Thomas that if she didn't tell them where "it" was, the two men would kill them all. Gwen Thomas asked Jackson what the men wanted and where "it" was. Jackson said that he didn't have anything and that he did not want to die. The two men ransacked the room, went into the closets and under the mattress, and pulled out drawers. One of the men put something in his pocket. One of the men tied up Gwen Thomas and made her lie face down on the floor and took a chain from around her neck. The two men left.
Thomas and Adamson untied each other. Thomas went downstairs, locked the doors and called the police, her grandmother and her cousin while Adamson held Jackson dying in his arms. Jackson died almost instantly from one of the six bullets which entered his right chest at a range of less than two feet, lacerated his liver, kidneys and aorta causing massive internal bleeding.
Arlander Adamson and Gwen Thomas gave the police descriptions of the two offenders. Later that evening they looked through photograph books at the police station. Neither made any identification from the photographs. On August 18, 1981, Gwen Thomas looked through a book of photographs which had been brought to her home by Chicago police Detectives Redmond and O'Leary. She identified a picture of defendant, Maurice Coleman, as a picture of one of the robbery-murder offenders. On the following day, Gwen Thomas and Arlander Adamson identified Maurice Coleman in a lineup at a Chicago police station as one of the offenders.
On August 28, 1981, Arlander Adamson was shown a group of photographs by Chicago police Detectives Redmond and O'Leary and he identified the picture of the defendant, Joseph Barnes, as resembling the other offender. On September 6, 1981, a complaint for preliminary examination which charged Joseph Barnes with the August 2, 1981, robbery-murder of Terrell Jackson was prepared and filed by Detective O'Leary in a branch of the first municipal district of the circuit court of Cook County. The court ordered and a warrant was issued for Barnes' arrest. The detectives were unable to locate Barnes in the Chicago area. Upon notice to them, Baltimore, Maryland police arrested Barnes in Baltimore on September 12, 1981. After extradition proceedings, Barnes was extradited to Chicago on February 17, 1982, and on that date Gwen Thomas and Arlander Adamson identified Joseph Barnes in a lineup as the other offender who invaded their home and robbed and killed Terrell Jackson on August 2, 1981. Adamson and Thomas also identified Coleman and Barnes at trial as the two assailants who intruded into their home, robbed them and killed Terrell Jackson.
Both defendants now claim for reversal in this court that they were denied their sixth amendment constitutional right to counsel at their lineups and the trial court therefore erred in denying their motions to suppress their lineup identifications. Conversely, the State maintains that both defendants waived their right to counsel at their lineups, that neither defendant Defendant Maurice Coleman's major basis in his pretrial lineup identification suppression motion was that his lineup identification was suggestive. 1 After alleging suggestive photograph identifications by the witnesses and that he was arrested and placed in a lineup, which he characterized as a "witness--suspect confrontation," Coleman's motion to suppress his lineup identification then alleged that "prior to said confrontation the accused was not advised by the police that he had a right to have an attorney present during such confrontation." (Emphasis added.) Likewise defendant Joseph Barnes' main assertion in his lineup identification suppression motion was that his lineup identification was also suggestive. 2 Barnes' motion alleged that he was arrested, that the witnesses were suggestively shown photographs, that "on February 17, 1982, Joseph Barnes stood in a five man lineup," and "that prior to said confrontation the accused was not advised by the police that he had a right to have an attorney present during such confrontation." (Emphasis added.)
[128 Ill.Dec. 405] presented or preserved the right to counsel issue in the trial court and both defendants therefore waived the issue in the trial court and in this court.
The defendants' motions to suppress their lineup identifications were consolidated for an evidentiary hearing, at which neither defendant testified. Defendant Coleman's attorney called Gwen Thomas as a witness on the hearing and elicited from her the following testimony.
On August 2, 1981, she lived at 6856 S. Calumet with her father, Terrell Jackson, the deceased, and on that date she went to a police station where police officers showed her photographs in a pile of books for about one and one-half hour. On August 18, 1981, police officers came to the home of a friend of Gwen Thomas where she was visiting and showed her eight photographs, which she identified in court. She identified photograph "two D" in court as the photograph she identified when she was shown them on August 18, 1981, and told the officers that she recognized the picture. On the following day, August 19, 1981, Chicago police officers returned and showed her another book of photographs and she identified a picture in the book as a picture of one of the persons she saw in her house on August 2, 1981. Later, on August 19, at about two or three o'clock in the afternoon, at a police station she viewed a lineup, from which she identified number three.
Upon concluding her direct-examination by Coleman's attorney, as above set forth, Gwen Thomas was then questioned by the attorney for the defendant, Joseph Barnes, who elicited from her the following testimony.
On August 28, 1981, she saw some photographs while she was at a friend's home. Barnes' attorney showed her a group of photographs, Defendants' Group Exhibit No. 2,...
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