People v. Cornille

• Decision Date: 13 April 1983
• Docket Number: No. 56259,56259
• Citation: 448 N.E.2d 857,69 Ill.Dec. 945,95 Ill.2d 497
• Parties: , 69 Ill.Dec. 945 The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Amil T. CORNILLE, Appellant.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 857

448 N.E.2d 857

95 Ill.2d 497, 69 Ill.Dec. 945

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Amil T. CORNILLE, Appellant.

No. 56259.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

April 13, 1983.

Tyrone C. Fahner, Atty. Gen., State of Ill., Ellen M. Flaum, Terence M. Madsen, ^* Asst. Attys. Gen., Chicago, for appellee.

Charles E. Schmidt, Mitchell, Brandon & Schmidt, Carbondale, for appellant Amil T. Cornille.

SIMON, Justice:

The principal issue in this appeal is whether a defendant in a criminal trial is denied due process of law when an expert witness for the State later turns out to be an impostor who presented false testimony about his expert qualifications. We conclude that false testimony of this type violates due process and that a defendant convicted because of it is entitled to a new trial.

Following his conviction of arson in the circuit court of Williamson County, the defendant, Amil T. Cornille, filed a petition seeking post-conviction relief alleging that he had been convicted on the basis of false testimony of this type. After a hearing, the circuit court decided that the testimony in question was false, but denied the petition. The appellate court affirmed in an unpublished Rule 23 order (102 Ill.App.3d 1209, 61 Ill.Dec. 612, 434 N.E.2d 1209). We allowed Cornille's petition for leave to appeal.

Nearly two years after the Cornille arson trial a reporter employed by a Chicago daily newspaper interviewed Dennis Michaelson, a consultant in fire investigations who had given crucial testimony for the State at that trial. Mr. Michaelson admitted in the interview that he had lied about his credentials as an arson-investigating expert when testifying at that trial as well as at other arson trials. After publication of the story based upon this interview the authorities began investigating Michaelson's academic and professional qualifications. These investigations established that Michaelson had given false testimony in several criminal arson trials, including Cornille's. Charges of perjury were thereafter filed by information against Michaelson in Boone, Cook and Williamson counties. Cornille's petition for post-conviction relief, which is the subject of this appeal, is based upon Michaelson's false testimony concerning his credentials as an expert witness. To understand the import of Michaelson's testimony it is necessary to review the record of Amil Cornille's trial.

Cornille was charged with committing arson on April 3, 1977, in that he knowingly damaged his home by means of fire with intent to defraud his fire insurance carrier. At trial he testified that on the evening of the fire he was watching television in the living room of his home in Johnston City. A daughter, who was ill, was sleeping on a couch in the same room. His wife and his two other children were away from home, attending religious services.

Shortly before 7:30 p.m., the television and the lights went out and Cornille heard a "crackling and popping" sound. He went to the circuit breaker box in the closet of an adjoining bedroom and placed his hand on it in the dark. Unable to detect any irregularity, but fearful for the safety of his daughter, he awakened her. After exiting with her through the front door, Cornille went to the rear of the house. He looked into the kitchen through the back door, saw flames under the refrigerator, and notified the fire department.

A fireman who arrived at the scene shortly afterward testified that "[t]he fire was in the kitchen area in the rear of the house. The cabinets were involved, the refrigerator was involved and the ceiling was partially involved." The fire was concentrated on the floor underneath the refrigerator and on the wall behind it, although there were also spot fires in the basement and the attic. After a few minutes the fires were put out and the fire damage was inspected. At the location of the refrigerator, a hole had been burned in the floor through which the basement could be seen. A sizeable wooden floor joist which could be seen in the middle of the hole was charred on the top portion only. The wall behind the refrigerator and the surrounding cabinets were also burned. The ceiling above the refrigerator was slightly singed.

Expert witnesses presented by the parties were in sharp disagreement about the cause of the fire. The State's theory was that Cornille had set the fire with gasoline, while the theory advanced by Cornille was that the blaze was caused by faulty wiring.

Officials of the Johnston City fire department and investigators for the defendant's fire insurance carrier testified for the prosecution that they had found no evidence of "beading" or "fusing" on electrical wires in the kitchen area. They stated that these conditions usually are found when a fire is caused by an electrical malfunction. Moreover the prosecution's experts testified that there was evidence of "alligator charring" on the floor joist, a pattern which often indicates a rapidly burning fire fueled by accelerants. They also observed that the fire had burned through the floor in a downward direction, a highly unusual circumstance when a fire is not fueled by accelerants.

Mr. Michaelson turned out to be an impressive prosecution witness. In presenting his credentials to the jury, he testified that he had investigated over 1,300 fires in 14 years as a fire investigator; that he had taught numerous seminars and courses for State and local governments on fire-investigation techniques; that he had written extensively in the field; and that he had designed several patented devices for use in fire investigations. In particular, he claimed credit for designing vastly improved equipment for testing samples by the technique of gas chromatography. This equipment allegedly was better able to detect the presence of accelerants than more traditional devices.

In addition to these self-proclaimed professional accomplishments Michaelson offered the following testimony as to his academic qualifications in response to questions by the prosecutor:

"Q. Mr. Michaelson, do you hold any degrees from universities or institutions of higher education?

A. Yes.

Q. And what are those degrees and where were they obtained?

A. I have an associate degree from Wright College in Chicago, I also have a degree, Bachelor's Degree in Science from Illinois School of Technology, and in addition to that I have about 25 credit hours, post-graduate courses, such as physics, optics and other courses I felt were of interest personally to me or usefulness in my work.

Q. In your degree in Science, was that chemistry?

A. In chemistry, yes, sir."

Some of Michaelson's substantive testimony was the same as that of the other prosecution witnesses; he noted the "alligator charring" and the downward burning pattern of the fire and observed that they indicated the possibility of an accelerant-fueled fire. The balance of Michaelson's testimony, however, was extremely significant, for it provided the crucial link in the prosecution's case: the accelerant. Michaelson testified that he had taken two samples from the carpeting near the hole in the floor and one sample from the exposed floor joist. He had tested these samples for the presence of accelerants by the use of what he claimed was his special gas chromatography equipment. He determined that the two pieces of carpeting contained traces of gasoline and that the floor joist contained traces of a petroleum distillate which might have been gasoline. On the basis of his test results, not only Michaelson, but the other expert witnesses for the prosecution as well, concluded that the fire was of an incendiary nature and probably caused by gasoline.

The defendant presented expert testimony that substantially contradicted the prosecution's theory of an incendiary fire. An arson investigator for the State fire marshal testified that he had collected three samples of debris at the scene of the fire, one of which was from the floorboards at the edge of the hole caused by the fire. The investigator took these samples to the Illinois Bureau of Scientific Services in DeSoto, Illinois. A forensic scientist at the Bureau testified that he tested the samples for the presence of accelerants using a gas chromatography technique and determined that the samples contained no traces of accelerants.

The defendant also presented substantial testimony in support of his theory of an electrical fire. He testified that he had purchased the house in February 1977 and from the very beginning the family had experienced electrical problems. The lights and television would flicker off and on whenever the family plugged in electrical appliances. This was corroborated by the testimony of guests at the Cornille residence. Two electric company employees who inspected the home shortly before the fire testified that the electricity meter was broken and that the circuit breaker box was improperly installed.

An electrical contractor and an electrical engineer who inspected the electrical system in November 1977, seven months after the fire, both testified that the wiring in the house fell far short of the requirements of local electrical codes. One observed that "this was the worst wired house I had ever seen." The electrical receptacles in the kitchen, including the one used by the refrigerator, were screwed directly into the wood paneling and did not have a metal box housing the open connections. The house was wired with telephone hookup wire which is neither voltage nor current rated, and according to these witnesses, the small and improperly insulated wire could have easily overheated and caused a fire. They also testified that wire splices were not properly housed in a junction box or joined with scotch lock. Moreover, the house had an inadequate 30-amp circuit breaker on the refrigerator's electrical receptacle rather than the customary 15- or 20-amp circuit breaker.

The electrical engineer testified that...