People v. Dukes

• Court: Appellate Court of Illinois
• Writing for the Court: JUSTICE NEVILLE delivered the judgment of the court.
• Citation: People v. Dukes, 2014 IL App (1st) 121541-U, No. 1-12-1541 (Ill. App. Nov 04, 2014)
• Decision Date: 04 November 2014
• Docket Number: No. 1-12-1541,1-12-1541
• Parties: THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. WILLIAM DUKES, Defendant-Appellant.

2014 IL App (1st) 121541-U

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. WILLIAM DUKES, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 1-12-1541

APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS FIRST DISTRICT SECOND DIVISION

November 4, 2014

NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and may not be cited as precedent by any party except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).

Appeal from the Circuit Court Of Cook County.

No. 04 CR 3557

The Honorable Thomas M. Tucker, Judge Presiding.

JUSTICE NEVILLE delivered the judgment of the court.

Presiding Justice Simon and Justice Pierce concurred in the judgment.

ORDER

¶ 1 Held: Supreme Court Rule 402(f) forbids the introduction into evidence of a statement the defendant made in the course of negotiations to have the State promise not to seek the death penalty, where the negotiations did not end in a plea of guilty. The trial court should exclude evidence of the defendant's unsavory conduct where that conduct has only marginal probative value. The trial court must exclude a witness's prior consistent statement where the witness made the prior statement after his motive to lie had already arisen. Statements of a co-defendant who participated in the crime will not usually qualify as statements of identification within the meaning of Supreme Court Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(B).

¶ 2 A jury found William Dukes guilty of two murders. In this appeal, Dukes argues that the trial court erred when it permitted the State to present evidence of statements Dukes made inhis effort to negotiate sentencing concessions from the State. We agree with Dukes, and we find the improperly admitted statements prejudicial in this case with closely balanced evidence. Accordingly, we reverse the convictions and remand for a new trial.

¶ 3 BACKGROUND

¶ 4 Marilyn Williams owned a house in Cicero. In the summer of 1993, she lived upstairs in the house with her daughter Lucy and Lucy's two children, Dustin, then 2 years old, and Bridget, who was 8. Marilyn rented part of the first floor to Marko Tomazovich. Sometime that summer Marilyn met Dukes. She leased a second unit on the first floor to Dukes for about two months. Lucy briefly engaged in a sexual relationship with Dukes that summer. On July 23, 1993, Lucy told Dukes that she was going to marry her longtime boyfriend, Kevin Rhynes, the next day. Dukes wished her good luck. Lucy had sex with Dukes that night and married Kevin at the courthouse the next day. Lucy and her children moved into Kevin's home, and Dukes moved out of Marilyn's house soon thereafter.

¶ 5 Tomazovich had a severe problem with substance abuse and addiction. Tomazovich's father helped him pay the rent, but by the summer of 1993, Tomazovich's father decided to stop giving Tomazovich money, and Tomazovich stopped paying rent. Lucy handed Tomazovich an eviction notice for failure to pay the rent. Marilyn and Lucy told Tomazovich they just wanted him to move out. He said, "Fuck you, bitches; I ain't paying." Later, Tomazovich said to Marilyn, "One day, I'm going to get you when you're alone. You better watch your back. I'm going to kill you."

¶ 6 On August 28, 1993, Lucy left Bridget and Dustin with Marilyn while Lucy went to work her shift as a cocktail waitress from 5 p.m. until closing. She went to Marilyn's home thenext morning. She found the front door ajar, and then she saw Dustin sleeping on a couch. Lucy found Marilyn and Bridget in the bathtub, dead. She picked up the telephone but heard no dial tone. She went down to Tomazovich's unit and banged on the door. When he answered, she told him to call 911. Tomazovich came upstairs with her and then went to a neighbor's home to call police.

¶ 7 The medical examiner found that Bridget died when someone tied a ligature around her neck and cut off her air. Tears on her vagina indicated that she had been raped shortly before her death. Marilyn died from suffocation. Her head bore marks showing the result of blunt force trauma shortly before death.

¶ 8 Police recovered a blood-soaked comforter from Marilyn's home. The police laboratory's tests showed that the blood matched Bridget's blood. Police also found several hairs on the comforter. From Tomazovich's unit, police obtained a bloody t-shirt and bloody jeans. Laboratory tests indicated that the blood matched Tomazovich and not Bridget or Marilyn.

¶ 9 In an initial interview on August 29, 1993, Tomazovich told Detective Darlene Sobczak that he knew nothing about the murders. He told Sobczak that he bled on his shirt and jeans in a fight at a bar. He also said he bled on the clothes during a fight in the woods.

¶ 10 In October 1994, police arrested Tomazovich for two robberies. Tomazovich pled guilty and the court sentenced him to six years in prison. In March 1995, Sobczak again interviewed Tomazovich about the murders of Marilyn and Bridget because he remained a suspect in the case. Tomazovich again said he knew nothing about the murders. But he changed his story when Sobczak interviewed him in August 1995. Tomazovich then said that he watched while Dukes murdered Marilyn and raped and murdered Bridget.

¶ 11 Police arrested Dukes in August 1995. Officers found part of Lucy's drivers license in Dukes's wallet. Dukes told Sobczak he knew nothing about the murders, and he had not gone to Marilyn's house on the night of the murders. Police released Dukes without charging him.

¶ 12 Police arrested Tomazovich again in 1998. Again police asked him about the murders. This time, Tomazovich said that he held Marilyn's legs while Dukes choked her. Prosecutors charged Tomazovich with the murders of Marilyn and Bridget.

¶ 13 Five years later, in October 2003, Tomazovich agreed to plead guilty to home invasion and to testify against Dukes in exchange for the dismissal of charges against him for the murders of Marilyn and Bridget. Also in October 2003, a police officer acting under cover tried to induce Dukes to confess to the murders. The officer did not succeed. Instead, officers arrested Dukes on drug charges in January 2004.

¶ 14 On January 10, 2004, Sergeant James Washburn of the Chicago Police Department questioned Dukes. Washburn asked what type of sentence Dukes thought he could get for a double homicide. Dukes said, "the needle." Dukes then said he wanted to tell Washburn about his participation in the murders of Marilyn and Bridget. First, Dukes wanted to make some phone calls. After the calls, Dukes said he would make a statement about his participation in the murders if the State promised not to seek the death penalty. Washburn said he needed to speak to his supervisor. When he returned, Washburn said, "State's Attorney's office wants to know exactly what you're going to say in your statement regarding the murders." Dukes said, "[W]ell, I'm going to tell them about my participation in themurders of Marilyn and Bridget." Washburn asked, "What are you going to say? That you killed Marilyn and Bridget?" Dukes answered, "[Y]es, yes, I am."

¶ 15 Assistant State's Attorney Jim Papa joined the subsequent discussion. Dukes said he would make a statement about the murders if the State would agree to a sentence of 20 years with day-for-day good time credit. Papa said the State would not do that. Dukes then asked for 40 years, and Papa again refused. Dukes said he would make a statement if the State promised not to seek the death penalty. Papa said he would confer with his supervisor about the offer, and asked Dukes if he felt remorse about the murders. Dukes said yes.

¶ 16 When Papa returned to the interview room, he said the State would agree not to seek the death penalty in exchange for a truthful statement about the murders. Dukes asked Papa to put the promise in writing. Papa's supervisor came to the interview room and told Dukes the State would not seek the death penalty but only if Dukes made a truthful statement within a day. Dukes agreed and the police started videorecording. But then Dukes decided not to talk.

¶ 17 A grand jury indicted Dukes for the murders of Marilyn and Bridget. Before trial, Dukes filed a motion to suppress the discussions he had with Washburn and Papa as plea negotiations. The trial court denied the motion, except that the court decided the State could not elicit testimony that Dukes asked for a sentence of 20 years, then a sentence of 40 years, in exchange for a statement about the murders.

¶ 18 At the jury trial, the State presented an expert on hair comparison, who testified that two hairs found on the blood-soaked comforter appeared to be pubic hairs. Those hairs matched Dukes's hair, and they did not match Tomazovich's hair or the other hair samples police took,including hairs of Marilyn and Bridget. The expert also looked at other hairs from the comforter, and found the hairs did not match Dukes, Tomazovich, Marilyn, Bridget, or any other hair samples prosecutors asked the expert to compare to the hairs from the comforter. The expert admitted that nothing about the hairs indicated when or how the hair arrived at the comforter, and she did not conclude from the unidentified hairs that other persons participated in the crimes. The expert admitted that Bridget or Marilyn or anyone else who came to their home could have picked up the unidentified hairs anywhere outside the home and carried them to the comforter. The expert also admitted that Dukes's hair could have gotten on the comforter when he lived in the house and sometimes visited Lucy.

¶ 19 An expert on DNA comparisons compared the DNA from the two hairs from the comforter to Dukes's DNA. He found that the DNA matched at two loci, and he estimated that about one Caucasian person in 1300 would match the hair's DNA at those two loci.

¶ 20 Washburn testified about the January 10, 2004, interview with Dukes. After the prosecution elicited all of the statements the trial court permitted, defense counsel, on cross-examination, elicited Washburn's testimony that Dukes sought a sentence of 20 years, and a sentence of 40 years, in...