People v. James

• Decision Date: 25 February 1987
• Docket Number: No. 84-640,84-640
• Parties: , 106 Ill.Dec. 327 PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Darryl JAMES, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 1118

505 N.E.2d 1118

153 Ill.App.3d 131, 106 Ill.Dec. 327

PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Darryl JAMES, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 84-640.

Appellate Court of Illinois First District, Third Division.

Feb. 25, 1987.

Steven Clark, Deputy Defender, Karen Michels, Assistant Appellate Defender, Office of the State Appellate Defender, Chicago, for defendant-appellant.

Richard M. Daley, State's Atty., Chicago (Michael E. Shabat, Mary Ellen Dienes, Sharon Johnson Coleman, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellee.

Presiding Justice McNAMARA delivered the opinion of the court:

Defendant Darryl James was convicted after a jury trial of murder and attempted murder and the court sentenced him to concurrent terms of 30 years for murder and 15 years for attempted murder. On appeal, defendant, who was 15 years old at the time of the offense, contends that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when the trial court admitted defendant's previously suppressed statement to impeach the testimony of a defense witness when defendant did not testify at trial.

On August 30, 1982, at approximately 11:00 p.m., police officers arrived at the scene of a shooting. They found Geliria Boyd and Delbert Collins shot and lying in the grass. Boyd, who was shot in the head, died shortly thereafter. Several eyewitnesses volunteered information to the police officers. The five witnesses to the crime who testified for the State at trial were all friends and members of a group called "the B Boys".

The victims and all of their friends, eight or nine in total, were returning from visiting a friend when they passed a group of three persons. One of the three individuals asked the larger group if anyone had money, and when his demand was not met, pulled a handgun and fired shots into the larger group. One witness heard four or five shots.

The five State witnesses described two of the offenders as being 6'1"' and the other offender as being about 5'4"'. They described the taller individuals as wearing dark jackets while the shorter offender, who fired the gun, wore a striped ski jacket. All three were wearing baseball caps. One of the witnesses gave police the name of a person he thought was one of the offenders. Police arrested this suspect and questioned him, but later released him when the same witness said this was not the person he thought.

The five witnesses who testified for the State all made in court identifications of defendant, who was taken into custody the day after the occurrence. At trial, defendant was wearing his hair in a natural style and it was black. All witnesses testified that the person responsible for the shooting had reddish hair and wore it in a slicked back butter style and also wore an earring. When giving descriptions of the offenders to the police, none of the witnesses said anything about the hair color or style of the person who shot the victims. One witness stated he did tell detectives at the police station that the person responsible for the shooting had red hair and a light complexion. The witnesses testified that they recalled seeing defendant a few weeks before the shooting at the Bud Billiken Parade and that they remembered his appearance because of his red butter hairstyle and the earring in his left ear.

Jewel Henderson, a friend of defendant's family, testified for defendant that on the day of the shooting, she took defendant to register for high school and on that day his hair was black. Defendant did not testify at trial.

To rebut Henderson's testimony, the State sought to introduce a previously suppressed statement of defendant. After a hearing on the voluntariness of defendant's suppressed statement, the trial court, over defendant's objection, permitted the State to introduce the statement.

The suppressed testimony which the trial court allowed in revealed that while in police custody on August 31, defendant stated that on the evening of August 30, his hair was long and combed back straight and reddish brown. He added that he had gone to the beauty parlor to have his hair dyed and curled to change his appearance. The trial court previously suppressed the statement after finding that there was not probable cause to arrest defendant, and thus the statement was the fruit of an unlawful arrest.

Following the police officer's testimony regarding the suppressed statement, the trial court told the jury that such evidence was offered for the purpose of impeaching and rebutting Henderson's testimony. The trial court, however, refused defendant's proffered jury instruction explaining that defendant's statement could be considered only for purposes of determining the believability of the witness and could not be used substantively.

During rebuttal closing argument, the prosecutor stated, "[T]his case comes to you with five eyewitnesses, an admission that he changed his color--changed the color of his hair." The trial court overruled defendant's objection that this was a substantive use of the suppressed testimony.

On appeal, defendant contends it was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights to allow his previously suppressed statement to impeach and rebut the testimony of a defense witness. Defendant's statement was suppressed at a pre-trial hearing after the judge found it to be the fruit of an unlawful arrest. Defendant did not testify at trial.

The State may use defendant's statement, held inadmissible pursuant to a Fourth or Fifth amendment violation, to impeach defendant's credibility if defendant takes the stand and testifies. (Walder v. United States (1954), 347 U.S. 62, 74 S.Ct. 354, 98 L.Ed. 503; Oregon v. Hass (1975), 420 U.S. 714, 95 S.Ct. 1215, 43 L.Ed.2d 570; Harris v. New York (1971), 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1.) Furthermore, the State may use the suppressed fruits of a Fourth Amendment violation to impeach defendant's perjurious testimony at trial. (United States v. Havens (1980) 446 U.S. 620, 100 S.Ct. 1912, 64 L.Ed.2d 559; People v. Brown (1976) 40 Ill.App.3d 1003, 353 N.E.2d 244.) The Havens court assessed the competing interests of the truth seeking function of the courts and the interests sought to be protected by the exclusionary rule and held that a defendant's testimony is subject to impeachment by the government although by evidence that has been illegally obtained and that is inadmissible in the government's direct case-in-chief as substantive evidence of guilt. There is no justification for letting the defendant affirmatively resort to perjurious testimony in reliance on the Government's disability to challenge his credibility. Walder v. United States.

The matter before us differs from these cases in that defendant did not testify. Here, the State seeks to use defendant's suppressed statements to rebut the testimony of another defense witness. When a defendant testifies, courts will allow otherwise inadmissible evidence to prevent a defendant from directly perjuring himself and then hiding behind the Fourth or Fifth Amendment. However, when a defendant has not testified, as is the case here, defendant has taken no affirmative steps which would act in the same way to...