People v. Landa
| Decision Date | 31 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | 1-17-0851 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Carlos LANDA, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
2020 IL App (1st) 170851
195 N.E.3d 640
457 Ill.Dec. 504
The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Carlos LANDA, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 1-17-0851
Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, SIXTH DIVISION.
Filed December 31, 2020
James E. Chadd, Douglas R. Hoff, and Sharifa Rahmany, of State Appellate Defender's Office, of Chicago, for appellant.
Kimberly M. Foxx, State's Attorney, of Chicago (Alan J. Spellberg and Brian K. Hodes, Assistant State's Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.
PRESIDING JUSTICE MIKVA delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.
¶ 1 Defendant Carlos Landa appeals from the second-stage dismissal of his petition for relief pursuant to the Post-Conviction Hearing Act (Act) ( 725 ILCS 5/122-1 et seq. (West 2016)). On appeal, Mr. Landa argues that his case should be remanded for further second-stage proceedings. We find that Mr. Landa presented a credible sixth amendment claim in his pro se petition based on his trial counsel's failure to prepare and present his alibi defense and that Mr. Landa's postconviction counsel failed to provide reasonable assistance in adequately presenting this claim. We therefore reverse the dismissal of his petition and remand for further second-stage proceedings.
¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND
¶ 3 A. The Trial and Direct Appeal
¶ 4 Mr. Landa was charged with first degree murder and vehicular hijacking in
connection with the shooting death of King Mayes on April 21, 2000. The evidence showed that, between 8 and 8:30 p.m. on that day, Mr. Mayes bought keys and key identifiers from Menards. At approximately 8:45 p.m., he drove his dark-colored Lexus from Menards to a Clark gas station in Calumet City and went into the station to purchase some items. Two witnesses, Antuan Colvin and Akbar Hendricks, testified that as Mr. Mayes walked back to his car at the gas station, he was approached by a man who was approximately 5' 5? or 5' 6? and wearing dark-colored clothing, including a hoodie. The two men exchanged words, two gunshots were fired, and the two witnesses saw Mr. Mayes fall to the ground. Neither witness saw the face of the man who fired the gun but they both saw him get into Mr. Mayes's car and drive away. Mr. Mayes later died at the hospital from a single gunshot wound to the chest.
¶ 5 Floyd Newell was charged as a codefendant in the case and testified against Mr. Landa. Mr. Newell had previously been convicted of a felony, and at the time of trial, he had two felony cases and one misdemeanor case pending against him. Mr. Newell testified that, at approximately 8:30 p.m. on April 21, 2000, he was driving his girlfriend's turquoise Grand Am with Nigel Barnes and Mr. Landa in the car. The three men stopped near the Clark gas station. All three men were in dark clothing, and both Mr. Newell and Mr. Landa were carrying guns; Mr. Newell had a black .45-caliber handgun, and Mr. Landa had a chrome 9-millimeter handgun.
¶ 6 According to Mr. Newell, the three men exited the car. While Mr. Newell remained by the car, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Landa went into the gas station. Mr. Newell saw Mr. Mayes exit the gas station and walk to the Lexus, then saw Mr. Mayes and Mr. Landa "exchange" words. Mr. Mayes attempted to grab Mr. Landa, and Mr. Landa shot Mr. Mayes, then fired his gun a second time as Mr. Mayes fell to the ground. Mr. Newell testified that Mr. Landa then got into the Lexus, while Mr. Newell and Mr. Barnes returned to the Grand Am, and both cars drove away from the gas station.
¶ 7 Mr. Newell testified that later that evening, he, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Landa parked the Lexus behind the house of Mr. Newell's uncle's girlfriend in Kankakee, Illinois, and joined three women—Laneashia Barnes, Donita Pendleton, and Mallory Burns—at the Avis Motel in Kankakee. Mr. Newell introduced the women to Mr. Landa, whom Ms. Barnes and Ms. Pendleton testified they had never met before, and according to the women, the men told the women that they had a Lexus. According to Mr. Newell and both women, Mr. Newell and Mr. Landa were each in possession of a gun at that time. Approximately 30 minutes later, the police arrived at the motel to investigate a report of drugs being sold from one of the rooms.
¶ 8 Mr. Landa and Mr. Newell left the motel room before the police entered. Upon entering the motel room, the police flipped the mattress over and recovered a chrome, 9-millimeter handgun. Because the motel room was under her name, Ms. Pendleton was arrested for unlawful possession of a weapon. At trial, Mr. Newell, Ms. Pendleton, and Ms. Barnes all testified that they had seen Mr. Landa with the gun that the police found under the mattress in the hotel room.
¶ 9 Charles Dortch also testified for the State. He testified that he lived near the Clark gas station and heard the gunshots from his kitchen but did not see the shooting. He went to his backyard to look over the fence, which looks into the alley and separates the gas station from Mr.
Dortch's house, but could not see anything and started walking down his driveway to the front of his house. As he was walking, Mr. Dortch saw two cars turn at a high rate of speed from the alley onto the street in front of his house. Approximately two or three minutes had passed since he heard the gunshots. The first car, a dark-colored Lexus with only the driver in it, was followed by a light-colored car with two people. On direct examination by the State, Mr. Dortch testified that he was unable to clearly see the faces of any of the cars' occupants.
¶ 10 After Mr. Dortch testified for the State, he contacted the State's Attorney's office and reported that, after he took another look at Mr. Landa when he was leaving the witness stand, he realized that Mr. Landa was clearly not the person that he saw driving the Lexus. Mr. Dortch was then recalled, in the middle of the State's case, as a defense witness. He testified that the person he saw driving the Lexus was young, small in stature, and dark-skinned; it was "[a]bsolutely not" Mr. Landa. He said that when he had previously testified, he "thought all the individuals that were involved [in the offense] were dark-skinned African-Americans," but when he looked at Mr. Landa, he realized "that was not true, he was not the driver."
¶ 11 On April 23, 2000, Mr. Mayes's Lexus was recovered from the backyard of Mr. Newell's uncle's girlfriend's house. On May 5, 2000, the police were given consent to search the Grand Am and recovered from inside the trunk of the vehicle keys and key identifiers, along with a bag and a receipt from Menards. No fingerprints matching Mr. Newell, Mr. Landa, or Mr. Barnes were found on the recovered shell casings, handgun, or Mr. Mayes's Lexus. The shell casings were, however, tested by a forensic firearms examiner, who concluded that they had been fired from the 9-millimeter handgun recovered from the motel.
¶ 12 After the State rested, defense counsel informed the court that Mr. Landa did not wish to testify, and Mr. Landa confirmed that this was correct. The defense then rested without calling any additional witnesses. The trial court found Mr. Landa guilty of two counts of first degree murder.
¶ 13 At the sentencing hearing, Mr. Landa's mother, Sharon Walker, testified in mitigation. In part, she said:
"I sleep and breathe this whole thing every night and every day. I think about the family because what happened if my son did this? I think about they lost someone. We're not cold-blooded people like the State said my son was an urban predator, that he was an assassin.
No, we didn't raise him like that. I raised that kid. We're hard working people. We never asked nobody for nothing. But this is a serious thing. You got someone that died, got murdered, and they are saying my son did it.
I listened to the evidence. He couldn't have done it. He could not have done it. So now you got someone that's lost their life and you got someone else who is about to lose his life, and the person that did this is getting away scot-free."
¶ 14 The court sentenced Mr. Landa to the minimum sentence—two concurrent terms of 40 years in prison—since he had no prior record.
¶ 15 On direct appeal, this court vacated one of Mr. Landa's convictions as a violation of the one-act, one-crime rule and corrected the mittimus to reflect the correct number of days of sentencing credit. People v. Landa , 365 Ill. App. 3d 1101, 339 Ill.Dec. 793, 927 N.E.2d 334 (2006) (table) (unpublished order under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23 ).
¶ 16 B. Postconviction Proceedings
¶ 17 On June 8, 2007, Mr. Landa placed in the prison mail the pro se postconviction petition with exhibits that is at issue before this court now, over 13 years later. The same day, Mr. Landa also sent a "motion for leave to supplement/amend post-conviction for cause" and a request for appointment of counsel.
¶ 18 In the petition, Mr. Landa first argued that the untimely filing of his postconviction petition was not due to his culpable negligence because he acted with due diligence in pursuing his postconviction remedies and believed in "good-faith" that his petition would be timely prepared and filed. He explained in his motion that his family had hired an attorney for this purpose but that the attorney had abandoned his petition. Upon learning of this, Mr. Landa had immediately made a diligent effort to locate the necessary witnesses and file the petition himself.
¶ 19 Mr. Landa then set forth nine claims for review. These included two claims that the 20-year sentencing enhancement he received was unconstitutional and multiple claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. With respect to the latter, Mr. Landa claimed his trial counsel had failed to investigate witnesses, failed to investigate and present Mr. Landa's alibi defense, failed to investigate the identities of certain people stopped by police in a car that fit the general description of the...
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