People v. Lovejoy

• Decision Date: 24 September 2009
• Docket Number: No. 104443.,104443.
• Citation: 235 Ill.2d 97,919 N.E.2d 843
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Laurence LOVEJOY, Appellant.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

919 N.E.2d 843

235 Ill.2d 97

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Laurence LOVEJOY, Appellant.

No. 104443.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

September 24, 2009.

Rehearing Denied November 23, 2009.

Michael J. Pelletier, State Appellate Defender, Charles M. Schiedel, Deputy Defender,

and Kim Robert Fawcett, Assistant Appellate Defender, Office of the State Appellate Defender, Chicago, for appellant.

Lisa Madigan, Attorney General, Springfield, and Joseph E. Birkett, State's Attorney, Wheaton (Michael A. Scodro, Solicitor General, Michael M. Glick and Erin M. O'Connell, Assistant Attorneys General, Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

OPINION

Chief Justice FITZGERALD delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

Following a jury trial in Du Page County, defendant, Laurence Lovejoy, was convicted of the first degree murder of his 16-year-old stepdaughter, Erin Justice. Defendant was found eligible for the death penalty on two statutory grounds and sentenced to death. On direct appeal to this court (Ill. Const.1970, art. VI, § 4(b); 134 Ill.2d R. 603), defendant raises numerous claims of error occurring during the guilt and penalty phases of his trial. We reverse his conviction and sentence and remand for a new trial.

BACKGROUND

The State's evidence demonstrated that in March 2004, Erin was a 16-year-old high school student and member of her high school track team. She lived in a Naperville apartment with her mother, Valerie Justice, and defendant, Valerie's husband of four months. Defendant and Erin had a strained relationship, and Erin did not approve of defendant and Valerie's recent marriage. On March 3, 2004, defendant and Erin were in the apartment together while Valerie was working at her second job at a nearby gas station. Defendant offered to give Erin a massage, commenting on how she must be sore after track practice. Erin accepted his offer, but protested when defendant made sexual advances during the massage. Erin ultimately accused defendant of forcing her to have intercourse. She reported that defendant put his mouth on her breast, penetrated her vagina, and began kissing her and placing his tongue in her mouth. The sexual assault ceased when defendant heard a noise which he believed was the garage door opening.

After the assault, Erin left the apartment with her dog and ran barefoot to the apartment of a neighbor, Ladarius Bankhead, who was a high school friend. Erin told Ladarius that defendant sexually assaulted her, and Ladarius' mother, Lawanda Bankhead, contacted the police. Erin gave an oral statement to a police officer at the Bankhead apartment. She also spoke to her mother and told her that defendant sexually assaulted her.

Erin was taken to the hospital for an examination and evidence was collected. Specifically, swabs were taken of Erin's left breast and right cheek for DNA testing, pursuant to Erin's report that defendant had placed his tongue on those areas. After the medical examination, Erin went to the police station to give a handwritten statement detailing the assault. Defendant was arrested for the sexual assault, but was released pending the outcome of DNA tests.

On March 5, 2004, defendant and Valerie purchased a town house in Aurora, as was their plan prior to Erin's allegations against defendant. Defendant was not permitted to move into the town house and was not given a key. He was permitted to stay at the town house during the day when Erin was at school. Valerie would leave a key for defendant and would collect it from him at the end of the day. Erin had no knowledge of this arrangement.

Although defendant was not allowed to live in the home, Valerie saw and spoke to defendant frequently. She confronted defendant about Erin's allegations and he admitted that he ran a bath for Erin and massaged her legs, but denied touching her in any other way. Defendant indicated that Erin was angry at him because they argued over her cellular telephone usage. Defendant maintained that he did nothing wrong and assured Valerie that the DNA testing would vindicate him. He repeatedly asked Valerie to go to the police and tell them that Erin was lying and changing her story, even though Erin had remained consistent. Valerie declined, reasoning that the DNA evidence would speak for itself. Sometime after Erin's death, DNA testing revealed that traces of amylase, a substance found in saliva, were present on swabs of Erin's left breast and right cheek. DNA was extracted from the amylase which matched defendant's DNA profile. The amount of amylase available for testing was minimal, and the DNA expert could not say with certainty that the DNA recovered came from saliva.

On Saturday, March 27, 2004, the date of her murder, Erin was scheduled to leave town to spend spring break with her father, Edreick Justice. Valerie advised defendant that Edreick would be picking up Erin between 9 and 10 a.m. on March 27. She asked defendant to reschedule a 10:30 a.m. veterinary appointment for the family dog so that defendant would not encounter Erin when he went to retrieve the dog. The veterinary appointment was rescheduled by defendant for 12:30 p.m.

Valerie went to work early Saturday morning. At 7:48 a.m., she called defendant's cellular telephone and left a message advising him to cancel the veterinary appointment altogether, because plans had changed and Erin was not going to her father's house until later that afternoon. At 10 a.m. Valerie spoke to defendant on the telephone and gave him this information.

Valerie had called Erin several times that morning, but was unable to reach her. Sometime after 10 a.m., Valerie left work and went to the town house to check on Erin. When she arrived at her home, Valerie found that the front door was ajar. She heard the dogs barking and could tell they were in the downstairs laundry room. She observed stains on the carpet and the wall leading up the staircase, which she later realized were bloodstains. She went upstairs to look for Erin, and found her, dead, in the bathroom. Erin's naked body was lying in the bathtub, which was filled with bloody water. Valerie ran, screaming, out of the home and called 911.

At about the same time, Valerie's neighbor, Kayleen Steele, was also calling 911. Steele's town house was connected to the Justice unit by a common wall. Earlier that morning, between 8 and 8:40 a.m., Steele heard "scuffling and bumping sounds," a female voice that sounded distressed, and whimpering noises coming from the Justice home. She also heard "a mature male voice saying, `so help me God'" and a "young, female voice saying, `I'll just leave then. Let me go. I'll leave,'" followed by a "thump" coming from upstairs. Sometime after 10:30 a.m., Steele heard a scream of "sheer terror," which prompted her to call 911.

Valerie was taken by ambulance to the hospital. Valerie's sister contacted defendant to tell him that Erin was dead and Valerie was hospitalized. Defendant seemed undaunted by the news, but indicated that he would go to the hospital to be with Valerie. Aurora police waited for defendant at the hospital after he assured them that he was headed there, but defendant never came. An Aurora police officer called defendant on the telephone, but defendant declined to speak to the officer on advice of counsel. Defendant did agree to meet with police the day after the murder, with counsel present. During that meeting, defendant admitted that he went to the town house at approximately 7 a.m. on the day of the murder, but denied seeing or speaking to Erin. Defendant could not account for his whereabouts after leaving the town house, other than to say he went to get coffee at a location he could not recall, and then drove around or sat in his parked car in locations he also could not recall. Defendant could not explain why he went to the house at 7 a.m. when he knew the veterinary appointment was not until 12:30 p.m. Defendant never went to the 12:30 p.m. appointment and did not call to cancel.

Michael Dabney, a crime scene technician, indicated that he did not find any evidence of forced entry into the town house. He did observe a significant amount of blood in the first-floor kitchen area. There were bloodstains on the kitchen floor, table, counter tops, and kitchen cabinets. Dabney also observed wipe marks on the kitchen floor and the kitchen sink. There was a rag on the stovetop that was stained with blood. There was also a red frying pan on the kitchen counter that was stained with blood. There were two knife blocks on the kitchen counter near the frying pan. Both blocks were knocked over and some of the slots for holding knives were empty.

Dabney saw reddish-brown staining, which he believed to be blood, on the stairs, the landing, the door of Erin's bedroom, and in the hallway leading to the bathroom on the second floor of the town house. Erin's body was observed in the bathtub of the upstairs bathroom, submerged up to the head in bloody water. Dabney explained that there was a large amount of blood in the bathroom, and stated that the blood was "[e]verywhere * * * except on the ceiling." A chemical called leuco crystal violet (LCV) was applied to several bathroom surfaces in an attempt to discover latent print evidence. The LCV test enhanced ridge impressions on a ceramic tile located just inside the bathroom entryway, and also revealed smears on the bathroom doorknob assembly that appeared to have a pattern on them. LCV is considered a presumptive test for the presence of blood and turns purple when in contact with blood. The LCV turned purple when applied to the tile and the door-knob assembly.

The ridge impressions on the bathroom tile were later identified by LeRoy Keith, a latent print examiner, as a portion of defendant's bare footprint. Although there was evidence that defendant had been in the bathroom prior to the day of the murder to fix the showerhead, Keith testified that the footprint could not have been a...