People v. Lusby

• Decision Date: 22 October 2020
• Docket Number: Docket No. 124046
• Citation: 450 Ill.Dec. 751,182 N.E.3d 563,2020 IL 124046
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant, v. Ashanti LUSBY, Appellee.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

2020 IL 124046

182 N.E.3d 563

450 Ill.Dec. 751

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellant,

v.Ashanti LUSBY, Appellee.

Docket No. 124046

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Opinion filed October 22, 2020

Rehearing denied February 26, 2021

Kwame Raoul, Attorney General, of Springfield (Jane Elinor Notz, Solicitor General, and Michael M. Glick and Leah M. Bendik, Assistant Attorneys General, of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

James E. Chadd, State Appellate Defender, Patricia Mysza, Deputy Defender, and Deborah Nall, Assistant Appellate Defender, of the Office of the State Appellate Defender, of Chicago, for appellee.

Shobha L. Mahadev and Scott F. Main, of Bluhm Legal Clinic, of Chicago, and Marsha L. Levick, of Juvenile Law Center, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for amici curiae Children & Family Justice Center et al.

OPINION

JUSTICE THEIS delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 In 2002, defendant Ashanti Lusby was convicted of first degree murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault, and home invasion and sentenced to 130 years’ imprisonment. Though he was 23 years old at the time of the trial and the sentencing hearing, he was only 16 years old at the time of the offenses. After unsuccessful direct appeal and postconviction proceedings, he filed a motion for leave to file a successive postconviction petition, asserting that his sentencing hearing was constitutionally inadequate under Miller v. Alabama , 567 U.S. 460, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012). The circuit court of Will County denied that motion, but the appellate court reversed and remanded for a new sentencing hearing. For the reasons that follow, we reverse the appellate court's decision and affirm the trial court's decision.

¶ 2 BACKGROUND

¶ 3 In 1993, Jennifer Happ moved to Joliet to teach third grade at a public elementary school. A year later, she purchased a condominium on the city's west side, where she lived until 1996.

¶ 4 Just before 9 p.m. on February 8, 1996, Happ spoke on the telephone with her coworker and friend, Kelly Nesheim, about a trip together to Iowa over the following weekend. Around 9:30 p.m. Happ's neighbors heard a gunshot from her home. One of the neighbors telephoned Happ, but she did not answer. After Happ did not arrive at school the next day, her teaching partner and friend, Trudy Bajt, asked her husband Steve Bajt, a Joliet Police Department detective, to visit Happ's condominium to check on her. When Detective Bajt arrived at the condominium, the exterior and interior garage doors were open. Inside, a kitchen drawer was open, and the bedroom dresser was ransacked. Detective Bajt called the dispatcher and requested backup. He then reentered the condominium and found Happ lying dead on her couch. A subsequent medical examination revealed that she had been superficially incised across her neck and sexually assaulted while alive. She died from a hard-contact, execution-type gunshot wound to her forehead. Although police found fresh footprints in the mud outside Happ's condominium leading toward nearby apartments, their investigation failed to identify the killer.

¶ 5 Five years later, the case broke. In early 2001, DeWayne Williams sent a letter to the Joliet Police Department that recounted a conversation that he and the defendant had at the Will County jail in 1996 regarding Happ's murder. Detectives interrogated the defendant. When they informed him that the investigation linked him to Happ's murder, he responded "oh shit" but denied any knowledge of the crime. The police obtained a search warrant to secure blood and saliva from the defendant. A forensic scientist with the Illinois State Police laboratory determined that bloodstains on a knife found near the couch in Happ's condominium matched her genetic profile. Another forensic scientist with the state laboratory found one female and one male genetic profile in both the vaginal and rectal swabs taken from Happ's body during her autopsy. The female profile obviously matched Happ; the male profile matched the defendant. He was charged in a 15-count indictment with first degree murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault, and home invasion.

¶ 6 At trial, Darylyn Phillips, the defendant's girlfriend in 1996, testified for the State. Phillips stated that, on a night in early February of that year, her father drove her to an apartment where the defendant lived with his mother and two sisters. The defendant and two friends, Williams and Fabian Carpenter, were watching a pornographic movie in the living room. Phillips spoke with one of the defendant's sisters until the movie ended. At that time, the defendant went to his bedroom and emerged with a revolver, which he stuck into the front of his pants. He then left the apartment with Williams and Carpenter for 30 to 45 minutes. The three of them returned to the apartment, running up the stairs around 10 p.m. According to Phillips, "They just looked kind of excited a little bit." She had never seen the defendant like that, explaining that "[h]e was just different" and "[a] little nervous maybe." The defendant, Williams, and Carpenter went to the defendant's bedroom and closed the door. Phillips asked them what they were doing, and they responded, "Nothing." She left shortly thereafter.

¶ 7 The defendant testified on his own behalf. He stated that on February 8, 1996, around 5:30 p.m., he was walking home from a friend's house, when he heard a man and a woman, whom he later identified as Happ, yelling from her condominium. He never saw the man, but he saw Happ standing in the front door wearing a T-shirt and apparently nothing else. The defendant stated that she asked him what he was looking at, and he answered that he was looking at her. She asked him his age, and he answered 18. Happ purportedly invited the defendant inside. She offered him a drink, but he refused. They sat on the couch together, and Happ swung her legs up and onto the defendant's lap. He then realized that she was wearing underwear. The defendant stated that he watched television and she read a book for 10 to 15 minutes, after which she initiated physical contact.

¶ 8 The defendant described a short period of consensual vaginal intercourse and inadvertent anal intercourse. According to the defendant, Happ said "oh when it went in the other place." She pushed him away, stood and walked to the front door, opened it, and said "sorry, it's a mistake, it's been a mistake." When she told him to leave, he did. The defendant testified that he was inside the condominium for 30 minutes and that he did not have a gun or touch a knife there. Happ was alive when he departed. He had never seen her before and never saw her after. He returned home, where he and Phillips argued for an hour.

¶ 9 On cross-examination by the State, the defendant stated he was "shocked by the whole incident" with Happ, though he was "pretty experienced in sex" at age 16. He explained that he lied about his age to Happ "to try to get at her." His aim was to have a relationship with her "whatever day it comes up"—"maybe not then, but in the near future." Once inside the condominium, the defendant and Happ did not converse. He estimated that they had intercourse at "6:30, almost 7:00, something like that maybe" and that when he left "[i]t couldn't have been over 7:00." He stated that he departed Joliet a few days later and stayed with his uncle in Chicago until April because he was "involved in a shooting" unrelated to Happ's murder and did not want to go to jail. The defendant denied any knowledge of Happ's murder until he spoke to police in 2001.

¶ 10 A jury convicted the defendant on all 15 counts, but those convictions were reduced to three: first degree murder, aggravated sexual assault, and home invasion. Because he was 16 years old at the time of the murder, he was not eligible for the death penalty, but the State sought an extended term of 60 to 100 years because the crime showed brutal and heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty. See 730 ILCS 5/5-8-1(a)(3) (West 2002). The defendant also faced terms of 6 to 30 years for aggravated criminal sexual assault and 6 to 30 years for home invasion. The statutory scheme mandated consecutive sentences, but the aggregate sentence could not exceed the maximum for the two most serious offenses. See id. § 5-8-4(a), (c)(2). The defendant's maximum sentence, therefore, was 130 years.

¶ 11 A Will County probation officer and a probation supervisor together prepared a presentence investigation (PSI) report. The report spanned 11 pages, 3½ of which summarized the charges against the defendant and the remainder of which detailed his background. The defendant was born in Chicago in 1979 and moved to Joliet at age 10. He moved back to Chicago for a year at age 14 and returned to Joliet afterwards. The report referred to another PSI report completed in 1999, which indicated that the defendant was expelled from a Chicago high school after tenth grade for "gang banging." He received his general equivalency diploma (GED) while incarcerated in the Illinois Youth Center. The defendant had a history of alcohol, marijuana, and PCP use. He denied any current alcohol or drug use and claimed that he had completed drug treatment. According to the report, the defendant had no past or present mental health treatment or institutionalization.

¶ 12 The report stated that "the defendant reportedly enjoys spending time with his children and family." The defendant added that he had a good relationship with his parents and that they visited him often in jail, though the officials found no record that the defendant's father had been there. The defendant had two sisters and two young daughters.

¶ 13 The defendant's criminal history was extensive. In 1996, he was adjudicated delinquent for aggravated discharge of a firearm, incarcerated for nearly 16 months, and released on parole. The report noted that he was discharged from parole on April 14, 1998, and arrested on that...