People v. Mason
| Decision Date | 04 November 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 1-17-2124,1-17-2124 |
| Citation | 175 N.E.3d 249,447 Ill.Dec. 881,2020 IL App (1st) 172124 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Michael MASON, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
James E. Chadd, Patricia Mysza, and John R. Breffeilh, of State Appellate Defender's Office, of Chicago, for appellant.
Kimberly M. Foxx, State's Attorney, of Chicago (Alan J. Spellberg, Mary L. Boland, and Miles J. Keleher, Assistant State's Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.
¶ 1 Following a bench trial, defendant Michael Mason was convicted on two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault. He was sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison followed by a term of 3 years to life on mandatory supervised release (MSR). The sole issue raised on appeal is whether the trial court erred in imposing the term of MSR under an amended version of the MSR statute rather than a previous version that provided for only three years of MSR. Defendant argues that he should have been allowed to choose the more lenient version of the statute because the State did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the offenses after the effective date of the amended version. For the following reasons, we affirm defendant's sentence.
¶ 3 In May 2015, defendant was charged by indictment with two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault (counts I and II) and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse (counts III and IV) based on events that allegedly occurred when defendant was under 17 years of age and alleged victim Z.W. was under 9 years of age. Count I alleged that defendant committed "an act of sexual penetration upon Z.W." by putting his mouth on Z.W.'s vagina. Count II alleged that defendant committed "an act of sexual penetration upon Z.W." by causing his penis to contact Z.W.'s mouth. Count III was based on alleged contact between defendant's penis and Z.W.'s hand, and count IV was based on alleged contact between defendant and Z.W.'s naked bodies. Each count originally alleged that the offenses occurred in the period beginning "on or about January 01, 2007 and continuing on through May 25, 2007." However, prior to trial, the trial court granted the State's oral motion to amend the indictment to allege that the offenses occurred between May 27, 2005, and March 1, 2007. Defendant did not object to the amendment.
¶ 4 The case proceeded to a bench trial, where Z.W. testified that she was born on May 26, 2001. She lived with her mother and stepfather but visited her biological father, C.G., "[a]t least twice out of the month" when she was "four or five years old." During some of her visits, C.G. would drop Z.W. off at defendant's home to be babysat by defendant's teenage sister, Malissa Mason, and defendant's mother, Lisa Johnson. Z.W. testified that, while she was at defendant's home, defendant would sometimes take her into his bedroom, remove both of their clothes, and make her participate in sexual acts. Defendant performed oral sex on her and made her perform oral sex on him "[a]t least ten" times each. Defendant also made Z.W. rub his penis with her hand "[m]ore than once." On "[a]t least ten" occasions, defendant would lay on top of her while they were both naked and "grind" his genitals into hers. Z.W. testified that these encounters occurred for "[a]lmost a year" and stopped when her family moved to Detroit "in the middle of [her] kindergarten year when [she] was five." Z.W. did not mention the abuse to anyone until she told her mother when she was either seven or eight years old. She subsequently also told her father and, later, "Ms. Brand," an assistant principal at her middle school.
¶ 5 M.P., Z.W.'s mother, testified that she and Z.W. moved from Detroit to Illinois in January 2005 and then moved back to Detroit in the spring of 2007. During the time they lived in Illinois, Z.W. would visit C.G. "every other weekend." When Z.W. was eight years old, she first told M.P. that "Michael," who Z.W. described as one of her father's friend's sons, touched her vagina at Michael's house. Z.W. also told C.G. the same approximately a week or two later. M.P. testified that she did not contact the police about what Z.W. told her because she "didn't know an address, a last name, [or] anything about [Michael's] family."
¶ 6 C.G. testified that he was longtime friends with Larry Gamble, the father of defendant and Malissa Mason. C.G. also testified that Z.W. visited him every other weekend during the time she and M.P. lived in Illinois. On some of those weekends, C.G. would drop Z.W. off at the Gamble residence so that Malissa could babysit Z.W. while he was at work. When Z.W. was eight years old, she told C.G. that defendant had sexually abused her "a few times" at the Gamble residence. C.G. did not contact the police because he "didn't want to believe her."
¶ 7 Patricia Brand testified that she is an assistant principal at defendant's middle school. In May 2014, Z.W. came to Brand's office and told her that her "dad's friend" had sexually abused her "several times." Brand did not ask for more details but contacted the police after the meeting.
¶ 8 Forest Park police detective Nick Petrovic testified that he was assigned to investigate the allegations against defendant. Petrovic discovered that defendant's date of birth was December 3, 1991, by searching the Illinois Secretary of State's driver's license database. Petrovic later interviewed defendant at the police station on May 5, 2015. Prior to questioning, Petrovic read defendant his Miranda rights from a preprinted form. Defendant initialed next to each right and indicated that he understood them. Petrovic testified that defendant initially denied the allegations but later admitted to one instance in which he "removed [Z.W.'s] underwear and licked her vagina" because "he was horny." Defendant also identified a photograph of Z.W. taken when she was four years old and wrote "the girl's vagina that I licked one time" on the photograph. Petrovic then ended the interview.
¶ 9 The State rested. For the defense, defendant's mother and sister both testified that one of them was always aware of Z.W.'s whereabouts when she was at their home. Both stated that they never saw Z.W. go into defendant's bedroom or defendant take her into his bedroom. Landon Gamble, defendant's stepbrother, also denied ever seeing Z.W. in the bedroom that he shared with defendant during the relevant time period.
¶ 10 Defendant testified on his own behalf and denied having any type of sexual contact with Z.W. Defendant also testified that he did not tell Petrovic that he licked Z.W.'s vagina. Rather, defendant stated he did not understand his Miranda rights and only wrote what Petrovic told him to on Z.W.'s photograph because Petrovic told him that he would be able to go home if he did so.
¶ 11 Following closing arguments, the trial court found defendant guilty on all four counts, stating that "[t]here was sexual contact" and that it did not believe defendant's testimony about what occurred in his interview with Petrovic. However, the court later vacated its findings of guilt on counts III and IV, though the court clarified that its ruling on those counts was "not to say that I don't believe that [Z.W.] is credible and that these incidences, in the way she described, happened."
¶ 12 After a sentencing hearing, the court sentenced defendant to consecutive terms of six years in prison on each count. The court also imposed a "three-year period of mandatory supervised release to lifetime reporting, depending on what the Illinois Department of Corrections says," and "lifetime reporting as a sex offender." The court denied defendant's oral motion to reconsider the sentence, and this appeal followed.
¶ 14 The sole issue on appeal is whether defendant was sentenced under the proper version of the MSR statute. As an initial matter, defendant concedes that he has forfeited the issue by failing to object in the trial court or raise the matter in a posttrial motion. See People v. Hillier , 237 Ill. 2d 539, 544, 342 Ill.Dec. 1, 931 N.E.2d 1184 (2010) (). Defendant nevertheless argues that we may review the matter under the first prong of the plain error doctrine, which allows a reviewing court to consider a forfeited issue if "a clear and obvious error occurred and the evidence is so closely balanced that the error alone threatened to tip the scales of justice against the defendant." People v. Sandridge , 2020 IL App (1st) 173158, ¶ 21, 2020 WL 3487498. The first step in a plain error analysis is always to determine whether an error occurred. Id.
¶ 15 In Apprendi v. New Jersey , 530 U.S. 466, 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), the United States Supreme Court held that, as a matter of due process, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum is an element of the offense that must be submitted to the trier of fact and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. In Alleyne v. United States , 570 U.S. 99, 103, 133 S.Ct. 2151, 186 L.Ed.2d 314 (2013), the Supreme Court extended this rule by holding that any fact that increases the mandatory minimum sentence for an offense must also be submitted to the trier of fact and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. In this appeal, defendant contends that his sentence violated his due process rights under Apprendi and Alleyne because he was sentenced to an increased term of MSR where the State did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the offenses after the effective date of the amendment to the MSR statute. For the following reasons, we disagree.
¶ 16 The Unified Code of Corrections provides that all criminal sentences other than...
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