People v. Palmer
| Citation | 147 N.E.3d 843,439 Ill.Dec. 168,2019 IL App (4th) 190148 |
| Decision Date | 27 November 2019 |
| Docket Number | NO. 4-19-0148,4-19-0148 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Charles B. PALMER, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
Arthur Loevy, Jon Loevy, Steve Art, Rachel Brady, and Alison Leff, of Loevy & Loevy, of Chicago, for appellant.
Jay Scott, State's Attorney, of Decatur (Patrick Delfino, David J. Robinson, and Luke McNeill, of State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor's Office, of counsel), for the People.
¶ 1 Charles B. Palmer petitioned the Macon County circuit court for a certificate of innocence. The court denied his petition. Palmer appeals. We affirm the judgment because we are unable to say it is an abuse of discretion.
¶ 3 A. The Charges (February 1999)
¶ 4 The information against Palmer had six counts, the first five of which accused him of committing the first degree murder of William Helmbacher. Specifically, according to counts I to V, Palmer did the following on August 27, 1998: (1) "with the intent to kill or do great bodily harm to [Helmbacher], repeatedly struck [him] on the head, thereby causing [his] death" (count I); (2) "repeatedly struck [Helmbacher] on the head, knowing said act would cause the death of [Helmbacher], thereby causing [his] death" (count II); (3) "repeatedly struck [Helmbacher] [o]n the head, knowing such act created a strong probability of death or great bodily harm to [Helmbacher], thereby causing [his] death" (count III); (4) "while committing or attempting to commit a forcible felony, [r]obbery, * * * repeatedly struck [Helmbacher] on the head and thereby caused [his] death" (count IV); and (5) "while committing or attempting to commit a forcible felony, [r]esidential [b]urglary, * * * repeatedly struck [Helmbacher] on the head and thereby caused [his] death" (count V). See 720 ILCS 5/9-1(a)(1), (a)(2), (a)(3) (1998).
¶ 5 In the remaining count, count VI, the State alleged that on the day before the murder, August 26, 1998, Palmer committed residential burglary of Helmbacher's apartment (id. § 19-3).
¶ 6 B. The Jury Trial (April 2000)
¶ 9 Ray Taylor, a first cousin of Palmer, testified that he lived in an apartment building in Decatur, upstairs from the apartment that Helmbacher had occupied, and that around dusk on August 26, 1998, Palmer came to Taylor's apartment and told him he was going to break into Helmbacher's apartment.
¶ 10 The two of them, Palmer and Taylor, went downstairs. Palmer entered Helmbacher's apartment through a window and, from the inside, opened the front door and asked Taylor to keep watch for him. Taylor "stood there, and then * * * went upstairs," returning to his own apartment.
¶ 11 Soon afterward, Palmer came upstairs to Taylor's apartment, bringing with him some bottles of beer and a jar with change in it, among other things. He asked Taylor for a bag, and Taylor handed him a plastic garbage bag. Palmer put some of the things in the bag, and he and Taylor drank some of the beers.
¶ 12 Later, the two of them walked to a dumpster, a few blocks from Taylor's apartment, and Taylor threw the garbage bag into the dumpster.
¶ 13 Taylor then went to his mother's residence and did not see Palmer again that night.
¶ 14 b. Taylor Sees Palmer the Next Evening, August 27, 1998
¶ 15 On the evening of August 27, 1998, Taylor saw Palmer at the apartment of another cousin of Taylor's, John Bradford. Palmer asked Taylor to come in, and upon entering, Taylor noticed that Palmer was wearing different shoes and different clothes from those he had been wearing the day before, and Taylor further noticed that the shoes Palmer now had on were too small, with his heels protruding out of the back of them. By way of explanation, Palmer told Taylor, " ‘Man, you know I had to beat the dude to death.’ " " ‘What dude?’ " Taylor asked. It was the man in the apartment downstairs from Taylor's apartment, Helmbacher, Palmer answered—adding regretfully Helmbacher had only $11 on him as it turned out. Taylor asked Palmer where his new tennis shoes were, the ones he was wearing the previous day. Palmer replied that " ‘blood was everywhere.’ "
¶ 16 c. Police Interrogations of Taylor
¶ 17 Later in the evening of August 27, 1998, the police came to Taylor's apartment and questioned him about Helmbacher's murder, and on September 1, 1998, the police questioned him again. In those first two interviews, Taylor, who was unwilling to get involved, divulged nothing of what he had heard about Helmbacher's murder.
¶ 18 Taylor became more cooperative later in September 1998, when the police approached him a third time and informed him that (1) a garbage bag containing property stolen from Helmbacher had been found and (2) Taylor's fingerprints were on the bag. This time, Taylor told the police what he knew about Palmer's participation in the burglary and the murder. In an interview room off the booking area, a police officer showed Taylor a pair of tennis shoes, and at that time Taylor identified them as the shoes Palmer was wearing on August 26, 1998, the day before the murder, when Palmer burglarized Helmbacher's apartment.
¶ 19 d. No Specific Promises Made to Taylor by the State
¶ 20 Taylor, who had two prior felony convictions, acknowledged that in Macon County case No. 98-CF-1476, he faced a charge of residential burglary (id. ) because of his participation in the August 26, 1998, burglary of Helmbacher's apartment. Taylor denied, however, that the State had made any specific promises to him in return for his testimony in the present case. All the State had told him was that his testimony would be taken into account.
¶ 22 Joseph Moyer testified that, in August 1998, both he and Helmbacher were employees of Douglas Lee and that on the evening of August 27, 1998, Moyer and Lee were collecting rent from occupants of apartment buildings owned by Lee.
¶ 23 At about 9:45 p.m., as they were making their rounds, Moyer and Lee arrived at Helmbacher's apartment and knocked on the door. No one answered. They left to collect rent at other buildings.
¶ 24 At 10:30 p.m. or 10:45 p.m., they returned to Helmbacher's apartment. Lee peered through a small window in the front door and saw a half-eaten cheeseburger on a table and Helmbacher's shoes on the floor. Suspecting that something was amiss, Lee opened the door, and Helmbacher was dead on the floor, right in front of them.
¶ 25 Moyer, who had a previous felony conviction for burglary, admitted that Lee was angry with Helmbacher the night of August 27, 1998, because Helmbacher had fallen behind in collecting rent for Lee.
¶ 27 Brian Cleary, a Decatur police officer, testified that on the evening of August 27, 1998, he responded to a call at Helmbacher's apartment. Upon arriving there, Cleary looked through a window and saw Helmbacher lying on the floor. Cleary saw no signs of forced entry.
¶ 29 On August 27 and 28, 1998, a Decatur detective, Roger Ryan, investigated the scene of the murder. The inside of the door to Helmbacher's apartment was splattered with blood, and blood had pooled around Helmbacher's body. A hammer lay nearby. Ryan saw no bloody footprints nor did he see any blood outside the apartment.
¶ 31 A forensic pathologist, Travis Hindman, had performed an autopsy on Helmbacher's body. The cause of Helmbacher's death, Hindman testified, was brain trauma
resulting from narrow-surface blunt trauma to the head. The head wounds were compatible with blows from a hammer.
¶ 33 According to Mike Callaway's testimony, Palmer spent the night of August 27, 1998, with him. When Palmer arrived at Callaway's apartment that night around 10 p.m., Callaway did not notice any blood on him. (After the passage of two years, Callaway was unsure whether he had told a Decatur detective, Tim Carlton, that it was just before dark when Palmer arrived at his apartment, but that could have been what he had told Carlton, Callaway agreed.)
¶ 34 Sometime that evening, after Palmer's arrival, Callaway went to a liquor store, and about 45 minutes later, when Callaway returned, Palmer was wearing one of Callaway's shirts. Callaway told Palmer he had to wash his own clothes and wear them. Later, during Palmer's stay at his apartment, Callaway saw him washing clothes.
¶ 36 According to Tim Carlton's testimony, Callaway told him, in an interview, that it was around dark on August 27, 1998, when Palmer arrived at his apartment.
¶ 37 On September 22, 1998, Carlton interviewed Palmer. At the time of the interview, Palmer was wearing a pair of white tennis shoes with red specks on them. Carlton took the shoes from Palmer and showed them to Taylor. Then Carlton put the shoes in evidence storage.
¶ 38 Later, the shoes were sent to the Illinois State Police crime laboratory for analysis. Initial testing found no human blood on the shoes. Then, without touching the shoes, Carlton had them sent back to the crime laboratory with instructions to "take them apart" and analyze them again.
¶ 40 On September 24, 1998, Roger Morville, the evidence officer for the Decatur Police Department, transported Palmer's tennis shoes to the crime laboratory. After the initial testing, Morville transported the shoes from the laboratory back to the evidence storage area of the Decatur police department. On October 15, 1998, he again transported the shoes from evidence storage to the crime laboratory. At that time, the shoes were still in a sealed evidence storage bag, and they had not been tampered with or altered.
¶ 42 Jennifer Lu was a crime...
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People v. Palmer
...in the commission of the charged offense because "[t]he principal and the accomplice are, in the eyes of the law, one and the same." 2019 IL App (4th) 190148, ¶ 150, 439 Ill.Dec. 168, 147 N.E.3d 843. The court also rejected petitioner's due process argument and his reliance on the doctrine ......