People v. Prante
| Citation | 180 N.E.3d 875,2021 IL App (5th) 200074,449 Ill.Dec. 950 |
| Decision Date | 12 April 2021 |
| Docket Number | NO. 5-20-0074,5-20-0074 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John PRANTE, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
Joshua Tepfer and Lindsay Hagy, of the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, of Chicago, and Dana M. Delger (pro hac vice), of Innocence Project, Inc., of New York, New York, for appellant.
Thomas D. Gibbons, State's Attorney, of Edwardsville (Patrick Delfino, Patrick D. Daly, and Julia Kaye Wykoff, of State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor's Office, of counsel), for the People.
¶ 1 The petitioner, John N. Prante, appeals from an order of the circuit court of Madison County, denying him leave to file a successive petition for relief under the Post-Conviction Hearing Act (Act) ( 725 ILCS 5/122-1 et seq. (West 2016)). The successive petition brought five claims: (1) that new scientific evidence regarding memory science, and the invalidity and unreliability of bite mark evidence demonstrates that he is actually innocent of the crime; (2) his constitutional right to due process of law was violated at trial by the State's use of faulty and since-repudiated forensic science on bite mark comparisons; (3) ineffective assistance of counsel of trial counsel, including for failing to challenge the admission of the State's evidence regarding bite marks and bite mark comparisons; (4) ineffective assistance of counsel of appellate counsel for failing to raise trial counsel's ineffectiveness; and (5) cumulative error. The circuit court denied the motion for leave to file the successive postconviction petition. For the reasons that follow, we reverse the judgment of the circuit court.
¶ 3 Following a three-week jury trial in June and July of 1983, the petitioner was convicted of the June 21, 1978, murder of Karla Brown. The petitioner was sentenced to the Department of Corrections for an extended term of 75 years. The facts of this case were set forth extensively in the petitioner's direct appeal. The evidence, as relevant to the case currently before us, is as follows.
¶ 4 On June 20, 1978, Karla Brown and her boyfriend, Mark Fair, moved into a home they recently purchased at 979 Acton Avenue, Wood River, Illinois. That evening, Fair and Brown, with the assistance of several friends, moved some of their belongings into the home. Paul Main, a friend of the petitioner, lived next door at 989 Acton Avenue. The petitioner and John Scroggins were visiting Main while Brown and Fair moved in next door.
Scroggins, who knew both Brown and the petitioner, testified that he introduced Brown to the petitioner, who expressed a sexual interest in Brown.
¶ 5 At 7:45 a.m. the following morning, June 21, 1978, Fair left for work, leaving Brown alone in her new home. Brown spoke to Helen Fair, Fair's mother, on the phone between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. The conversation was interrupted when Brown said she would have to call Helen back because "someone [was] at the door."
¶ 6 At approximately 10:45 a.m., Edna Moses was driving her grandson, Eric Moses, to the dentist, when she pulled into the driveway at Brown's home to turn her vehicle around. Edna and Eric saw a woman, matching the description of the victim, standing in the driveway talking to a man. Eric testified the woman "sort of got mad at [the man]." Edna testified that as she was turning around, the woman started to walk toward the house. At 11 a.m., a friend of Brown paid a visit to the home. Brown's van was at the house, but no one answered either the front or back door. Phone calls made to Brown's house between 11:45 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. went unanswered.
¶ 7 Around 4:30 p.m., Fair left work and drove to Tom Fiegenbaum's house. The men used Fiegenbaum's truck to pick up additional items from Fair's prior home to bring to the new house. When they arrived at the Acton Avenue house, Fair used his key to enter the front door, while Fiegenbaum backed his truck into the driveway. Fair went through the house to the back door, which was unlocked, to help unload the truck. After the truck was unloaded, Fair invited Fiegenbaum inside to show him the house. The men entered through the back door, and Fair led Fiegenbaum into the basement. When Fair got to the foot of the stairs, he saw blood on the floor. Fair then noticed that the room was in disarray and there was blood all over the couch. Fair glanced into the laundry room and found Brown's body. Brown was bent at the waist over the side of a large metal lard can, with her head and shoulders submerged in water. Brown's hands were tied behind her back with a white extension cord from which the ends had been cut. Brown was nude from the waist down but was wearing a winter sweater that had been buttoned at the top. Fair pulled Brown's stiffened body from the can and laid her on the floor while Fiegenbaum called the police. Brown had large gashes on her forehead, chin, and nose. Two men's socks, tied together, were tied tightly around her neck. The area where the socks had been tied around her neck was bruised
.
¶ 8 Police arrived and secured the crime scene. Fair told police that the men's socks had been kept in a dresser drawer in the bedroom upstairs and the extension cord had been packed in a box in the basement. The clothes that had been stored in the lard can had been dumped onto the floor and a stand of television trays had been overturned. A couch in the basement was soaked with blood, and blood was splattered on the basement floor. The bloodied couch cushion was saturated with water. On the coffee table near the couch was a bloodstained tampon. A coffee pot from the coffee maker in the kitchen upstairs, which police believed had been handled by the perpetrator, was found in the rafters of the laundry room. The scene was processed for fingerprints. All of the fingerprints recovered matched the victim, except for one, which was recovered from the coffee pot. This print did not match the petitioner and has not been matched to anyone else.
¶ 9 Pathologist Dr. Harry Parks conducted an autopsy on June 22, 1978, and concluded that Brown died from strangulation and that her facial injuries were caused by a blunt object. Dr. Parks estimated the time of death as 11:45 a.m. but believed this time could vary by as much as two to three hours.
¶ 10 Two witnesses testified that they saw the petitioner at Main's home on the day of the murder. Edna Vancil, who lived across the street from the residences of the victim and Main, testified that the petitioner arrived at Main's home between 9:30 and 10 a.m. on the day of the murder. Vancil testified that the petitioner and Main sat on the front porch of Main's home until approximately 11 a.m., when the two men "disappeared." Vancil stated that the men reappeared at noon and sat on the front porch until 3 p.m., when the petitioner left in his vehicle. Charles Nonn, a police officer for the City of Wood River, responded to the scene at about 6:20 p.m. Nonn testified he had known the petitioner for several years and that he saw the petitioner and Main standing in Main's front yard when he arrived.
¶ 11 Three days after the murder, on June 24, 1978, Ralph Skinner, the chief of police for the City of Wood River, interviewed the petitioner at his home. Skinner testified that the petitioner indicated he was at Main's house the evening before the murder while Brown and Fair moved in. The petitioner stated that on the day of the murder he dropped off an application at the Shell Oil Company in Roxana, Illinois, at approximately 8:15 a.m. The petitioner stated he arrived at Main's house at about 8:30 a.m. to see if Main would like to go to St. Louis to pick up employment applications while the petitioner dropped some off. The petitioner stated that Main was busy painting a neighbor's house, so the petitioner dropped off the applications alone. Skinner testified that the petitioner indicated he had "bummed around" afterward and was unsure of where he stopped until he saw Main again at approximately 6 p.m. at Harold Pollard's house. The petitioner advised Skinner that he learned of the murder at that time, when Main told him that the girl next door had been killed.
¶ 12 Two weeks after the murder, on July 5, 1978, Eldon McEuen, an officer for the Wood River Police Department, interviewed the petitioner regarding the investigation. While reviewing the reports, McEuen noticed a discrepancy between the information provided by Main and the petitioner. McEuen testified that the petitioner reiterated that he had stopped at Main's house after dropping off his application at Shell Oil Company and then left to drop off additional applications alone because Main was busy painting a home nearby. McEuen testified that he asked the petitioner if he returned to Main's house afterward, and the petitioner indicated "he wasn't sure if he did or didn't." McEuen testified that the petitioner was unable to account for some of his time and stated the next thing he remembered was seeing Main at Harold Pollard's home when Main advised him about the murder.
¶ 13 In the summer of 1980, investigators sent photographs of the crime scene to Dr. Homer Campbell of the University of New Mexico. Dr. Campbell indicated that he believed certain marks, in the area of the victim's right collarbone, were bite marks. Prior to this time, no one who had examined the body or worked on the case had identified these marks as bite marks. In the spring of 1982, the police sought the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to develop a psychological profile of the perpetrator. As a result of this collaboration, the police decided to exhume Brown's body and sought to increase the media exposure regarding the crime. Articles appeared in regional newspapers about the impending exhumation, the existence of bite marks on the body, and technological...
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People v. Martinez
...in a different light, undermining the court's confidence in the judgment of guilt. People v. Prante , 2021 IL App (5th) 200074, ¶ 92, 449 Ill.Dec. 950, 180 N.E.3d 875. ¶ 116 Here, the trial court found the strongest piece of evidence against defendant was Parker's identification. The court ......