People v. Robinson

• Decision Date: 22 September 1989
• Docket Number: No. 1-85-0893,1-85-0893
• Citation: People v. Robinson, 545 N.E.2d 268, 189 Ill.App.3d 323 (Ill. App. 1989)
• Parties: , 136 Ill.Dec. 744 The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Arthur ROBINSON, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 268

545 N.E.2d 268

189 Ill.App.3d 323, 136 Ill.Dec. 744

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Arthur ROBINSON, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 1-85-0893.

Appellate Court of Illinois First District, Fifth Division.

Sept. 22, 1989.

[189 Ill.App.3d 326] [136 Ill.Dec. 747] Randolph N. Stone, Public Defender of Cook County (Emily Eisner, Asst. Public Defender, of counsel), Chicago, for defendant-appellant Arthur Robinson.

Cecil A. Partee, State's Atty. of Cook County (Thomas V. Gainer, Jr., Joan E. Disis, Penelope Moutoussamy, Asst. State's Attys., of counsel), Chicago, for plaintiff-appellee.

Justice PINCHAM delivered the opinion of the court:

A jury found defendant, Arthur Robinson, guilty of the murder of his girl friend Allie Bee Anderson, with whom he lived in a Chicago, Illinois apartment building. The trial court sentenced the defendant to an extended term of 70 years' imprisonment. On this appeal defendant Robinson contends for reversal that he was denied a fair trial because of, (1) the prosecutor's noncompliance with discovery and failure to furnish defendant's attorney with the defendant Robinson's oral statement of, and the admission of the totally unrelated testimony of defendant Robinson's argument with and threat to kill the apartment building custodian hours before Anderson was killed; (2) the prosecutor's unsupported assertion to the jury, in the complete absence of any proof, that State witness and Anderson's neighbor, Juana Buckner, told the police that she recognized the defendant Robinson's voice as the voice of Anderson's assailant in Anderson's apartment during the fatal attack upon her; (3) the State's extensive inadmissible hearsay testimony that Anderson, the deceased, called defendant Robinson by the name "Omar," to connect defendant Robinson with the homicide; (4) the State's inflammatory, prejudicial, irrelevant, inadmissible hearsay evidence that the defendant Robinson had not paid his rent and that State's witnesses had told Anderson the deceased to leave and move to Indiana; (5) the prosecutor's erroneous and improper representation to the jury that defendant Robinson's attorney before trial withheld and destroyed his investigative notes; (6) the trial court's erroneous refusal to give the jury the second paragraph of Criminal Illinois Pattern Jury Instruction No. 3.02 on circumstantial evidence; (7) the trial court's erroneous refusal to instruct the jury on voluntary manslaughter; (8) the evidence failed to prove defendant Robinson guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; and (9) the extended term of 70 years' imprisonment sentence was improper. We reverse and remand for a new trial. Our reasons follow.

Juana Buckner and her husband Cornell Buckner lived in an apartment next door to the apartment in which Allie Bee Anderson--the deceased and her live-in boyfriend, defendant Arthur Robinson, lived. Juana Buckner and Allie Bee Anderson were also co-workers, as maids, at a nearby hotel and defendant Robinson walked them to work daily. About 3:30 p.m. on May 6, 1983, the date of the homicide, defendant Robinson and Cornell Buckner picked up Juana Buckner and Allie Bee Anderson at the hotel. Before the four of them left the hotel, Juana Buckner, while talking to Cornell down the hall, overheard what sounded to her like an argument between Anderson and defendant Robinson. When the four of them left the hotel, the Buckners parted Anderson and Robinson's company to go shopping. Later, when the Buckners returned to their apartment about 5 p.m., they overheard the fatal altercation in Anderson's apartment between Anderson and her assailant. To avoid repetition, the more specific details of the Buckners' witnessing of the incident are later set forth herein.

Anderson's son, Roscoe Harris, and his girl friend, Elisha Ingram, who lived in Indiana, had a key to Anderson's apartment and frequently visited Anderson on weekends. About 11 p.m. on May 6, 1983, Elisha Ingram, Roscoe Harris and his brother, Victor Harris, came to Chicago on a surprise visit to Anderson. They found the front and rear doors to the apartment locked and the back bedroom window broken. They also discovered Anderson's body lying on the back bedroom floor. Anderson's clothing was packed in a carrying case in the front closet. Elisha Ingram noticed writing scribbled on the living room wall and she described a large picture also on the living room wall as a mural, initialed, "Bee's Paradise," designed for Anderson by her former boyfriend, Walter Hiawatha.

Anderson's neighbor and co-worker, Juana Buckner, knew that Hiawatha was Anderson's former boyfriend, that Hiawatha still "hung around" Anderson's apartment building and that after Hiawatha and Anderson broke up, Hiawatha would occasionally come by the hotel where Anderson worked and attempt to walk Anderson home, but Anderson would refuse. A few weeks before Anderson's homicide, Juana Buckner and Anderson were approached by Hiawatha as they entered a cab. Hiawatha attempted to grab Anderson's clothes. Although Juana Buckner admitted that she said in her pretrial statement that Hiawatha yanked Anderson out of the cab, at trial however Juana Buckner denied this occurrence. Juana Buckner further admitted that a few weeks before Anderson's homicide Hiawatha had followed Anderson and Buckner around, and that Hiawatha followed Buckner and Anderson all the way home from the hotel at which they worked.

Chicago police department evidence technician Joseph Moran testified that when he arrived at Allie Bee Anderson's apartment he observed her body with her bra and underpants pulled down. (Sperm were later discovered in her vagina.) Anderson was dead from multiple knife wounds.

Evidence technician Moran recovered two knives from the apartment which he took to the crime laboratory but did not process. Moran also lifted an undetermined number of fingerprints from the wall, the pantry door, a metal table leg, a metal table stand, and a piggybank inside the apartment. He also observed and photographed the scribbling on the wall, but the trial court refused to allow defense counsel to cross-examine him on whether he could identify the letters of or read the scribbling. Elisha Ingram and Roscoe also observed the scribbling on the wall, which had not been there before.

After discovering their mother's body in her apartment, Roscoe Harris, his brother Victor, and two of their friends went looking for Arthur Robinson. They waited for him on the street corner at the deceased's building for one and a half hours. When Robinson arrived, Roscoe and Victor Harris and their two friends approached him, whereupon Robinson stated, "I didn't do nothing. I didn't do nothing." The four beat and kicked Robinson until the police arrived.

Chicago police officer Reeger testified that he observed the four men beating Arthur Robinson and stopped them. After speaking to the Harris brothers, Officer Reeger arrested Robinson. Because of the injury and bleeding of Robinson's head inflicted by the Harris brothers and their two friends, Officer Reeger took Robinson to the hospital for treatment.

Robert Lenz, a Chicago police department crime laboratory microanalyst, testified that after examining their blood samples, he determined that defendant Robinson's blood was a type-O and deceased Anderson's blood was a type-B. Robinson's T-shirt was positive for blood type-O and blood type-B was found on Robinson's jogging pants which had been ripped off him. Microanalyst Lenz further related that type-B blood was not identifiable to a particular person and was consistent with anyone who had type-B blood; that anyone who bled during a mutual struggle and came in contact with Robinson could have been the source of the type-B blood that was found on his clothing at the time of his microanalysis, Lenz did not know that Robinson had been injured in a fight which involved mutual bloodshed and he did not obtain the blood type of Roscoe Harris, or anyone else. Lenz did not know the source of the type-B blood on Anderson's clothing or how long it had been there.

Chicago police officer Thomas Krupowicz, a fingerprint analyst, testified that of the 36 suitable fingerprints lifted from the metal table stand in the apartment of the deceased Anderson and the defendant Robinson, ten fingerprints belonged to Robinson and two belonged to Anderson; the remaining 24 suitable fingerprints did not belong to Robinson or Anderson and Krupowicz had not determined to whom these fingerprints belonged. A single suitable print from the table leg did not belong to defendant Robinson or to the deceased Anderson. Two of the four suitable fingerprints from the piggybank belonged to defendant Robinson, but Krupowicz did not know to whom the remaining two suitable prints from the piggybank belonged, but he did know however that neither belonged to either Robinson or Anderson. Fingerprints analyst Krupowicz did not test for fingerprints of anyone else other than Anderson and Robinson, and more particularly, he did not test for fingerprints of, or even obtain a fingerprint from Walter Hiawatha.

Defendant Robinson's first contention for reversal is that the trial court erred in admitting into evidence statements of the defendant's threats to and argument with the apartment building custodian which the prosecutor had not furnished defendant's attorney pursuant to the discovery rules. We agree that this was error.

The uncontradicted testimony of Juana Buckner and Cornell Buckner established that Allie Bee Anderson was killed in an altercation in her apartment around the hour of 4:30-5 p.m. Cornell Buckner was permitted to testify that earlier that morning, at about 11:30 a.m., in the downstairs lobby of the apartment building the defendant became engaged in an argument for 15 minutes with the apartment building maintenance man about the defendant throwing trash off the back porch, that the defendant threatened to kill the...