People v. Williams

• Decision Date: 19 September 1990
• Docket Number: No. 64085,64085
• Citation: 138 Ill.2d 377,563 N.E.2d 385,150 Ill.Dec. 498
• Parties: , 150 Ill.Dec. 498 The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Bennie WILLIAMS, Appellant.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 385

563 N.E.2d 385

138 Ill.2d 377, 150 Ill.Dec. 498

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Bennie WILLIAMS, Appellant.

No. 64085.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Sept. 19, 1990.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 30, 1990.

[138 Ill.2d 378] Paul P. Biebel, Jr., and Randolph N. Stone, Public Defenders, Chicago (Kyle Public Wesendorf, Asst. Public Defender, of counsel), for appellant.

Neil F. Hartigan, Atty. Gen., Springfield, and Richard M. Daley and Cecil A. Partee, State's Attys., Chicago (Terence M. Madsen, Asst. Atty. Gen., Chicago, and Inge Fryklund, Renee Goldfarb and James S. Veldman, Asst. State's Attys., of counsel), for the People.

Justice STAMOS delivered the opinion of the court:

Following a jury trial in the circuit court of Cook County, defendant, Bennie Williams, was convicted of murder and armed robbery. (Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 38, pars. 9-1(a), 18-2(a).) Defendant waived a jury for the sentencing phase of his trial. Upon finding defendant eligible for the death penalty, weighing aggravating and mitigating factors, and determining that there were no mitigating factors sufficient to preclude imposition of the death penalty, the trial judge sentenced defendant to death. (Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 38, par. 9-1(h).) The sentence was stayed pending direct appeal to this court. Ill. Const.1970, art. VI, § 4(b); Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 38, par. 9-1(i); 107 Ill.2d Rules 603, 609(a).

On procedural and substantive grounds, defendant contends that the trial judge erred in holding that certain evidence obtained as a result of his custodial interrogation was attenuated from the taint of his unlawful arrest. See Brown v. Illinois (1975), 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416; Wong Sun v. United States (1963), 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441.

Defendant's first procedural contention is that the trial judge erred in considering the suppression question's attenuation component Defendant's second procedural contention is that the trial judge erred in basing a finding of attenuation on evidence that was not new and had been before the original judge for consideration.

[150 Ill.Dec. 499] more than a year after an earlier judge had already entered an order suppressing the evidence, and when the State had neither completed an appeal from nor sought reconsideration of that order.

Defendant's substantive contention is that the trial judge erred in finding that attenuation had occurred.

Defendant raises numerous other issues, but we reverse and remand on the first procedural issue.

FACTS

I. The Crimes and Defendant's Interrogation

On the night of May 28-29, 1983, shortly after midnight, 17-year-old Tony Long was fatally shot and robbed of a radio he was carrying. On the evening of May 30, police received an anonymous telephone call implicating the 18-year-old defendant by name. On the basis of the call, their records on defendant, and descriptions by crime witnesses of a suspect's height, police called at defendant's home at about 11 p.m. and asked him to accompany them to the police station. There, they gave him Miranda warnings and questioned him at length.

Defendant initially denied knowing anything about the crimes. When asked, he agreed to take a lie detector test, which could not be scheduled until the next day at the earliest. He remained at the police station overnight and until the evening of May 31, when he was taken to another police station for the test. Upon completing the test, he was told by the examiner that his answers were suspect, whereupon he replied that it was because he actually knew who had committed the crimes.

Upon being returned to the first police station, he was given another set of Miranda warnings and informed that he had failed the test. He then told investigating officers that he had seen two persons named Kuykendoll and Gito in the act of shooting and robbing the victim. He said that afterward he had gone to the apartment of Ruthie Jackson and there had told Loneill Davis and his and Davis' "girlfriends," Leatha Erving and Kelly Adams, what he had seen.

While police searched for Kuykendoll and Gito, defendant remained for a second consecutive night in the police station. On the following day, June 1, defendant's friend Leatha Erving arrived at the police station and, at about 5 p.m., told investigating officers that, at about the time of the crimes, defendant and Davis had left her company and that, when they later returned, defendant was carrying a large radio.

At about 9 p.m. on June 1, police gave defendant another set of Miranda warnings and informed him of Erving's statement, whereupon he told them that, after he and Davis had left Erving's company, Davis disappeared, then later reappeared carrying the radio, after which they returned to the house where Erving was waiting.

Later in the evening of June 1, police received a telephone call from Davis, met him at a certain location, and escorted him and his friend Kelly Adams to the police station. There, at about 12:30 a.m. on June 2, Davis was given Miranda warnings and gave the police a statement. According to the statement, Davis had been with defendant when defendant had said that he had to have the victim's radio. Davis told the police that defendant had then shot and robbed the victim during a struggle.

Police thereupon informed defendant of Davis' statement, and defendant confessed to the crimes, some 50 hours after the police first encountered him. Defendant also told the police that he had taken the gun and radio to the apartment of Debra Glenn. Shortly afterward, police called at Glenn's apartment and recovered a radio. Later the same day, police again called at Glenn's apartment in search of a gun, and she and Patricia Barnes took police to another dwelling some distance away, where the police took possession of the gun. II. The

Suppression Motion, Hearing, and Order

The case against defendant first appeared on the call of Judge John H. McCollom (the original judge). Defense counsel filed a "Motion to Quash Arrest and Suppress Confessions, Admissions and Statements and Physical Evidence." Besides seeking to quash defendant's arrest, the motion requested that the court "suppress from introduction into evidence" the following:

"A. Physical evidence discovered directly and indirectly as a result of the arrest and detention.

B. Statements, utterances, reports of gestures and responses by Defendant during the detention following the arrest.

C. Witnesses who viewed Defendant during the detention following the arrest, as well as witnesses discovered as a result of the arrest, provided that Defendant has the right to call said witnesses to testify for the purpose of protecting his Constitutional Rights.

D. Photographs, fingerprints, and other information, the product of the processing of Defendant following his arrest, and the fruits thereof.

E. All other knowledge and the fruits thereof, witnesses, statements, whether written, oral or gestural and physical evidence which is the direct and indirect product of the arrest."

After June 5, July 5, and August 2, 1984, hearings on the motion, the original judge ruled on September 20, 1984, that defendant had been seized and detained in police custody without probable cause, adding: "Therefore, the Court grants the Defendant's motion to quash arrest and allows the Defendant's motion to suppress confessions, admissions, statements and physical evidence."

Most of the parties' argument on defendant's motion before the original judge concerned whether defendant had been seized prior to the time he confessed, not whether defendant's statements had been attenuated from the taint of any unlawful arrest. However, at one point during defense counsel's citation to the appellate court's opinion in People v. Townes (1981), 94 Ill.App.3d 850, 50 Ill.Dec. 496, 419 N.E.2d 604, aff'd (1982), 91 Ill.2d 32, 61 Ill.Dec. 614, 435 N.E.2d 103, counsel quoted from the appellate court's discussion of the attenuation issue that had been developed in Dunaway v. New York (1979), 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824, and Brown v. Illinois (1975), 422 U.S. 590, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416. (See Townes, 94 Ill.App.3d at 853, 50 Ill.Dec. 496, 419 N.E.2d 604.) At another point, the prosecutor referred to the appearance of Leatha Erving at the police station as having been "a totally independent factor" that led the police to realize that defendant was not a mere witness but was a suspect. Thus, the original judge heard at least brief argument related to attenuation before making his suppression ruling.

On October 19, 1984, the State filed a notice of appeal from the original judge's suppression ruling. However, on November 2, 1984, the State informed the court that it would not prosecute the appeal, and on December 19, 1984, the State informed the court that on November 21, 1984, the appellate court had granted its motion to dismiss its appeal and that the appellate court's mandate was being awaited. On May 29 and June 17, 1985, after the mandate had apparently been received, the State informed judges sitting in the original judge's stead that the State intended to argue before the original judge that certain items of evidence suppressed by him would have been inevitably discovered and should be admitted. On July 1, 1985, appearing before Judge Robert Boharic (the trial judge), who had succeeded the original judge because of reassignment, the State advised the court that it had been considering filing a motion for reconsideration of the suppression motion on which the original judge had ruled but that the State was not "at the present time" moving for reconsideration.

III. The Attenuation Motion, Hearing, and Order

On November 12, 1985, the State, through an assistant State's Attorney who Defense counsel argued that, under Wong Sun v. United States (1963), 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441, the original judge could not properly have based a suppression...