People v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 30 September 1993
• Docket Number: No. 1-88-2578,1-88-2578
• Citation: 254 Ill.App.3d 1020,626 N.E.2d 1282
• Parties: , 193 Ill.Dec. 731 The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Andrew WILSON, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 1282

626 N.E.2d 1282

254 Ill.App.3d 1020, 193 Ill.Dec. 731

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Andrew WILSON, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 1-88-2578.

Appellate Court of Illinois,

First District, Sixth Division.

Sept. 30, 1993.

Rita A. Fry, Office of the Public Defender of Cook County, Chicago (Alison Edwards, of counsel), for defendant-appellant.

Jack O'Malley, State's Atty. of Cook County, Chicago (Renee Goldfarb and Kevin Sweeney, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellee.

Justice EGAN delivered the opinion of the court:

On February 4, 1983, the defendant, Andrew Wilson, and his brother, Jackie Wilson, were found guilty by a jury of the murder of two Chicago police officers, William Fahey and Richard O'Brien, and two counts of armed robbery. The defendant was sentenced to death, but the jury was unable to agree to impose the death penalty on Jackie Wilson, who was sentenced to a term of natural life imprisonment. The Illinois Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Andrew Wilson on the ground that his confession had been coerced. (People v. Wilson (1987), 116 Ill.2d 29, 106 Ill.Dec. 771, 506 N.E.2d 571.) The defendant was again convicted of both murders and armed robberies by a jury on June 20, 1988. After six days deliberation, the jury was unable to agree that the defendant was eligible for the death penalty. He was sentenced to a term of natural life imprisonment. He does not contest the sufficiency of the evidence to support the murder convictions; but he does seek a reversal of his armed robbery convictions on the ground that the evidence was insufficient. He seeks a new trial on the murder charges on several grounds.

On February 9, 1982, Chicago Police Officers William Fahey and Richard O'Brien were on duty in a squad car. They had stopped a Chevrolet with a damaged front grille at the 8100 block of South Morgan Avenue in Chicago. The driver of the car was later identified as Jackie Wilson, and the passenger was identified as Andrew Wilson. The passenger shot and killed both officers. Tyrone Sims saw the entire incident from his front window at his home located at 8108 South Morgan. Dewayne Hardin, a passenger in a car travelling northbound near 82nd and Morgan, saw the two men enter their car and drive away after the shooting.

Several police officers arrived at the scene. Fahey was dead; O'Brien was still alive but died later. The service revolvers of both officers were missing. A case containing eyeglasses, which were later traced to the defendant, was found lying near Fahey. The police also recovered a bullet which fell from O'Brien's jacket.

Tyrone Sims testified he saw a police car turn on its flasher and pull over a burnt orange or rust colored Chevrolet with a damaged front grille in front of his house. The drivers of both cars got out, met "half-way" and walked back to the Chevrolet. He identified the driver of the Chevrolet as Jackie Wilson. (The driver of the police car was later identified as Officer Richard O'Brien.) O'Brien asked the driver for his license, which the driver surrendered. As O'Brien leaned into the Chevrolet, the passengers of both the Chevrolet and the police car got out. The passenger of the Chevrolet, identified by Sims as Andrew Wilson, threw a jacket back into the car and the police passenger, later identified as William Fahey, told the passenger to give him the jacket. Fahey went through the jacket, found something and took out his handcuffs. As Fahey was trying to handcuff the passenger, both men fell. The passenger then came up with a "shiny pistol," put it to the back of Fahey's head and fired. As O'Brien came around the trunk of the car, the passenger fired two shots. When O'Brien fell, the passenger got up on the trunk and fired two more shots toward O'Brien. He then got off the trunk, picked up his belongings and shouted, "Let's get out of here" to the other man. At that point, Sims left to call the police.

About ten hours later, Sims met with a police sketch artist to prepare a drawing of the man who fired the shots. Sims and the artist prepared a drawing of the shooter, and Sims also gave a detailed verbal description of the shooter which was then written at the bottom of the sketch. The sketch and part of the description were circulated in a police bulletin.

The next day Sims was hypnotized by Dr. Bennett Braun in an effort to recall the license number of the Chevrolet. Before the hypnosis, Sims had given a detailed statement of the incident to the police.

The following day, February 11, Sims viewed a lineup but was unable to make an identification. On February 12, Sims picked out the photographs of two men. He told the police that those two men "looked something like the people that was out there that day of the incident." The two men, whose pictures he had tentatively picked out, were Donald (Kojac) White and Dwight Anthony.

On February 13, Sims viewed a lineup which included White and Anthony. He did not recognize them as the two men involved in the shooting. The following day, Sims viewed another lineup and identified Andrew Wilson as the shooter and Jackie Wilson as the driver.

Dewayne Hardin was a passenger in the front seat of a car going northbound near the corner of 82nd and Morgan. The driver of the car was Andre Coulter. Hardin testified that he saw one man, who was smiling, get into the driver's side of a brown Chevrolet with damage to the front grille. As the brown Chevrolet drove past Hardin's car, he saw the passenger in the Chevrolet also smiling. He identified the defendant in court as the passenger. He also made an in-court identification of Jackie Wilson as the driver. After the brown Chevrolet left, Hardin saw two police officers, one lying in the street and the other lying at the curb. After determining the condition of the officers, Hardin used the squad car radio to call for help.

Hardin subsequently returned to his home in San Antonio, Texas. Officer Hill came to his home on February 23 and showed him a photograph of the lineup Sims had viewed on February 14. Hardin identified the defendant and Jackie Wilson from the lineup photos. Hardin had been convicted of attempted armed robbery in 1976 when he was "about 17."

Hardin denied that he was smoking marijuana and denied that he said the driver looked like a man called "Baby Hooks." He filed a lawsuit to recover the reward money, but he said he was "not pursuing with the case probably anymore."

Willa Washington was the owner of Willie's Beauty Shop located at 1440 West 115th Street in Chicago. During early February 1982, the defendant was staying at the beauty shop. The defendant was the only one who had keys to the shop other than Willa Washington and her assistant Joyce. Two days after the murders of Fahey and O'Brien, Washington saw the defendant at the beauty shop. He was carrying two bags at the time; and Washington asked him to take them back to the storage room.

After Donald White was arrested, he gave the police information which led them to look for the defendant at Willie's Beauty Shop. Detective Joseph Gorman and several other officers went to Willie's Beauty Shop on February 13, 1982, to arrest the defendant. The defendant was not there. Gorman went to the back room where he had heard the defendant had been sleeping. On top of a partition, wide enough for a person to hide on, Gorman found the service revolvers of O'Brien and Fahey and a sawed-off shotgun.

In the early morning of February 14, 1982, Police Captain Joseph McCarthy led a team of officers to an apartment on the west side of Chicago where he arrested the defendant. When asked if he had a gun, the defendant said that a gun was in a duffel bag on the floor. A loaded, chrome, snub-nosed Colt .38 revolver was found in the duffel bag. The defendant's finger prints were found on the revolver. The bullets in the revolver were "consistent with" police ammunition. Also recovered from the duffel bag were a white smock, plastic gloves, a man's surgical shirt and some "other bullets."

Dr. Robert Stein performed the autopsies on Fahey and O'Brien. Fahey had died of a gunshot wound to the back of the head fired at very close range. Four bullets had hit O'Brien. One bullet entered the left anterior chest wall, destroyed the left ventricle of the heart and lodged in the skin of the back. In response to a hypothetical question, Dr. Stein testified that the wounds to the officers were consistent with the testimony of Sims.

Firearms examiner Donald Smith testified that he performed tests to determine the origin of five bullets recovered: one from O'Brien's jacket, one from O'Brien's body at the hospital, two from O'Brien's body at the autopsy and one from Fahey's body. All the bullets recovered from the officers' bodies were fired from Fahey's service revolver. The bullet which fell from O'Brien's jacket could have been fired from Fahey's revolver, but the bullet was too mutilated for Smith to make a definite comparison.

The police also recovered a brown 1978 Chevrolet with a missing grille which belonged to the defendant's sister, Bobbie Rucker. Sims and Hardin identified pictures of the car as the car involved in the killing of the officers. The defendant's fingerprints were lifted from a number of places in his sister's car, including the driver's door window and the rear seat ashtray.

Derrick Martin testified that he knew the defendant by the name of "Gino"; and he knew Edgar Hope by the name of "Ace." On the afternoon of February 9, 1982, Martin was in the living room of the home of Donald "Kojac" White on the far south side of Chicago. The defendant told the people that were present that "he was looking for police uniforms and guns to break Edgar Hope out of jail." The defendant referred to Edgar Hope as "Ace." Martin knew that Hope was in custody for murder. ¹ He saw Danny Kennedy give the defendant several bullets. The defendant pulled out a .38 caliber, snub-nosed, "s...