People v. Clay

843 N.E.2d 885, 363 Ill. App. 3d 780, 300 Ill. Dec. 285, 2006 Ill. App. LEXIS 61
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedFebruary 7, 2006
Docket1-04-2394
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 843 N.E.2d 885 (People v. Clay) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Court of Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Clay, 843 N.E.2d 885, 363 Ill. App. 3d 780, 300 Ill. Dec. 285, 2006 Ill. App. LEXIS 61 (Ill. Ct. App. 2006).

Opinions

JUSTICE SOUTH

delivered the opinion of the court:

This appeal arises from defendant Janene Clay’s conviction of the first degree murder of her infant grandson. Defendant was tried in a bench trial and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The victim, Alonzo Chamberlain, was the son of defendant’s daughter, Ritrice Webb, and was three months old at the time of his death. In the spring of 2002, Webb and her three-year-old son, Davion Brown, moved into a one-bedroom apartment at 2910 South Dearborn in Chicago where defendant and her boyfriend, Elwerth Robertson, lived. Alonzo was born on June 24, 2002. The apartment contained only one bed and had no crib. After Alonzo’s birth, it was common for one or two of the adults to sleep with the children on the bed while the other adult slept on the couch. The State proceeded to trial on a theory that defendant drowned Alonzo while she was at home alone with the two children during the evening of September 19 through the early morning of September 20, 2002. The defense advanced a theory that neither the cause nor the manner of death could be definitively determined, and it could not be ruled out that Alonzo died of a natural cause such as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) or an accidental cause of death such as “overlaying.”1

At trial, Elwerth Robertson, a convicted felon, testified he had been living with defendant for approximately five years. In September 2002, he was living at 2910 South Dearborn with defendant, Webb, Davion and Alonzo. During the afternoon of September 19, 2002, he was at home with defendant and Alonzo. Webb was not at home at the time, so he watched Alonzo while Davion was at school. At some point during the afternoon, defendant went downstairs to see a friend, and when she returned he smelled alcohol on her breath and noticed she was talking strangely. The couple’s friend, Angie Denson, also stopped by for a visit that afternoon.

Robertson picked Davion up from school around 4:30 p.m. and made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich back at the apartment. Defendant became very irate because she was making dinner and thought Robertson had spoiled Davion’s appetite. An argument ensued, and defendant went into the bathroom and threw the food she had been cooking into the toilet. She dropped the iron skillet, which broke a hole in the toilet bowl, causing the water to flow out. Defendant later threw a couple of cans of food over the television at a fish tank. The tank’s glass broke, and water ran out onto the floor. Defendant was getting ready to put Davion in the other room when Robertson told her not to touch him because she had been drinking. Robertson did not want to fight with defendant any longer, so he and Denson left the apartment around 7 p.m. He spent the night at Sandy Bey’s home at 64th and South Drexel. Alonzo and Davion remained with defendant. Defendant called Robertson the following morning and said that Alonzo was not breathing. He told her to give the baby CPR, even though he did not think she knew how, and to call 911.

The parties stipulated to the admission of Angie Denson’s statement to authorities on September 22, 2002, which corroborated Robertson’s trial testimony concerning what transpired in the apartment in the late afternoon before they left for Sandy Bey’s home.

Bey testified that Robertson and Denson arrived at her home around 9 p.m. on September 19, 2002, and Robertson remained there overnight. She knows defendant through Robertson, and they are friends. On the morning of September 20, Bey found a telephone message from defendant which was left at approximately 5:08 a.m. Bey returned defendant’s call around 5:45 a.m. She asked defendant how the children were doing, and defendant said they were okay and mentioned she had just changed and fed the baby. Defendant also told Bey she thought she had broken the toilet and asked to speak to Robertson. Bey received another call from defendant around 7:45 a.m. when defendant told her Alonzo was not breathing and asked to speak to Robertson.

The parties stipulated to the admission of the grand jury testimony of the victim’s mother. Webb testified she arrived back at her mother’s apartment at approximately 10:30 p.m. on September 19, 2002. She noticed a puddle of water on the floor outside of the apartment and thought something was wrong with her baby because nobody answered the door and someone was always home. Webb walked to a side window and saw there were no lights on. She returned and kicked on the door, and after no one answered, she went downstairs to a friend’s apartment. Webb went back upstairs around 1 a.m. The puddle of water outside the door was deeper, and again no one answered the door.

Paramedics Joni King and Lena Colon responded to defendant’s 911 call at approximately 8 a.m. King testified she found defendant on a couch in the apartment next to an unresponsive infant. Defendant was pushing forcefully on the abdomen of the baby, who was lying faceup on the couch. King testified it appeared to her that defendant was “attempting to give us the impression — it looked like she started doing the abdominal thrust as we were walking in.” King determined Alonzo did not have a pulse and was not breathing. He was stiff, blue, cold and completely saturated, including his face and hair. She attempted to ventilate him with a bag valve mask, and there was a lot of resistance and some gurgling noise. King then picked Alonzo up and positioned him with his head in her hands and tilted the head at a downward angle. She administered five back blows to clear the airway, and copious amounts of water came out of his mouth, so much so that it splashed into her hands and onto her face. King asked defendant a few questions but had difficulty getting a coherent response from her. King testified defendant appeared to be intoxicated, her speech was slurred, and she was manifesting signs which King believed to be from heroin use.

Chicago police forensic investigator Victor Rivera testified he arrived at defendant’s apartment at approximately 9:30 a.m. on September 20, 2002. The floor was flooded with water, and the apartment was in a state of disarray. The toilet had a hole in it, and there was broken glass inside the tub. Rivera removed a blanket from the bed with a waffle weave pattern that seemed “sort of wet” and soiled. He also took pictures of the apartment, one of which shows a bucket containing dirty water that was found in the bathroom.

The parties stipulated to the admission of defendant’s oral statement to authorities on September 22, 2002, which was read into the record at trial. Defendant stated, in pertinent part, that she had used heroin on September 19 and had been drinking during the day and into the night. She got into an argument with Robertson about food after he picked Davion up from school, and she broke the fish tank by throwing cans around the apartment and broke the toilet by dropping a skillet. After Robertson and Denson left the apartment together on September 19, she consumed more alcohol after the children fell asleep on the bed. Davion woke her around 4 a.m. because he had to go to the bathroom, and she told him to go ahead. Defendant felt Alonzo, and he was wet all over, including his clothes and hair, but she went back to sleep before changing him. She went into the bathroom at some point and flushed the toilet and water went everywhere.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
843 N.E.2d 885, 363 Ill. App. 3d 780, 300 Ill. Dec. 285, 2006 Ill. App. LEXIS 61, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-clay-illappct-2006.