People v. Coleman

618 N.E.2d 466, 248 Ill. App. 3d 371, 187 Ill. Dec. 875, 1993 Ill. App. LEXIS 793
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedJune 4, 1993
DocketNo. 1 — 90—0971
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 618 N.E.2d 466 (People v. Coleman) 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. Coleman, 618 N.E.2d 466, 248 Ill. App. 3d 371, 187 Ill. Dec. 875, 1993 Ill. App. LEXIS 793 (Ill. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

JUSTICE EGAN

delivered the opinion of the court:

The defendant, Charles Coleman, was indicted with his brother, Maurice Coleman, and Willie Powell for the first degree murder and armed robbery of Willie Melson. The defendant waived a jury and was tried alone. Maurice Coleman testified for the State. The defendant was found guilty of first degree murder and armed robbery and sentenced to 60 years’ imprisonment for murder and 30 years for armed robbery, with the sentences to run concurrently. The defendant contends that procedural or evidentiary errors deprived him of a fair trial; he does not contend that the evidence was insufficient to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

In August 1988, the defendant was living with Elizabeth Stampley in her apartment on the second floor of a building at 4810 South Michigan in Chicago. Seventy-year-old Willie Melson lived in the third-floor apartment directly above Stampley’s apartment. On August 10, Melson’s decomposed body was found in his apartment. Under a sheet that covered the body, police officer Owens found a butcher knife and a fork sticking out of Melson’s chest. Owens also found $200 in Melson’s pants pocket and a bullet near Melson’s body. An autopsy disclosed a cooking fork in Melson’s right chest, a carving knife in his left chest, nine stab wounds in his chest; neck and back and a gunshot wound in the back of the head. The decomposed condition of the. body was consistent with a July 29, 1988, date of death, but the exact date of death could not be determined. A “deformed small caliber bullet” was recovered from the autopsy cart at the time of the autopsy; the bullet was beneath the head and upper neck of Melson.

Willie Powell was arrested on September 13, 1988, and implicated the defendant and his brother. Powell did not testify at the trial, but his statement to the police is involved in one of the errors assigned by the defendant and will be discussed in detail later.

The defendant was also arrested on September 13, 1988, but no statement was taken from him. On December 2, 1988, Maurice Coleman was arrested. He also gave a statement to the police that will be discussed later.

Brian Melson, the son of the deceased and a Chicago police officer, last saw his father in early June 1988. At that time he visited his father at his apartment, where he had lived alone for the past 10 years. During that period, Brian had visited his father at the apartment on 10 to 12 occasions; most of the time his father came over to Brian’s house.

Brian testified that his father had been employed by Walgreens for 18 years and was paid by check. His father had cashed his checks “for years” at a currency exchange on 47th Street and kept his cash either in his wallet or in a shoe at home. His father had recently received vacation checks totalling over $2,000. On his last visit to the apartment, Brian saw Budweiser beer, which his father bought by the case, and Scotch whiskey. His father kept a black .25 automatic handgun with a woodgrain finish handle at home; he sometimes carried it with him.

Maurice Coleman was living with his sister at 4803 South Wabash on July 29, 1988. He testified that at one o’clock that afternoon, the defendant, his brother, came through the back door of Maurice’s home. The defendant’s “left baby finger” was bleeding; he was carrying a 12-pack of Budweiser, had a bottle of Scotch in his hand and $60. The defendant also had a .25 automatic handgun with a brown handle. The defendant told Maurice that he had stuck someone up on 51st and Wentworth. After he and the defendant talked about going to the hospital, Maurice called an ambulance, but the defendant decided to go to the hospital with Maurice in his car. Maurice and the defendant first went to visit a friend named Rodney and purchased some heroin. After “snorting” the heroin, the defendant and Maurice were dropped off by Rodney at 59th and Ashland. The defendant asked Maurice what Maurice would say if the defendant told him that he killed someone. Maurice did not respond but just shrugged his shoulders.

They both went to Bernard Mitchell Hospital, but after waiting two hours they left without the defendant receiving any stitches. On the way back to their sister’s house, the defendant told Maurice that if there were not any police around they would go up to the “apartment.” In the apartment, which was Melson’s, Maurice saw the deceased on the floor with cooking utensils sticking, out of his chest. The defendant went into the deceased’s pockets and removed about $500. Maurice also reached into the deceased’s back pocket and took his wallet. They returned to their sister’s house, and Maurice gave his sister some rent money.

Maurice and the defendant then left their sister’s house to visit Edward Gibson; they purchased some drugs; spent the evening with Gibson; and returned to their sister’s house. On the following day, Maurice and the defendant went to 100th Street and sold the gun to a “friend.” They made contact with that “friend,” to whom they sold the gun, through the friend’s brother, whose name Maurice did not recall. He remembered that the brother lived at 64th and Eberhart.

Maurice was arrested on December 2, 1988, and charged with murder and armed robbery. On the same day, he made a statement to to an assistant State’s Attorney in which he implicated the defendant.

Edward Gibson testified that the Coleman brothers came to his place of work and the three of them went to 50th and Cottage Grove, where the defendant and Maurice purchased heroin. Gibson noted a bandage on the defendant’s right little finger. He saw that the defendant had either $1,100 or $1,300 in cash with him and a small caliber revolver with a brown handle. When Gibson asked the defendant about purchasing the gun, the defendant responded, “You don’t want this one. *** That was a throw-away piece.” The defendant told Gibson that he got the money from an old man he saw coming out of a currency exchange on 47th Street; he followed the man into an alley and strong-armed him and took his money. When Gibson asked about the cut on the defendant’s hand, the defendant said that he got it because the old man had a knife and the defendant had to wrestle it out of the old man’s hands.

Ethel Stampley testified that she had been living with the defendant in the second-floor apartment at 4810 South Michigan. The defendant told her that his bleeding finger resulted from cutting cheese with the butcher knife that Stampley had received as a gift. The defendant told her that he threw the knife away after he had cut himself. She identified the knife that had been taken from the deceased’s body as her missing butcher knife.

The defendant first contends that the State knowingly used perjured testimony by calling Maurice Coleman as a witness. The defendant filed a pretrial motion to bar the State from calling either Maurice Coleman or Willie Powell as witnesses. The motion alleged that the State had engaged in plea bargaining with Maurice Coleman and Powell and that Powell had accepted an offer of three years’ imprisonment in return for his testimony against the defendant. Attached to the motion were the statement given to Assistant State’s Attorney Tyrell by Maurice Coleman and the statement given by Powell to Assistant State’s Attorney William McGarr.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

People v. Shelton
Appellate Court of Illinois, 1997

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
618 N.E.2d 466, 248 Ill. App. 3d 371, 187 Ill. Dec. 875, 1993 Ill. App. LEXIS 793, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-coleman-illappct-1993.