People v. Fryer

618 N.E.2d 377, 247 Ill. App. 3d 1051, 187 Ill. Dec. 786, 1993 Ill. App. LEXIS 766
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedMay 28, 1993
Docket1-89-1774
StatusPublished
Cited by20 cases

This text of 618 N.E.2d 377 (People v. Fryer) 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. Fryer, 618 N.E.2d 377, 247 Ill. App. 3d 1051, 187 Ill. Dec. 786, 1993 Ill. App. LEXIS 766 (Ill. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

JUSTICE EGAN

delivered the opinion of the court:

A jury convicted the defendant, Matthew Fryer, of aggravated criminal sexual assault, criminal sexual assault and unlawful restraint. He was sentenced to imprisonment for nine years. He first maintains that he was not proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

In early 1983, the defendant moved in with the complaining witness, L.H., and her two young daughters. L.H. owned the house and she paid the bills. In 1985 L.H. and the defendant began to argue frequently. At the request of L.H. the defendant moved out sometime in 1985. On December 28, 1985, he called L.H. and asked permission to visit her. She told him that she had company and that she did not want him to come. The defendant came anyway, and he was shot by a man who was in the house with L.H.

L.H. and the defendant renewed their relationship sometime in 1986 when the defendant moved back into L.H.’s house. They planned to be married, and they obtained a marriage license. They never married, and their relationship deteriorated. In January 1988, L.H. asked the defendant to move out of her house; he refused. On January 17, they had an argument, and the defendant went to bed. While he was sleeping, L.H. drove to a police station and returned to her home with the police, who arrested the defendant. The defendant did not live with her after this incident. She admitted that she was angry with the defendant in January 1988 and was still angry with him in April 1988.

L.H. testified that on April 15, 1988, the defendant called her at approximately 1 a.m., told her he was in the hospital, and asked her to bring him money. She refused, and the defendant told her he was “tired of suffering all by [him]self” and that it was L.H.’s “turn to suffer.” At approximately 7 p.m., the defendant called L.H. and told her that he hoped to sell the tires from his car, which was in her garage. He asked if he could come to her home to remove the tires; he told her that his cousin Kenneth Fryer would accompany him because Kenneth wanted to retrieve his clothes, which were also stored in L.H.’s garage.

When the defendant and Kenneth arrived at L.H.’s house, L.H. left the house with her two daughters, walked to the garage behind her house, and unlocked the overhead door on the front of the garage. The defendant asked L.H. to move her car from the garage to give him better access to the tires on his car. After L.H. moved her car, the defendant told her that someone was going to call about the tires “within a couple of minutes.” L.H. and her daughters went back inside the house.

The defendant came to her back door and said that he needed L.H. to help him steer his car. She left the house alone; she was wearing a coat, a skirt that snapped up the front, a light-weight night shirt, a cardigan sweater and house slippers. She entered the garage and saw that the defendant was behind his car and Kenneth was going through some boxes near the door. The defendant showed her what appeared to be a hospital bill and told her that he was telling the truth when he called early in the morning and that he had “really needed her.”

L.H. testified that the defendant told her to get into the car to steer. She noticed that there were no keys in the ignition and that Kenneth closed the overhead garage door. The defendant told L.H., “Get out of the car, bitch.” L.H. left the car and asked the defendant what was wrong. He said: “I am going to hurt you. I am going to kill you *** but I am going to rape you first.”

L.H. had a mace canister attached to her key chain in her coat pocket. She put her hand in her pocket, hoping to spray both the defendant and Kenneth. Kenneth reached his hand into her pocket, pulled out the mace, and sprayed L.H. in the eye. She cried out because the mace hurt her eyes and nose, causing her nose to bleed, but the defendant told her, “Be quiet, I am going to hurt you.”

She testified that the defendant told L.H. to remove her coat, and she did. He reached for an old mattress that was leaning against the garage wall and placed the mattress on the floor. He told L.H. to remove her panties and to lie on the mattress. She pleaded with the defendant and Kenneth, and offered the defendant the paycheck she received that day if he would let her leave the garage. The defendant and Kenneth refused, and L.H. removed her panties and lay on the mattress. Kenneth left the garage to retrieve a towel for L.H.’s face. She explained that she was on her back on the mattress when the defendant unsnapped the buttons on the top of her skirt, unzipped his pants, and took out his penis. The defendant got on top of L.H. and “tried to force his penis into [L.H.’s] vagina because he didn’t have an erection.” He did this approximately five times; his penis made contact with her vagina. He did not ejaculate. He did not strike her in the garage.

At the defendant’s direction, L.H. performed fellatio on the defendant for two or three minutes, but again he did not ejaculate. When Kenneth returned with a towel, he opened the garage door “halfway.” L.H. jumped up and ran out of the garage and down the alley. At this time, she was wearing her sweater, night shirt and partially unsnapped skirt.

The defendant followed her down the alley. L.H. screamed, “Help” and “Fire.” She saw a man and woman in the alley and cried for them to help her. She did not know them and had not seen them in her neighborhood before. The defendant caught up with L.H., and she fell. Her skirt and sweater came off or were “grabbed off” by the defendant while she was running. As a consequence, when she fell she was wearing only the nightshirt. The defendant began beating her with his fist on the top of her head. L.H. again asked the couple in the alley to help her, and even grabbed the woman around the waist while the defendant tried to drag her away. The defendant told the couple that L.H. was his wife, that he had caught her in this state of undress “messing around,” and that he was “taking [L.H.] home to take care of [her].” The defendant dragged her back toward her house, and her “legs and *** butt [were] scarred up from the way he was trying to drag [her].”

L.H. saw a police officer, and the defendant dropped her. At that point, the sleeves had been tom off her nightshirt. This nightshirt was admitted into evidence, along with the rest of her clothes that had been recovered in the alley. The nightshirt was described as having only a loop of material at the neckline that held it on to L.H. She told an officer what had happened in the garage and specifically that she had been raped.

The police took L.H. to Holy Cross Hospital, where she was examined, treated and photographed. She had facial bruises and scratches and a swollen eye. The pictures of her legs at the hospital showed scratches she received that evening. She showed the jury a five-inch scar on her leg that came from one of these scratches. She testified that she was treated with iodine for the “sores” on her face and for scrapes, scratches, and broken skin on her buttocks.

Chicago police officer Kenneth Pisano and his partner, Officer Scott Rotkovich, were the first officers to arrive at L.H.’s house. Rotkovich ran into the alley on foot, and Pisano drove his squad car into the alley behind the house.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
618 N.E.2d 377, 247 Ill. App. 3d 1051, 187 Ill. Dec. 786, 1993 Ill. App. LEXIS 766, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-fryer-illappct-1993.