People v. Grayer

2025 IL App (4th) 241015-U
Appellate Court of Illinois·Decided September 3, 2025·No. 4-24-1015·Unpublished

Opinion

2025 IL App (4th) 241015-U

NOTICE NO. 4-24-1015 This Order was filed under FILED

IN THE APPELLATE COURT September 3, 2025 Supreme Court Rule 23 and is Carla Bender

not precedent except in the 4th District Appellate

limited circumstances allowed OF ILLINOIS Court, IL

under Rule 23(e)(1).

FOURTH DISTRICT

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, ) Appeal from the Plaintiff-Appellee, ) Circuit Court of v. ) Peoria County DeMARKOE GRAYER, ) No. 23CF923 Defendant-Appellant. )

) Honorable

) Paul P. Gilfillan, ) Judge Presiding.

JUSTICE CAVANAGH delivered the judgment of the court.

Justices Knecht and DeArmond concurred in the judgment.

ORDER

¶1 Held: (1) Because it is not ineffective assistance of counsel to refrain from making futile motions, defense counsel did not render ineffective assistance by refraining from moving for a directed verdict at the close of all the evidence—a motion that would have been properly denied.

(2) The evidence was constitutionally sufficient to support a finding that the element of knowledge, in the offense of unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon (720 ILCS 5/24-1.1(a) (West 2022)), was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

(3) The statute defining the offense of unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon (id.) is not facially unconstitutional under the second amendment (U.S. Const., amend. II), made applicable to the states through the fourteenth amendment (U.S.

Const., amend. XIV).

¶2 In the Peoria County circuit court, a jury found defendant, DeMarkoe Grayer, guilty of one count of unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon (720 ILCS 5/24-1.1(a) (West 2022)). The court sentenced him to imprisonment for five years and six months. He appeals on

three grounds.

¶3 First, defendant claims that defense counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to move for a directed verdict at the close of all the evidence. We conclude, however, that if defense counsel had made that motion, the correct ruling would have been a denial. It is not ineffective assistance to refrain from making unmeritorious motions.

¶4 Second, defendant contends that the evidence was constitutionally insufficient to prove his knowing possession of the pistol in question. When we view all the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, we conclude that a rational trier of fact could find, beyond a reasonable doubt, this element of knowledge.

¶5 Third, defendant claims that the statute defining the offense of unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon (id.) is facially unconstitutional under the second amendment (U.S. Const., amend. II). In numerous previous decisions, we have rejected that contention. We adhere to those previous decisions.

¶6 Therefore, we affirm the circuit court’s judgment.

¶7 I. BACKGROUND

¶8 A. The Discovery of the Pistol

¶9 Around 6 a.m. on November 18, 2023, a patrol officer with the Peoria Police Department, Bryce Taylor, went to Springdale Avenue in Peoria, Illinois, to investigate a reported hit-and-run in which a vehicle had sideswiped a parked vehicle before driving away. Within a block of the struck vehicle, Taylor saw what appeared to be the offending vehicle. It was parked on the side of the street, with its interior lights on and its engine running, and defendant was in the driver’s seat, asleep. After waking defendant up and having him exit the vehicle, Taylor searched the vehicle and found, under the driver’s seat, a pistol.

¶ 10 Before moving the pistol or touching it, Taylor stood approximately by the driver’s side mirror and, looking down at the driver’s seat through the open driver’s side window, took a photograph of the small portion of the pistol that was protruding from under the driver’s seat. This photograph is People’s exhibit No. 4.

¶ 11 B. The Prior Felony Conviction

¶ 12 The parties stipulated that defendant “was convicted of a felony offense on January 7th of 2013” and that he “remained a convicted felon on November 20th, 2023.”

¶ 13 C. The Lack of Fingerprints or DNA Evidence

¶ 14 Another Peoria police officer, Kenneth Lopez, a member of the crime scene unit, found no latent fingerprints on the pistol that were suitable for comparison. Although he also swabbed the pistol for DNA, he never sent the swabs to the Illinois State Police Forensic Science Laboratory in Morton, Illinois, for analysis. When asked why he had not done so, he explained, “At the time I did not have standards for the swabs to be compared to, and the State Police Crime Lab will not accept those touch DNA swabs due to the charges.” In fact, even with standards, he testified, “The state police will still not accept it *** because of the charge.”

¶ 15 D. Phone Calls From Jail

¶ 16 Brian Johnson worked for the Peoria County Sheriff’s Office and was the assistant superintendent of the jail. One of his responsibilities in that position was to oversee the jail’s telephone call system, which was administered by a company called ViaPath. Inmates using this system could communicate with people outside the jail by text messaging on tablets, video calls, or audio telephone calls. Except for conversations with attorneys, every telephone call an inmate made was recorded. Johnson could listen to these recorded telephone conversations and give password access to members of law enforcement so that they, too, could

listen to the recorded telephone conversations. Jail telephone calls could be looked up by the inmate’s name, the telephone number the inmate had dialed, or the time or date of the call.

¶ 17 Johnson had listened to three recorded telephone calls relating to this case: clips 1, 2, and 3, as defendant calls them. Johnson identified People’s exhibit No. 1 as a flash drive bearing his initials and containing clips 1, 2, and 3. The prosecutor was able to download jail telephone calls from “the website.” Johnson had “set [her] up with passwords for the tablets, the video visits, and the phone calls.” He had watched the prosecutor download clips 1, 2, and 3 from the website and onto the flash drive, and he had listened to the recordings as the prosecutor played them for him, including the part of each recording saying that “this is a phone call from the Peoria County Jail, which is a correctional facility, and it gives *** the person making the call the opportunity to say their name.” Johnson could not remember, however, the name of the person who had made these telephone calls. All he could do in his testimony was verify that the telephone calls on the flash drive, People’s exhibit No. 1, were the telephone calls he had witnessed the prosecutor look up on the website and play for him. He had “listened to the same phone call from the website that [he] did on the flash drive.” Specifically, he had first listened to one recording on the flash drive, and then he had “listened to the same phone call on the website, [went] down to the next one, and [he] compared those, third one, compared those.”

¶ 18 Taylor testified that he had had an opportunity to review the body camera video of the approximately 30-minute interaction he had with defendant at the scene on November 18, 2023, and that he also had had an opportunity to listen to the audio recordings of the telephone calls on the flash drive, People’s exhibit No. 1. The prosecutor asked Taylor, “Based upon you being with the defendant for approximately 30 minutes as well as relistening to your body worn camera, do you have an opinion as to the male voices on the jail phone calls?” Taylor answered

that he did have an opinion: “[I]t was the defendant.”

¶ 19 Taylor noted that, in clips 2 and 3 of People’s exhibit No. 1, defendant made calls to the telephone number of his girlfriend, Ashley Edwards, but that in clip 1, defendant made a call to a telephone number ending in 1304, which was a telephone number different from that of Edwards. In clip 1, a man and a woman had the following conversation (we use the transcription in defendant’s brief):

“Man: Was that joint in your name? That I got from you?

Woman: Yeah.

Man: Was it registered?

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People v. Grayer, 2025 IL App (4th) 241015-U (Ill. Ct. App. 2025).

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