People v. Harvey

853 N.E.2d 25, 366 Ill. App. 3d 910, 304 Ill. Dec. 493, 2006 Ill. App. LEXIS 571
Appellate Court of Illinois·Decided July 5, 2006·No. 1-04-2188·Published·Cited by 37 cases

Opinion

JUSTICE ERICKSON

delivered the opinion of the court:

Defendant Jeral Harvey was convicted following a jury trial on one count of first degree murder on an accountability theory (720 ILCS 5/9 — 1(a)(1) (West 2002)). He was sentenced to 44 years in prison.

On appeal, defendant contends that his conviction should be reversed and the cause remanded because (1) the trial court improperly advised defendant of the consequences of rejecting an offer to plead guilty, (2) the trial court improperly permitted the jury to consider prior inconsistent statements from certain witnesses’ grand jury testimonies and written statements as substantive evidence pursuant to section 115 — 10.1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963 (the Code) (725 ILCS 5/115 — 10.1 (West 2002)) where the recanting witnesses acknowledged making most of the prior inconsistent statements, (3) the trial court improperly admitted certain hearsay testimonies regarding evidence of defendant’s alleged other crimes, (4) the cumulation of the alleged errors denied defendant a fair trial, and (5) the trial court improperly admonished defendant pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 605(a) (210 Ill. 2d R. 605(a)).

BACKGROUND

Defendant was indicted with codefendant Damien Venn 1 for the first degree murder of Rodney Dumas. During plea negotiations prior to trial, the State offered defendant a 14-year sentence in return for a plea of guilty to the reduced charge of conspiracy to commit murder and a 15-year concurrent sentence for an unrelated vehicular hijacking charge. After defendant rejected the offer, the State requested that the trial court admonish him about the consequences of rejecting the plea offer. The trial court admonished defendant and the matter proceeded to trial.

On July 6, 2001, defendant was at his sister’s house in Country Aire, a subdivision in Markham, Illinois, where an altercation ensued between defendant’s niece, Sabrina Aikens, and her boyfriend, Derrick Thomas. Sean Mitchell, Dumas’s brother, and Tracy Roberson, Thomas’s mother, testified that at approximately 7:45 p.m., Thomas was arguing with Aikens when defendant approached Thomas and began arguing with him. Roberson heard Thomas accuse defendant of breaking into his house on an earlier occasion. Mitchell stated that he tried to stop the argument by pulling Thomas away and taking him across the street. Thereafter, Venn came outside and began yelling that “he was tired of this [and he was] going to kill somebody.” Mitchell testified that when he, Dumas, and Thomas confronted Venn, Venn pointed a gun toward them and fired but missed. Thereafter, defendant and Venn ran away.

Tomika Stewart, Venn’s girlfriend, testified that on July 6, 2001, she went to Country Aire with defendant and Venn. While defendant and Venn went to meet their friends, she visited her mother. She later received a telephone call from defendant and went to pick him up. He told her about the altercation he had with Thomas, Mitchell, and Dumas. Shortly thereafter, she picked up Venn and he told her that Thomas, Mitchell, and Dumas were about to “jump” him so he pulled out a gun and fired in the air. On July 7, 2001, the next day, at approximately 10:30 p.m., Venn, defendant, defendant’s girlfriend, Natassaja Hall, and Stewart went to the house of Stewart’s mother in Country Aire. After Venn made a telephone call, he and defendant left. At that time, Stewart and Hall also left to get sandwiches. On their way back to Country Aire, Stewart received a telephone call from defendant. Defendant said that Dumas was dead and asked her to come pick him up on Birch Street. When he got into the car, he looked sweaty and out of breath. She stated that he never admitted to shooting Dumas. As she began driving away, she heard Venn call out her name. She stopped the car and he got in. She then dropped defendant and Venn off at a convenience store and went back to Country Aire to find out what had happened.

Stewart’s testimony at trial differed dramatically from the testimony she gave in front of the grand jury on July 24, 2001, and the written statement she gave to an assistant State’s Attorney on July 12, 2001. At trial, the State impeached her several times with her grand jury testimony and her written statement, which was substantially similar to her grand jury testimony. She acknowledged making the following statements in front of the grand jury. During the altercation on the night before the murder, Venn told her that he shot toward Dumas’s head. That same night, she heard defendant and Venn planning to “get them niggers,” referring to Thomas, Mitchell, and Dumas. When Stewart picked up defendant on the night of the murder, he admitted to her that he shot Dumas in the head. In addition, she admitted that she returned to the convenience store after the shooting and picked defendant and Venn up and took them to her house.

Stewart claimed that she made up the story contained in her grand jury testimony and written statement because she, while pregnant, was held in jail for over 72 hours and the detective threatened to take her children away. However, she did not remember which portions of her statements were made up. Over defendant’s objection, the trial court allowed the State to publish her grand jury testimony and her written statement in their entirety with certain third-party-admission redactions as substantive evidence pursuant to section 115 — 10.1 of the Code because she testified that she was unsure which portions of her statements were true and which portions were not.

Police officer Samuel Harris testified that on July 9, 2001, two days after Dumas’s murder, Mrs. Sales, the mother of Dumas’s girlfriend, told him that a voice-mail message possibly connected to the murder may have been inadvertently left on her home answering machine. Harris transcribed the message without making any alterations.

Stewart verified at trial that the message was a recording of a conversation she had with defendant in the car after the shooting. Apparently, defendant accidentally called someone on his cellular telephone while he was in the car, leaving a voice-mail message on that person’s answering machine. She reviewed the transcript at trial and acknowledged that the tape was an accurate recording of their conversation. After making a few corrections, the transcript of the message was published to the jury. During the recorded conversation, defendant said “[Dumas is] about to go to the hospital, if he ain’t dead.” Defendant also said that he found Dumas at “[Princeton’s] across [sic] cross the street from his crib, going out critical.”

Hall testified that on July 7, 2001, she went to the house of Stewart’s mother in Country Aire with Stewart, Venn, and defendant. After defendant and Venn left the house, Stewart and Hall went to get sandwiches. On their way back to Country Aire, defendant called Stewart. They then went to Birch Street to pick him up. Defendant stated that Dumas may be dead, but he did not say who shot him. She denied that defendant admitted to shooting Dumas. Instead, she testified that defendant said that “Folk shot Folks,” apparently referring to Venn. She also denied seeing defendant with a gun.

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People v. Harvey, 853 N.E.2d 25, 366 Ill. App. 3d 910, 304 Ill. Dec. 493, 2006 Ill. App. LEXIS 571 (Ill. Ct. App. 2006).

853 N.E.2d 25 (People v. Harvey) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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