JUDGING CRIMES

Last Wednesday the Illinois Appellate Court issued a "vacuously, smugly, and unconsciously foolish" opinion in a carjacking case.  According to the juries that heard their separate trials, Shakina Feazell and Dion Banks (who, supposedly, met in drug rehab, that romantic rendezvous) went to the Ford City Shopping Center on Chicago's southwest side.  (The mall got that funny name - "Ford City" isn't a municipality - because it was the site of a WW II defense plant.) 

Banks and Feazell didn't go to the mall to ride the merry-go-round.  They wanted to trade in the Toyota, which they'd already been driving for three weeks,  for some new wheels.  Three weeks, after all, is a long time to be riding around in a stolen vehicle.  It's just asking for trouble.

Meanwhile, Rose Newburn, a 40-year-old nurse, had just taken her two sons, 4-year-old Quincy and 5-year-old Tyrone, for haircuts, and decided to stop by the mall on the way home.  The boys were in the back seat.  Banks and Feazell pulled up next to her Dodge Intrepid.  Banks got out, pointed a gun at Ms. Newburn, and told her to get out of the car.  Ms. Newburn said no and Banks shot her through the window, opened the door and dragged her out, and left her in the parking lot to bleed to death.

Then Banks got in the car and drove off, with Feazell following in the Toyota.  A neighbor, who apparently heard the story from the boys' father, told a Sun-Times reporter what happened next:

 "He drove to the other side of the mall, and the kids were in shock, and (the youngsters) said something or the driver realized the boys were in the car," Patterson said. "Then he stopped the car and said, `Get out.' "

The carjacker left the boys standing in the mall lot, according to officer Edward Alonzo of police news affairs.

Or, in the no-big-deal words of the Appellate Court, "Before exiting the mall, Banks let Quincy and Tyrone Newburn out of the car.  The boys ran back to where their mother lay in the parking lot."  If you didn't know better, you might think Banks had been operating the carousel or something.   But Banks' jury took a dimmer view and sentenced him to death.   Unfortunately for him the sentence was handed down after Nobel Peace Prize candidate George Ryan had left office - indeed, after Ryan was already under indictment.

His accomplice, Shakina Feazell, got off easier at trial - and hit the jackpot on appeal.  (I don't mean to be disrespectful,  but doesn't "Shakina Feazell" sound like a character out of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?)

The Appellate Court ruled that Ms. Feazell was denied her constitutional right to a fair trial when the trial court allowed a police detective to describe his post-murder interview with her. 

Now, murder confessions are suppressed so routinely that the mere suppression doesn't come close to qualifying an appellate opinion for inclusion in the Fatuity Watch.  Confessions are commonly suppressed when a suspect isn't given Miranda warnings, asks for a lawyer, or is questioned after an illegal arrest.  Less commonly (these days), confessions are suppressed because the suspect was mistreated by police.

None of that occurred in People v. Feazell.  Ms. Feazell didn't even confess: she admitted planning to shoplift at the Ford City mall, it's true, but she wasn't charged with that, since she never got inside the mall doors.  She said she was totally surprised when her boyfriend pulled out the gun and shot Ms. Newburn, and afterwards she tried to get him arrested by attracting police attention.

No, the information that should have been concealed from Ms. Feazell's juries wasn't her answers to the detective's questions.  Rather, it was the questions themselves.

Incidentally, I don't recall ever previously reading another appellate opinion in which the facts are expressly viewed from the point of view of the convicted defendant, ignoring the prosecution's evidence.  I've read lots and lots of cases in which author views the facts that way, but in every case I can recall the author put on a show  of being objective.  This opinion comes right and out and says that the court is adopting the convicted murderer's version of the facts as its own ("For the purpose of simplicity, most of the testimony will be related in the context of the defendant's account of the events.").  I'm not sure if that's commendable honesty about the judges' bias, or merely a technique for concealing from the reader inconvenient facts that would make the court's decision seem even more ridiculous.

Because it's ridiculous to say that a jury is permitted to hear a suspect's answers to a detective's questions, but not the questions themselves.  The Washington Supreme Court, no stranger to fatuity itself (see post 282), explained why earlier this summer.   A person's responses to questions "would not make sense" without the questions.  It's not exactly counterintuitive. 

But in the realm of legal technicalities, where the ridiculous is normal, the argument can be made that the Constitution required the officer to describe his questions without actually letting the jury in on the secret of the precise words he used.  He should have paraphrased himself.  He should, in short, have lied to the jury.  That argument can be made, but only a court steeped in fatuity would buy it.

If only the jury had received a distorted idea of what Ms. Feazell meant by the words she spoke to the detective.  Then she would have had a fair trial.

UPDATE: The court withdrew the original opinion and came out with another one arriving at the same conclusion based on the same comical reasoning.  Presumably there's a difference between the two opinions, but the court itself is careful not to reveal what it might be, since to provide guidance to readers would be to admit that it was capable of producing a flawed opinion.