SPRINGFIELD - Supreme Court Justices ruled on June 6 that St. Clair County murder defendant Trenton Jefferson, facing a third trial on an indictment from 2011, can’t claim jurors at his second trial decided he didn’t fire the fatal shot.
They found Circuit Judge John O’Gara improperly barred the state from contradicting what he interpreted as a jury’s explicit finding that Jefferson didn’t shoot Marcus Gosa.
“Jefferson maintains the jury must have concluded he could not have acted as the principal in the murder,” Justice Joy Cunningham wrote.
“Under Illinois law a jury may return a general verdict of guilty even if there is no juror unanimity with regard to the means by which the murder was committed.”
She found some jurors might have believed Jefferson fired the shot while others might have believed Renaldo Brownlee fired it and Jefferson was guilty by accountability.
“It is also possible that the jurors were unable to decide which of the two fired the shot but knew beyond a reasonable doubt that either Jefferson or Brownlee did,” she wrote.
Marcus Gosa died in an alley in East St. Louis in 2010, at age 17.
Jurors at Jefferson’s first trial before former chief judge John Baricevic didn’t reach a verdict.
At the second trial jurors heard testimony of Rochelle Davis, mother of Jefferson’s child, who rode with a group but was dropped off before the crime.
They heard from Kiyanna Howard, who slept in the back seat as the crime occurred.
They heard from Reshon Farmer, Jefferson’s cellmate, who testified in exchange for reducing his possible prison time from 18 years to 28 months.
Baricevic instructed jurors that to find Jefferson guilty they had to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he or one for whom he was responsible performed acts that caused Gosa’s death.
He delivered an instruction regarding a sentence enhancement for personally discharging a firearm that caused death.
He said if they found him guilty they should go on to deliberate whether the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he personally discharged the firearm.
He read verdict forms indicating the state did or didn’t prove the allegation.
The jury returned a general verdict finding Jefferson guilty by accountability and finding the state failed to prove he discharged the firearm.
Baricevic imposed a sentence of 30 years.
Jefferson appealed and Fifth District appellate judges reversed the verdict in 2016.
They found Baricevic allowed prejudicial testimony from Davis three times.
They found it likely that the errors encouraged the jury to convict Jefferson on the basis of violent tendencies as opposed to evidence concerning the crime for which he was charged.
Upon remand to St. Clair County, Jefferson moved to preclude testimony and argument that would contradict the jury’s finding on lack of proof that he fired the shot.
Associate judge Randall Kelley granted the motion and the state appealed.
Fifth District judges remanded for further proceedings in 2019, stating the parties didn’t identify exactly what evidence Kelley excluded.
On remand, O’Gara took the case.
Jefferson argued the state couldn’t introduce any statements by Davis, Howard or Farmer that expressly or implicitly indicated Jefferson shot Gosa.
He didn’t argue that the state was barred from trying Jefferson for the murder but asserted he could only be tried under a theory of accountability.
O’Gara agreed and wrote, “The State told the jury to complete the verdict this way if defendant was guilty by accountability. They did just that.”
He found the state could still argue and present evidence that Jefferson was accountable.
He identified statements that were consistent with accountability and could be introduced so long as the state made no attempt to argue that they established principal liability.
State’s attorney James Gomric appealed and prevailed.
Fifth District judges found nothing in their previous decision barred the state from trying Jefferson under a principal liability theory.
They stated the purpose of the special interrogatory on personally discharging a firearm was to enable the state to obtain a sentence enhancement.
They found courts consistently refused to consider an answer to a special interrogatory beyond the purpose for which it was asked.
They concluded that because it applied to enhancement and not to the general verdict, it did not preclude trial under both principal and accountability theories.
Jefferson’s counsel Richard Whitney of Mount Vernon appealed to the Supreme Court, where all seven Justices ruled for the prosecution.
“Standing alone, the jury’s answer to the special interrogatory is not a finding of fact,” Cunningham wrote.
“Rather, it is simply a determination by the jury that the state failed to prove the sentencing enhancement beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Assume that Brownlee did not die but was prosecuted.
“Assume further that the jury returned general verdicts finding each defendant guilty of murder and in addition answered special interrogatories indicating that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that either defendant personally discharged the weapon that killed Gosa.
“In this example, there would be no inconsistency between the general verdicts and the answers to the special interrogatories.
“The jury might not have known beyond a reasonable doubt who fired the fatal shot but it would have known that one of the defendants did and since each defendant was accountable for the other they could each be found guilty of the murder.
“Now assume that on appeal the convictions were reversed for reasons unrelated to the answers to the special interrogatories.
“If the answers were given preclusive effect in a retrial, the state would be barred from arguing that either Jefferson or Brownlee shot the victim.
“The state could not prosecute the murder case against either defendant even though there would be no question that one or the other shot the victim.
“This is an absurd result and serves to underscore why the jury’s answer to the special interrogatory cannot be given the preclusive effect advanced by Jefferson here.”