People v. Williams

              Supreme Court Summaries
Opinions filed July 15, 2010
No. 107550 People v. Williams
Appellate citation: 385 Ill. App. 3d 359.
CHIEF JUSTICE FITZGERALD delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.
Justices Thomas, Kilbride, Garman, and Karmeier concurred in the judgment and opinion.
Justice Freeman specially concurred, with opinion.
Justice Burke concurred in part and dissented in part, with opinion.
In February of 2000, a 22-year-old woman who was on her way home from work on the south side of Chicago was attacked and sexually assaulted. In bench trial proceedings in the circuit court of Cook County, this defendant was convicted of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault.
The defendant was arrested on an unrelated matter later that same year, and a blood sample was drawn. Tests performed on it revealed a match with the analysis which had been made using a sexual assault evidence collection kit obtained earlier from the victim. She also identified the defendant in a lineup. Although finding that one of the sentences could not be consecutive, the appellate court affirmed.
On appeal, the defendant argued that expert testimony presented as to DNA analysis lacked sufficient foundation and also that his right to confront was denied by the testifying expert’s opinion testimony, which was based on the reports of lab technicians who did not testify. Both of these contentions were rejected by the appellate court and also by the supreme court in this decision.
The supreme court disagreed with the appellate court only as to sentencing. Unlike the appellate court, it held that the defendant’s term of 60 years for aggravated kidnapping could be consecutive to his two concurrent terms of natural life imprisonment for the two counts of