People v. Booker

Following a jury trial in Cook County, defendant Niquita Booker was convicted of attempted first degree murder of Kenneth Bledsoe and second degree murder of Kailah Bledsoe, receiving consecutive sentences of 26 and 10 years. She appealed, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence, a jury instruction on the mens rea for attempted murder, and her sentences.

The First District reversed the attempted murder conviction, holding that IPI Criminal No. 6.05X failed to correctly state the mens rea element under the Illinois Supreme Court's recent decision in People v. Guy, because the instruction's 'without lawful justification' language addresses the use of force rather than the defendant's intent. Although trial counsel did not object to the instruction, the court found counsel was not ineffective because Guy postdated the trial and counsel could not have anticipated the change in law. Nevertheless, the court held the instructional error satisfied the second prong of the plain error doctrine, since it affected an essential element of the offense, and the error was not harmless because the jury may have separately assessed defendant's subjective belief in the need for defensive force as to Kailah without applying the same analysis to Kenneth. The court remanded for a new trial on the attempted murder charge and declined to reach defendant's sufficiency and sentencing-classification arguments as moot.

The court affirmed the second degree murder conviction, finding sufficient evidence that defendant's belief in the need for deadly force against Kailah was objectively unreasonable, based on video evidence and her flight from the scene. It also affirmed the 10-year sentence, within the statutory range and presumed proper, finding no affirmative showing that mitigating factors were ignored.