Background
Chicago police stopped a vehicle in which Cristian Lopez was a passenger, but the vehicle drove away. Commander Bryan Spreyne followed it and saw an arm extend from the rear driver’s-side window and discard a firearm. After the vehicle stopped, two men fled from its rear doors. Spreyne testified that Lopez exited from the rear passenger side holding a dark semiautomatic firearm with a bluish-purple slide and an extended magazine.
Police arrested Lopez nearby and recovered a loaded blue-and-black “ghost gun” with an extended magazine from the wheel well of a parked van approximately one block from the arrest. No firearm was found on Lopez, no one saw him place the gun in the wheel well, and forensic testing did not identify his fingerprints on it. Following a bench trial, Lopez was convicted of armed habitual criminal and related firearm offenses based in part on two stipulated 2021 aggravated-unlawful-use-of-a-weapon convictions. The trial court merged the counts into the armed habitual criminal conviction and sentenced him to six years in prison.
The Court’s Holding
The appellate court affirmed, holding that the evidence was sufficient for a rational factfinder to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Lopez actually possessed a firearm. Spreyne testified that he clearly observed Lopez holding the weapon, contemporaneously radioed that one of the fleeing occupants had a gun, and identified Lopez in court. A firearm resembling Spreyne’s description was recovered nearby. Although Spreyne omitted the second firearm from his traffic-pursuit report, the trial court recognized that omission as somewhat impeaching but nevertheless found his testimony credible.
The court also rejected Lopez’s facial and as-applied Second Amendment challenges to Illinois’s armed habitual criminal statute. It explained that Illinois decisions have uniformly upheld the statute under the framework established in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, either because firearm possession by felons falls outside the Second Amendment’s protection or because historical tradition supports disarming felons. Even assuming the record was sufficiently developed to consider Lopez’s unpreserved as-applied claim, the court concluded that his assertion that the predicate felonies were nonviolent did not make the statute unconstitutional as applied to him.
Key Takeaways
- A single credible eyewitness’s testimony that a defendant held a firearm can establish actual possession beyond a reasonable doubt.
- The absence of fingerprints, recovery of the gun from another location, and omissions from a police report did not require reversal because those matters concerned credibility and evidentiary weight for the trial judge.
- The court upheld the armed habitual criminal statute against both facial and as-applied Second Amendment challenges, including the argument that Lopez’s predicate felonies were nonviolent.
Why It Matters
The order reinforces the substantial deference Illinois reviewing courts give to a trial judge’s credibility determinations in firearm-possession cases, even when physical evidence does not directly connect the defendant to the recovered weapon.
It also continues the First District’s rejection of post-Bruen challenges to Illinois’s armed habitual criminal statute. Because the order was issued under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23, however, it is nonprecedential except in the limited circumstances permitted by Rule 23(e)(1).