The Third District Appellate Court has upheld a Chicago woman’s 35-year prison sentence for driving two other people to a home in Streator where Maria De La Torre was shot to death in 2018. She was 33 years old and died in her driveway.
The appellate judges found that Judge H. Chris Ryan wasn’t unfair when he moved ahead to trial instead of granting 24-year old Ashanti Roberts another delay so she could find a private lawyer. She’d already had a private lawyer who backed out of the case, in part because he wasn’t being paid.
The appellate judges also rejected the claim that Public Defender Doug Kramarsic did a poor job by not trying to get her statements to police thrown out. Their opinion says Roberts hasn’t shown that throwing the statements out would have made a difference. The police obtained cell phone messages about the crime between Roberts and a co-defendant, and that co-defendant testified against her as part of a plea deal. Roberts gave police her cell phone pass code 12 minutes into questioning. The justices found that police were likely to obtain the messages anyway.
Roberts claimed she was forced to drive Tamil Adams, now 20 years old, and Hashim Waite, now age 28, from Chicago to Streator to rob someone at De La Torre’s house. Waite’s testimony and the cell phone messages between him and Roberts persuaded Judge Ryan otherwise. He found her guilty in 2019. Waite is serving a 30-year sentence and Adams is serving a 35-year sentence.