He didn't kill anyone, so why is he locked up for Murder?

 Jose Rebollar-Vergara didn't kill anyone. He didn't even know a shooting was about to happen when he and two other young men met up unexpectedly with a teen  at a Round Lake Beach minimart in 2013.

But the Round Lake man still should do 38 years in prison as a convicted killer, a state appeals court ruled this week.

In a split decision featuring an unusually harsh dissent stating the decision "reeks of desperation," justices decided Rebollar-Vergara's first-degree murder conviction was appropriate under the state's accountability statute.

The statute essentially says that under the right circumstances, a person is legally responsible for another's actions.

Rebollar-Vergara, who will turn 31 on Saturday, was convicted for his role in the March 2013 shooting of Gabriel Gonzalez, 18, outside the One Stop Food & Liquor store. Authorities said Rebollar-Vergara and co-defendant Jose Garcia exchanged words with the Zion teen inside the store, believing he belonged to a rival gang because of the way he was wearing his hat.

Rebollar-Vergara told police he followed Gonzalez outside expecting a one-on-one fistfight. That's when Garcia pulled out a gun and opened fire, police said.

Writing for the majority, Justice Michael J. Burke said even if Rebollar-Vergara didn't intend to kill Gonzalez, he and Garcia were "acting with a common criminal design." 

 "The state presented ample evidence from which the jury could infer that defendant's trash talking and pursuing Gonzalez from the store was a cue to Garcia to escalate the confrontation," Burke wrote. "Garcia's act of shooting Gonzalez was in furtherance of the common design to harm Gonzalez."

'Counterfactual mischief'

That's what Justice Robert D. McLaren wrote of his colleagues' finding in a scathing 17 1/2-page dissent that references the Salem Witch Trials, Humpty Dumpty, the Magna Carta and the military aphorism "Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out."

McLaren's main beef was the majority's willingness to give prosecutors a pass for allowing false testimony before the grand jury that indicted Rebollar-Vergara. The jury was told Rebollar-Vergara confessed; he didn't.

"No longer a 'shield' against arbitrary prosecutions, the grand jury becomes the proverbial mushroom that is kept in the dark and fed false confessions," he wrote.

McLaren also scoffed at the idea Rebollar-Vergara and Garcia acted together to kill Gonzalez. The co-defendants, he noted, met up at the store that night by chance, and there was no evidence Rebollar-Vergara knew Garcia was armed.

"How could the intent to fight 'one on one,' while someone 'looked on,' be evidence of a common criminal design?" he asked.

What's next?

Rebollar-Vergara's next step could be asking the Illinois Supreme Court to give his case another look. Until then, he remains locked up at the Pontiac Correctional Center, with a potential parole date in March 2051.

Garcia, 24, and formerly of Mundelein, is serving a 62-year term at the Menard Correctional Center. He won't be eligible for parole until 2075.