discerning what the legislative intent was behind the enactment the statute at issue in this case is a citizen statute to provide status when a defendant over the age of twenty one is convicted of a class one or class two felony having previously been convicted of a class to or higher quality that defendant must be sentenced as a class sex offender the precise question before this court because when two young defendants become subject to age into eligibility at some point after the offense has been committed in this case should talk less was twenty years old when he when he committed the class to found me to which he ultimately pleaded guilty the sentencing range for that offense was read to seven years after time the offense was committed by the time mr douglas pleaded guilty however he had turned twenty one and at that point the attorneys and the court believe that he was eligible for class x is the only interpretation of this statue that is consistent with the legislative intent behind recidivism statutes behind really all statutes within the state of illinois the treat for treatment of youth and the treatment of youthful offenders fair notice and preventing the arbitrary treatment of its citizens is a core value that rests at the core of every statutory in most if not all statutory an accident that take that take place  in each of those statutes eligibility for the sentence and how it's made is triggered by the date of the offense despite the fact that the legislature uses of broad range of language to describe the eligibility in some of those  talks about when the defense when the offense is committed in others it talks about the date of conviction but because of the ex post facto laws as a necessary matter any sentence enhanced meant has to be in place at the time that the offense is committed so in every other sentence and handsome and in the state eligibility is measured by date by offense state not by some factor that occurs in the future in addition there is no other sentencing provision in the code that creates it sensually a floating eligibility date where at the time the offenses committed a certain a certain sentencing range applies but if the independent variable occurs after the time of the offense the defendant can be eligible for enhanced punishment these legislative values who score legislative values are compromised by reading this statute in the way that the first district has read it eligible eligibility for this enhanced mc can occur after the time the offense is committed reading the statute consistent with williams and permitting defendants to be calm eligible for defense and the finding of guilt a speedy trial implications the defendant does not have a right to demand to walk into a courtroom and be tried for one hundred twenty days if he is in custody or one hundred sixty days if he has posted  turn twenty one in sixty days i really haven't had time to go over this is much as i need to but i want to get you sentenced before you turn twenty one so that you know i have six million to tory yes regardless of proceedings in some cases proceedings could be further delayed by fitness issues d n a requirements the state's right to act which case to proceed on the the case in which the transit is watching the clock until he turns twenty one could be affected by that as well and importantly these delays are important for two reasons first that most if not all of them are totally outside the defendant's control but they are also outside the control of the state players the state in terms of its charging decision may be delayed by state actors that are completely unrelated to the decision of when to charge that event delays in police investigation and on availability of witnesses docketing delays while a trial where does control its own docket that control is not without limits the trial judge is still limited by the fact that here she has a certain amount of cases that need to be dealt with that some of those cases classic sentencing we are not sure can even make a pretty good prediction at this point because of all of these other variables and factors that are outside of the defendants and the parties control those rehabilitation concerns focus on the defendant that we are looking at at the time of the offense putting younger offenders slack putting them great in a statue is focus not rehabilitation it is also based on culpability it is this new juvenile justice youthful offender case law that permeates everything that we look at presumably this is something that the trial court consider hope ability in terms of but that can't be the only consideration it would not have been reasonable for the court to say because the defendant is older by the time of sentencing he's no longer that somehow that that that line of twenty one is this magical line that the defendant automatically becomes incapable of being rehabilitated and given all of the other problems in the case again the legislature might have been focused on rehabilitation but he could not have intended chip create all of this potential arbitrary application it's the necessity of looking at the statute as a whole and in the context of every other recidivism statute that exists in illinois and there is no indication in either williams or stokes about that particular part of the argument was addressed items that don't appear in appellate decisions don't necessarily mean that they were argue significant i think that there is no place in either of those opinions where the appellate court says all of these other recidivism statutes apply at the time of the offense we recognize that this is this interpretation creates an outlier interpretation and we numb the last to leave that based on legislative intent we should be measuring eligibility at the stage at which the defendant is found guilty and in fact the district really stretch the language a bit even to get to that particular interpretation of the statute convicted traditionally from a traditional standpoint means convicted the date on which you are found guilty either by a jury or your or you are or you plead guilty in some context that term means the date of sentencing and that's exactly what the williams court did with the girl reported in this case is it said even though convicted sounds like it means the date on which the defendant is found guilty we think that we need to i'm sorry even though that even though the term convicted is traditionally interpreted as encompassing the date of sentencing in her read the into culpability if you look at the language both i touched very briefly on the lack of linguistic precision in many recidivism statutes primarily because it's not  hasn't been necessary for the for the legislature to be that precise but if you parse the language of section five hundred three ca and you take out all of the intermediate clauses that  substitute the word commits for convicts what you what you get is when a defendant over the age of twenty one commits a class one or class two felony such defendant shall be sentenced as a class sex offender you cannot sentence someone merely commits an offense as a class sex offender there has to be a finding of guilt and so the legislature to use the word convicted in this first sentence is consistent with the fact that it's committed and then for the one in the statute and eligibility is measured in the timeline between when the first offense is committed and the second offense committed and the third offense is committed at that point the legislature very clearly says we're focusing on when the offense is committed which is again consistent with the legislature's treatment of measuring culpability of defendants that we measure the culture the defendant culpability we measure a defendant's eligibility for a particular sentence based on the offense that he committed not something that happened later in time especially when that that that variable is affected by things outside the defendant's control and outside of the control of the other players in the court room there is a rich history and illinois of courts rican strewing legislative language to mean something that it doesn't necessarily appear to mean the word shall is mandatory is defined in mandates as mandatory in webster's  rather routine basis or to construe the word shall to mean may even though shall doesn't mean may but in order to get to the intent of what the legislature what the legislative intent was behind it it's necessary for courts to do things like read the term shall format and indeed courts recently have inserted rather broad language into statutes to effect a legislative intent in the statute most recently is discussed in the defendant's brief in johnson the entire phrase same or similar class or greater felony was inserted into a recidivism statute to avoid absurd results in that particular case of the admission particular phrase would have resulted in in defendants with juvenile adjudications being punished more harshly than defendants with similar class adult convictions in garcia the supreme court did the same in that case  time should be told if the defendant skips town and willfully absent some cell but the supreme court looked at that statute and sad the legislature intended to not reward defendants for behavi and to not give them credit for times when they're in prison and they don't have the ability to control their to control their actions in the same way that they could when they were when they were free so in this instance in garcia we have two very discussed in terms of the ambiguity is that are in the statute and the legislative intent construing the statute in a way that the first district test chosen to do in a way that allows defendants to age into eligibility raises very serious constitutional concerns and it goes without saying that the legislature does not intend to enact unconstitutional statutes of the facts that reading this statute in the way that but that the first district has read it i'm not i don't know ex post facto prevents increasing punishment or time after the time the crime is committed there is no analogous case in terms of raises the sentence and under those circumstances absolutely ex post facto is prohibits that type of the statute in this case the effective date of the statute occurred long long before mr douglas committed this particular offense but because of this floating variable that's in the statute that can change your eligibility for classic sentencing depending on how long your trial is  d it does in fact increase the punishment for a defendant after the offense has been committed due process and equal protection all of the arguments that are contained in the defendant's brief focus on the notions notions of fundamental fairness and fair treatment these are core values that are that sit at rest at the core of the constitution and at length in terms of legislative enactments and those interests are not served by interpreting the statute in a way that allows a defendant to age in to very serious classic sentencing based on a variety of patterns had are outside both his control and often outside the control of the trial court and the people who are fourteen years and it seems part of their request to leave his resigned saying to no more than seven years of course then it seems what the defendant wants also keep the state from reinstating count one in particular count one because that was  essentially what we're stuck with here is analyzing the language itself and the courts have done that in the four cases in particular that would refer to a situation where if any commits a crime for the age of twenty one  to that law that was already always been in effect since then and there is no legislative change with the defendants talking about something other than a legislative change changeable opposition facts a fact that she aged into age twenty one for state of sen one you've got a three year statute of limitations the state's attorney could wait until their person turns twenty one to charge and convict corrector and essentially all the other claims about the burdens of docket that rebutting presumption of constitutionality and showing that somehow constitutes a violation of the constitution state or ny state where you could have to defend it the same age committing the same offense on the same date maybe in different counties maybe in the same county and the statues they show legislature treating this issue differently but that doesn't mean that this context that's what the legislature intended as well because the legislature wrote this words wrote a statute differently and they used different words for different reasons and that should be the presumption not that somehow they really meant something else but they didn't say it but what how else we figured out what the defense says well look at these all these other statutes but there's only one i think statute and the that this this court cannot rewrite statutes to be consistent with its own sense of public policy that must follow the statutes as written unless of course the intent of the legislature was otherwise clear so for those wants to as a rackety have the entire family withdrawn and start from square one the state has the ability to do that and so the defendant is perfectly satisfied with having a case sent back having guilty plea vague vacated and starting from square one starting from square one at a point where when the defendant is negotiating a plea agreements both his attorney and the state understand what the authorized by statute he was eligible for extended term but eligible for extended term does not mean that the trial court would have imposed an extended term it also the fact because the parties believed that the defendant had to be sentenced within the six to thirty year range there was no consideration of extended term there was no negotiation about whether it's time to term would or wouldn't apply and fundamentally the trial court was hampered in its ability to sentence the defendant prohibition against ex post facto laws cannot be avoided merely by adding to a law notice that it might be changed and this is exactly what section five five three see eight tells defendants  sentencing range is the normal range for a class one or a class to a friend's but it might change in the future ok for the questions we'll take the