please the court assistant state's attorney nancy falls on behalf of the people of the state of illinois i will be addressing the jurisdictional issue in this case as well as the application of arthur h and  guardian cast playing on behalf of the minor leona w will be addressing the motion in limine a regarding the other sibling evidence as well as the propriety of the unfitness and terminations rulings we intend and splitting our time ten minutes apiece in the opening and five minutes apiece in rebuttal your honour's some cases are close as to whether or not there was error below this is not one of those cases despite the fact that the appellate court of the first district had two separate opportunities to decide and the merits the issue that was actually before  that would be the unfitness of biological father and the terminations of his parental rights as to leona the appellate court failed to do so even after this court issued a supervisory order specifically instructing the court to really view their decision in light of your decision in re arthur h the appellate court still failed to address the merits of the issue actually before it so that leaves us here in january of two thousand and eight leona turned eleven in ak told her she went into foster care straight from the hospital when she was eleven days old and still there has been no review of the order that would have freed her up for adoption instead years have been spent looking at an adjudication order that was entered and february twenty fifth of  ninety seven in order that the people and the public guardian agree was knacked appeal ball in the termination of parental rights appeal in addition the first district in another division later after this case was decided in the second district and the third district and the fourth district have all held that adjudication orders are after the dispositional order is entered and it must be appealed thirty days after the dispositional order that order in this case was entered on april twenty ninth of nine hundred ninety seven which means had biological father wanted to appeal the adjudication order that was the time to do so biological father in this case did not do so there was nothing in his notice of appeal and this case saying that he was appealing the adjudication order the adjudication transcript wasn't even in the record that was reviewed by the appellate court have transcript is only a part of this record because i made a motion to supplement the record with it in may of last year more over biological father stipulated two the facts that form the foundation for the adjudication so there is no question the biological father was not raising any issue as to the child who is over eleven years of age and given the procedural history of this case going back to the appellate court yet again may not be the answer in this case unless of course you rem very specific instructions and very specific instructions again delineating what your holdings and in way arthur n h and in a way madison h actually mean in the terms of this case which given the length of this case has been in the system in the age of leona may not be the most judicious use of the court's time and for leona this falls the public guardian says that since the three plus years since the court terminated the problem right after the best interest hearing things changed regarding sex abuse perhaps the alleged sex abuse minor so do you think that a whole new hearing is required here and i don't necessarily believe that there needs to be a best interest hearing there definitely needs to be a permanency hearing i don't believe in the information that i have which is not in the record because the record you have in front of you stops four years ago there has been no change in biological father's inability to parents leona so there would be no need to draw her to determine whether or not his right should be terminated but in any event some look at like situation as it's currently constituted needs to be done because yes four years have gone by since the termination it was brought before this court by the public guardian because there are cross apple and as far as the unfitness finding regarding subsection b and it was also brought before the court by the public defender the term an issue in this or if we agree with you that there is no intersection quite frankly when you issued your first supervisory order i thought that appellate court would look at in re arthur age and understand that when you were at adjudication you don't look at whether or not the parent is neglectful and they would realize we weren't supposed to look at that now we will decide what we're actually here to look at which is whether or not the unfit is finding was proper and whether or not his parental rights were terminated properly and they didn't do that which is one of the problems procedurally with this case i do believe that if you look at the record the record is replete with evidence that would let allow you to determine that the trial court's ruling that biological father was on fit was proper was not against the manifest right of the avodah aunts and that it was proper with the evidence before the trial court at that time to terminate biological father's parental rights so i guess what i'm saying is obviously you're the supreme court and if you want to look at this case you can look at this case either way a determination on the m determination given the unique situation and the unique procedure and what happened in this one case if that's what the court decides to do the people would have no problem with that but that's i mean this is certainly not a situation where we're asking this court to as a matter of course conduct direct appeals in these types of cases however given the fact that you've already given the a one opportunity with specific directions as to what they should do and they didn't do it and given that what we're alternately here for is the best interest of leona if the court wants to address it we would not have any problem with that the record is in front of you you you do have the authority to do anything that the trial court could have done and it's kind of hard to say over eleven years later let's do things as expeditiously as possible for leona when we've argued spent eleven years and she still doesn't have permanency but given what we have right now that could hearing because the adjudicatory order didn't contain the requisite findings of fact i think so did the transcript that you alluded to a few moments ago was that in the record before the stipulation was in the record so even looking at the fact that the that the order didn't contain the actual handwritten reason for the adjudication huge occasion stipulation was their biological trial court had no jurisdiction over not that i'm aware of all of the case law that i've looked at from all of the districts except your own which hasn't addressed it has said they could not and should not have looked at the adjudication i will now turn over the podium these children will be on the siblings and at the time of the terminations hearing they ranged in age from about five to ten years old the trial court did not abuse its discretion and granting the motion in limine a because the trial court indicated that the grounds of unfitness alleged in this particular petition were grounds am and b and they rate related only to leona and the owners ability to care and his ability to care for leona first in both two thousand and five and two thousand and court concluded that the evidence sought to be excluded and the motion in limine a consisted of the disposition of orders entered in this case that ruling by the appellate court is not supported by the evidence during the argument on the motion in women a page dispositional orders be taken notice of because mr h did not make an offer of proof he did not preserve the record for appeal and asked the ruling on a motion in limine nay should be affirmed as to the substance of the motion eliminate the appellate court does not explain how the fact that we're on the siblings were returned home to ask his relevant as his fitness to parent leona the court regard disregarded the first district appellate court particular child we all know is a unique child she has numerous special needs she has a seizure disorder she has asthma significant developmental delays which include mild mental siblings also have some of her special needs however the record only solomon the youngest boy had special needs that required some services but if you look at the november two thousand client service plan it indicates that solomon is almost all caught up most importantly however in the two thousand and two parental capacity assessment mr h told dr niland that none of the children in his care have any special needs so the fact that os r parent children without special needs is not relevant to whether he can parent leona with all her extreme special needs finally i ask this court if you find that the granting of the motion in limine a  any error in excluding evidence was harmless a set forth in my next argument there was ample evidence that oscar h was unfit and as such i asked the court if you find that the granting of a motion in limine was error that you find that it was harmless error as you have mentioned before the appellate court did not address the unfitness issue in either the two thousand and five or two thousand and six modified opinion we're asking under rule three sixty sixty five that you do address the unfitness issues for all the reasons alluded to by the state's attorney i'd like to set out just a brief timeline for you leon i was not quite seven years old when the end fitness ruling was made in two thousand and three she's now eleven she's been waiting in the reviewing courts for over four years for permanency the original appeal in this case was fully briefed in september of two thousand and four and fifteen months later the appellate court issued its first decision on december twenty third two thousand and five based and it what it did is it reversed the terminations order based on an alleged defect an adjudication order that was entered six years previously if this case is remanded back to the appellate court for review of the unfitness findings i fear that leon is permanency will be even further delayed with regard to ask his unfitness the trial court held that he was asked repeatedly to do two simple things and as the testimony of mary handers in a catholic charity showed he didn't do those two very important tasks he would only attended two out of one hundred medical appointments for leona so he wasn't able to learn from her doctors how to recognize when she was having a seizure and what to do if she had a seizure i'm asked who was also asked to attend her individual education program meetings or her i e peas she had those yearly from the ages of three to six he never attended one of those i eat now ask her age did totally on a school two or three times but he told the school the only reason he was there is because the court made him go ask her each denied the extent of me on a special needs and told workers she would have any special needs at all if she would just return home to him ask her a should not make reasonable efforts or reasonable progress and the trial question fitness training should be our task is going to be right is once they decided that that original adjudication order which it least no other appellate court has held that they had jurisdiction to decide once they hit that and said that was invalid they didn't decide anything else that's why i asked the state whether we would have to send this back if we agreed that there was no jurisdiction in ri mandated to the appellate court to does terman the terminations proceed but the unlikely that the legislature meant to include the formalistic technical requirements suggested by respond that they have been the writing and the difficulty we have here is that we have no way of knowing whether oral found by needs were made at the hearing and the appellant has the burden of presenting a sufficiently complete record and we didn't have a record and we'll have the rest of the week so we don't know whether there were oral pronouncements nomen if we get he followed the services like i said to be there because the council says that he didn't attend doctor's appointments he did go to school once and told the teachers there that he was only there because the court ordered him and he also stated that he didn't it would then thereafter be true in every terminations appeal that you could if you could if your will in your language examined all the parts of the equation and have been otherwise you never a case should be put in  position we had have to do over what had already been done if it's a mistake i believe in justice should always be open to reveal and of course that we are seeking justice here but the fact of the matter in this case and i want to sign fall to anybody but it is it is an example of how bizarre efforts can can be when we try to do justice and we don't do it in a timely fashion whatever else is true about this case the fact that this eleven year old child is disposition order is a final word so this jurisdiction issue is important to the court because our own rules say that it was a final order that was an appeal so my question to you is do you need jurisdiction issue oh no you don't think you should but but you can see that that's a possibility right wouldn't you still have the the would you still be in the position to question the terminations separate and apart from the jurisdictional absolutely and i think that's what the chief justice was asking absolutely because first of all we have then something has suggested that rather than than remain ending that to the appellate court this court should take the record as it if i can do so i can follow up in the last area i think that you might be going there anyway or maybe the issue on the terminations is the year co counsels part of the argument is that correct here's the question why don't why don't why isn't the evidence for question treated as a matter of weight rather than admissibility as far as the parenting of the other children  problem with the way that that was handled in this case is there was never a nexus as to he can parent the other children that don't have special needs the question is can he help will they at least have born with syphilis yes however none of them have an i q of fifty three none of them have a seizure disorder none of them have the delays that she has the emotional conditions that she has the mental health issues that she has that is something that throughout the course of this case has been quite troubling because there is this allusion that the other children are the same as leona and they simply are not and if  review of the record will establish that is that your position that the the evidence of witness as to the other four children is that there's no way probative as to leona absolutely because whether or not the biological father is an exceptional man and a good and loving man towards the two children he had with the biological mother before leona and the three more that he had with her after leona doesn't address how he would parent we own a in fact if anything it makes our case for terminations even stronger because what the evidence established is is that he thinks leona needs discipline he thinks that because she's in foster care and because she needs discipline that is why she is the way that she is and he there isn't even a quote in the record in the binding assessment  where he says that he would like to teach her a better way of doing things because she doesn't act the way the other children act so that is why the focus needs to be specifically on we own up because if he can parent these other children that's wonderful but that doesn't tell us whether or not he can parent leona and as far as the state's wanting to take leona away from him that is not the case and the record bears this out for a number of years there were agreed permanent borders where we were attempting to turn return we own a home the people would have been please if biological father would have stepped up to the plate as he did for his other children and learned how to take care of her it's quite troubling that she's eleven years old and she is either not at home with a father who can take care of her if she has an epileptic seizure and can understand that she has mental health issues or that she is in an adoptive home and she doesn't have either one of these things and if biological father had done what he was supposed to do we certainly wouldn't be here but part of the reason that we're here is biological father as well  quite come to the proper conclusion as to what it is we're looking at in these cases as far is the fact that the biological father was non custodial that doesn't absolve him of the fact that she was an abused neglected child this court has addressed that a number of the appellate courts have addressed it the issue is was she an abused neglected child and yes she was we have many cases where we don't know if the abuse neglect was because of the mother or because of the father but the child is still abused or neglected so that is a problem number one the appellate court was back quite getting that they didn't have it wasn't proper for them to go back to the adjudication hearing it was absolutely unnecessary and yes it was nat raised by counsel and we would argue that it couldn't have been raised by counsel because he stipulated in the first place but even then even if it had been  back from that going back from the beginning or just the last four years and any point but certainly for years in the terminations well in the in the beginning as far as when it was in the trial court the hope  was the biological father would step up to the plate and learn how to take care of leona and he was given an opportunity after opportunity and was told service plan after service plan that he needed to do that coupled with the fact that bring these children that are abused that are exposed to cocaine and syphilis into the world so biological father would say he wasn't having a relationship with her and she would continue to have children by him that he would ultimately take care of in the fact that he's taking care of those other children that is the right thing to be doing because he is stepping up to the plate for those children so that is what took the time in the trial courts and the biggest portion of time that was taken in the appellate court was the case was fully briefed and sitting in the first district appellate court for fifteen months before there was a decision the first time that was obviously before this court changed its rules and started expediting our cases so that things like this wouldn't happen and as far as counsel suggestion that we shouldn't have brought the appeal after the appellate court did what the appellate court did obviously we couldn't let an opinion stand that flies in the face of what this is court has done and what the juvenile court act is done in trying to get these children permanency because that is what we are after here is getting these children permanency if their families can be fixed let's get the children home if the families can't be fixed then it's our obligation to try and find them a better place to live somewhere where they can go forth and be children and be the best that they can be given their circumstances and based on everything that has gone on in this case the people we quest that your honour's review the unfitness substantively the the the evidence of the unfit this has not changed will not change and is there and should you decide to send it back for a best interest hearing or back for a permanency hearing to the trial court so that the trial court can have a full hearing on the record and find out everything that's been going on and in the last four years that would be to the most important thing is just let's get this moving in a way that we all want to can finally have some permanency and try and get on with her life thank you miss you don't