conducted a narcotics surveillance on the west side of the city during the course of that surveillance the officers of the defendant taking part in two narcotics transactions after the second transaction the officers broke their surveillance and arrested defendant along with two call offenders during the course of the arrests the police officers recovered two loaded handguns and an amount of cannabis in the open entryways surrounding defendant a month later and november of two thousand and eight defendant was formally charged by information with one count of possession of cannabis with intent to deliver in march of two thousand and nine before the cannabis charge went to trial but one hundred seventy six days after defendant's original charge i'm sorry after defendants raths the people appeared before the cook county grand jury and indicted defendant with five additional weapons charges including one count of arms a bitch of a criminal and four counts of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon the defendant filed a motion to dismiss the additional charges on compulsory join court's decision was illogical in that it found that possession of cannabis and possession of guns typically constituted different acts for purposes of compulsory jointer but that the situation presented here where there was simultaneous constructive possession was somehow different this characterization by the appellate court of the dual possessions in this case as a single act was problematic for two distinct reasons first it was inconsistent with this court's prior decisions in cases such as people vs gooden and people versus johnson where this court made clear that the question of whether joinder is mandated is resolved by examining whether distinct independent criminal acts exist act being interpreted very narrowly secondly it creates an artificial distinction between situations where a defendant is an actual physical possession of an item and situation such as the one presented here where the defendant places the items within his control but does not maintain them on his person and his boss in constructive possession a distinction which has never before existed as these possessions have always been treated equally for purposes of prosecution three three of the of the code the compulsory joinder statute states that if several offenses are known to the prosecution at the time of commencements they must be tried together if they are based on the same act but act is not defined by this action nor has it ever been explicitly defined by this court both of which have led to confusion on the parts of lower courts in applying the statute this court how as however has indicated that action be defined narrowly in johnson for instance this court reviewed a case in which the defendant was charged with the offenses of rape and burglary with both charges arising out of a single entry into the victim's home the defendant was tried on the rape charge and convicted and following the trial which took place which was a jury trial the parties stipulated that the evidence would be the same and the defendant was also convicted of the burglary afterwards the defendant appealed the burglary conviction arguing that it should have been tried along with the rape charge in making this argument the defendant relied on a broad interpretation of act specifically asking that act  e defined equally as same conduct or same transaction however this court declined the defendant's request for a broader interpretation finding that such a broad definition was not warranted and explaining that section three three of the compulsory rejoinder statute was not intended for situations where more than one offense arises from a series of closely related acts where the crimes are clearly distinct and have different elements of this language and johnson is significance of this case first because it supports a narrow interpretation of act as opposed to the broader interpretation which would include conduct or transaction and second because it indicates that the two factors that are key for the consideration of the question of whether one act exists or are there distinct criminal actions and do these actions require different while they are both possessory offenses that does not render them the same as the character and the quality of the items possessed are entirely different furthermore proof of guilt of each possessory offense requires a showing of different elements as it is the individual nature of the item has asked which renders the possession a criminal act gooden is also instructed in gooden the defendant was charged with home invasion and at a later date the people added charges of aggravated criminal sexual assault both sets of charges arose out of the same interrupted act on the single victim the defendant in that case filed a motion to dismiss the sexual assault charges claiming that they rose out of the same act as the home invasion and thus were subject to compulsory joinder this court explained that where multiple offenses arise from related acts even where there is a single criminal purpose or plan joinder is not required this court explain the independent over act that constitute different offenses are not required to be joined because they are not based on the same act this holding in good helps to demonstrate why the appellate court's decision here was wrong in reaching its decision the court did not rest on the obvious conclusive question our possession of guns and possession of cannabis distinct criminal acts constructive nature of the possession that can't i'm sorry that the constructive nature of the possession was significant and found that it was the nature of the possession itself that demanded constructive jointer this conclusion by the appellate court was incorrect and essential he created a distinction between constructive possession and physical possession and rewards the defendant for not physically possessing his contraband at the time of his arrest this court should reject this distinction since the location of the contraband should be of no significance as to the question of whether the criminal acts are distinct and overt the appellate court's other concern in this case rested on the simultaneous nature of the possessions and on this point the court relied on two cases people vs quickly and people versus manning arising out of a single act of driving under the influence by the defendant the felony charge was predicated on an injury which was suffered by a passenger in the car in holding that compulsory joinder applied this court's concern was that there was only one clear continuous criminal act committed by the defendant which was his operation of a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol this quote explained that for multiple acts to exist in quickly there had to be a creation of artificial breaks in the timeline and a finding that the first offense essentially stopped and the second offense began that is not the that is not the case here unlike quickly this court does not have to create artificial breaks in time for distinct acts to exist what occurred here were two simultaneous possessions of distinct items and each possession in and of itself was a distinct criminal offense with separate elements the act of possession of the handguns and the act of possession of the cannabis in an in and of themselves were each sufficient to support a separate and distinct criminal offense and the simultaneous nature of their occurrence should not dictate that should not dictate that jointer is mandated here this situation would be more similar to if the defendant in quigley was found with an amount of cannabis on his person when he was stopped for driving under the influence in that instance it would be clear that the defendant was simultaneously committing two separate offenses possession of cannabis and driving under the influence and it would be a logical in that instance to suggest that that defendant had committed only one criminal offense or that jordan or was mandated of those two offens the same should be true here and the possessory nature of the offenses should not make a difference the other case relied on by the appellate court was the case of people versus manning in that case the defendant was arrested  while in during the course of robbing a pharmacy and he was found to be in possession of two types of controlled substances the defendant was charged with possession of a controlled substance based on his possession of both items two counts of possession of a controlled substance the after the defendant appealed one of the counts of possession of a controlled substance was reversed by this court which was consistent with the law at the and it's now commonplace for a defendant to be charged and convicted of multiple counts of possession of a controlled substance based on his possession of different controlled substances such as heroin and cocaine so any reliance on people versus manning to support the proposition that simultaneous possession of different items cannot support different convictions or that they do not constitute separate acts has to be questioned in light of the change of the law and the fact that manning merely reflected the law at the time if there are no questions for those reasons and for those in the people's brief we would ask this court to reverse the decision of the appellate court and reinstate the dismiss charges thank you good morning to you justice your honour's counsel and may it please the court many with me and ingram and i represent doing hunter join hunter exercise control over a single area which contains two guns and cannabis contraband was found in the same location at the same time during the same search the state suggests that we know for a fact that mr hunter placed those items in the vestibule but in fact we don't we don't know who put the items in the vestibule all we know is that the wayne hunter after being seen allegedly engaging in narcotics sec in order narcotics sales was standing in the vestibule he was not doing anything different physically in relation to each item that was in that area his simultaneous possession at the same time and the same place is the same act this is like someone holding in a single container several items of stolen property each belonging to a different person or holding a gun loaded with bullets in each of these items a single act simultaneous possession violates fact the legislative history of section three three makes clear that the legislature foresaw that there would be occasions when multiple offenses with different elements different criminal offenses could and sometimes would arise out of the same act and the fact that there were two that there were two different criminal offenses two distinct criminal offenses that does not inherently mean that there are two different acts that's what th statue was designed to address the rare occasion when there is one act but distinct criminal offenses and there are several cases in in the baker and manning cases that opposing counsel was referring to there were different elements that the court found or different different criminal offenses with different elements that arose from what the court found was the same act think in one of them was the possession of  illegal transportation of alcohol i mean just because there are different elements and the different offenses the crucial question is whether they're the same the same act just because there are different offenses does not inherently mean that there are different acts  offense but it might be the same act i think what the crucial distinction is the time and place elements of it here in this case again doing hunter he's he's in the vestibule nothing's honest person everything  is his area he's standing there exerting this construct control in the constructive possession in the cases where this court and others have found different acts there's been a sequence of events even if it's  close in time or even if it's maybe in a different place but there's always been some sort of break in time and that's why and that comes from the legislative history which specifically said that section three three doesn't apply when there's a i think time is a consideration yes and i think it was in the davis corps in the year in the appellate court where in that case the defendant he robbed a person who's standing right here and then he robbed the next person immediately after and the court said he could have just robbed person one but he did it he chose to turn and rob the other person i think there is an element of a choice that the court has look to to say look he could have just commit in it he could have just stopped doing what he was doing but he did it he pinch owes to go on and commit another in the cases where the court has found different x there's always been some element of a sequence of events a series of events some some point where the defendant went from committing criminal act they were going on to committing some other act that was also a criminal offense and so committing murder and then going and hiding the bodies or a home invasion in the committing a sexual assault there's always been some kind of there's been a very clear series of acts and certainly when the court has found any sequence of events where it could reasonably be found to be a series then no court has hesitated to find that jointer was not required but we just don't have that in what we have here we don't have a single criminal statute i think you've been addressing that but then what about the williams cases well they talked about all turning of theories to the same facts and you know we don't have alternative theories to set of facts this is a simultaneous possession of multiple contra simultaneous construct of possessor and of different kinds of contraband all that mr hunter is asking for is that the statute be followed the statutes very simple where there are multiple offenses arising out of the same act they must be joined he's not arguing that he couldn't be couldn't keep couldn't they have be convicted of possessing these different items but the state has to follow the rules and have to charge and the victim later died and this is what the court stated the charges of involuntary involuntary manslaughter and aggravated battery were both curved from the defendant's single act of striking the victim in the face and as a consequence committed a single physical act punching the victim in that case here there's not really a physical act the act is his exerting control a constructive in the constructive possession sense of those items but the statute doesn't say same physical act the statute simply says same act so we don't it doesn't even go that far the statute doesn't say same criminal act it doesn't say same things go act it simply says same act so i think it encompasses both same physical acts as in the case but also same acts as in this case where the defendant is standing there and in the same time at the same place there are these these items within it's worth remembering too that the state had five months approximately to bring these charges but failed to do so even though it was aware of these offenses it's not unfair or a heavy burden on the state to ask them to bring charges of wh aware within the designated time period when the charges spring from the same act as they did here there's no need to rewrite the long compulsory jointer just because somewhere along the line somebody dropped the ball and didn't get these charges in time this court should apply section three three as it is written and affirm the holdings of the trial an appellate court's thank you very briefly honors in terms of the legislative history component of it the committee comments actually reflect just the opposite and they clearly state that section three three is not intended to cover the situation in which several offenses either repeated violations of the same statutory provision or violations of different provisions arise from a series of acts which are closely related with respect to the offender single purpose or plan  following that the comments provide specific examples one of which is but that's of articles belonging to the same or different persons in the same location and within a short period of time which i think speaks to the time and place elements of it while it's correct that in the majority of the cases which are cited in our brief there is some distinct break in time or the acts occur in a series there's no language in those cases and there's nothing which indicates that it was meant to suggest that where there is a lack of a break of time or there is not a clear series of events that there must be compulsory jointer that the charges must be brought together and there's nothing to suggest that where x occur simultaneously but are clearly distinct and have different elements that they cannot constitute separate acts for purposes of joint or and i think that ultimately that comes back to the point that i was making earlier that there is no clear definition of act either in this court's previous cases or in the compulsory joinder statute and that this case offers this court the opportunity to provide that clear definition and provide the guidance that the lower courts need for the proper application of compulsory joinder in future cases so you are well i would say that the committee comments would suggest that would be multiple acts that the elements would be different but i different items involved in that it specifically state the fact of articles being wrong interesting questions in the same