Opinion ID: 2003747
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Failure to Excuse Venireperson

Text: Having used all of its allotted peremptory challenges, the defense unsuccessfully sought to excuse for cause from the venire Delbert Folgate. Folgate, it is asserted, was predetermined to automatically vote for death and therefore should not have served as a juror. As the point was not set out in Keene's post-trial motion, the State urges that we ignore it. The State argues that plain error, which it says is the means to reach the issue's merits, is not satisfied by the circumstances of the case. Generally, the filing of a post-trial motion is necessary to preserve issues for appellate review. The requirement is a statutory one (see 725 ILCS 5/116-1 (West 1992)), different from the additional, initial need for a timely trial objection. (See People v. Enoch (1988), 122 Ill.2d 176, 187, 119 Ill. Dec. 265, 522 N.E.2d 1124.) Where a post-trial motion has been filed, the statutory requirement is interpreted to also mandate inclusion of the particular points sought to be raised on appeal. See, e.g., People v. Thomas (1984), 121 Ill.App.3d 883, 891, 77 Ill.Dec. 346, 460 N.E.2d 402. In capital cases, however, procedural defaults are excused for three categories of error: errors for which a timely trial objection was made and which could be asserted in a post-conviction petition (725 ILCS 5/122-1 (West 1992) (permitting only claims of substantial denial of    rights under the Constitution of the United States or of the State of Illinois)), challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, and plain errors. ( People v. Enoch (1988), 122 Ill.2d 176, 190, 119 Ill.Dec. 265, 522 N.E.2d 1124.) The categories are mutually exclusive. See generally M. Graham, Cleary & Graham's Handbook of Illinois Evidence § 103.10, at 33 (6th ed. 1994) (noting that both plain and reversible error exist only with regard to a substantial right but that, if that term had the same meaning for both types of error, the requirement of a timely trial objection would be rendered inconsequential). Plain error is not the reason for which the merits of Keene's argument may be considered. The purported errorparticipation of a juror who would vote indiscriminately to impose deathis assailable as a fourteenth-amendment-based due process claim. (See Morgan v. Illinois (1992), 504 U.S. 719, 728-29, 112 S.Ct. 2222, 2229-30, 119 L.Ed.2d 492, 502-03.) The Post-Conviction Hearing Act accommodates such a claim. Further, there had been a contemporaneous trial objection made to Folgate's jury participation. Keene's claim here therefore need not rise to the level of plain error to excuse the procedural bar. The contention, however, fails substantively. Folgate did initially say during voir dire that he was for the death penalty and would vote to impose it if Keene should be found guilty. But Folgate's answers to later questions show that he simply misunderstood, at first, the sentencing options. Folgate had thought that Keene was to be put to death if found guilty on one or all of the pending charges. Folgate was confused by questions indicating that he did not have to vote for death and said so. The trial judge then explained that the imposition of death was not automatic given a finding of guilt. He also explained the difference between a finding of death eligibility in the first stage of the sentencing considerations and the imposition of that penalty in the second stage. Folgate then indicated that he would not vote for death if he believed, in the end, that the ultimate penalty was inappropriate. The record does not, therefore, reveal what is essential to Keene's claim: Folgate's promise to vote for death regardless of mitigating circumstances. There was no error in the refusal to dismiss Folgate for cause.