Opinion ID: 2086451
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Claims Relating to the Trial Court's Understanding of the Burden of Mitigation Evidence

Text: Defendant assails some statements the trial court judge made while he sentenced the defendant. Specifically, the trial judge stated: I am looking for something good about you. I am having a difficult time because I have to find something in mitigation sufficient to preclude the death penalty. I have listened to your witnesses. I have looked at your background and I listened to you quite a while as you blamed everybody in the world but yourself. You were a criminal as a youth. You were put in institutions for your crimes. When you became an adult, again you just kept committing crimes. These extemporaneous remarks, suggests the defendant, indicate that the trial judge possessed a fundamental misconception of mitigating evidence and that the trial judge improperly placed the burden of persuasion on defendant to introduce evidence which would preclude the death penalty. We find that defendant has waived his meritless challenge to the trial judge's remarks. He did not object to them in the trial court; he did not object to them in his post-trial motion; he did not object to them in his opening brief; he did not object to them in his reply brief. Rather, he objected to them for the first time in a supplemental brief filed one year and seven months after his opening brief was filed with this court. This exemplifies the process of comb[ing] the record for every semblance of error which this court faulted in People v. Caballero (1984), 102 Ill.2d 23, 31-32, 79 Ill.Dec. 625, 464 N.E.2d 223. The objection having been waived, we will not consider defendant's argument under these circumstances.