Opinion ID: 3135205
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: 15/20/25-to-life Sentencing Enhancements

Text: The next stage in the development of our cross-comparison jurisprudence would come when this court attempted to use the analysis with offenses that had been amended by the 15/20/25-to-life sentencing enhancements. In People v. Walden , 199 Ill. 2d 392 (2002), we considered for the first time a challenge to one of these enhanced offenses. The defendant in Walden was charged with armed robbery while in possession of a firearm (720 ILCS 5/18–2(a)(2) (West 2000)). The penalty for that offense is Class X plus a 15-year enhancement. 720 ILCS 5/18–2(b) (West 2000). The defendant argued that this penalty violated the proportionate penalties clause because it was more severe than the Class X penalty for the more serious offense of armed violence predicated on aggravated robbery (720 ILCS 5/18–5(a), 33A–2(a) (West 2000)). To determine the statutory purpose of armed robbery with a firearm, this court looked at the codified statement of legislative intent supplied by the legislature. In this statement, the legislature explained that the purpose of the enhancements is to “deter the use of firearms in the commission of a felony offense.” 720 ILCS 5/33A–1(b)(1) (West 2000). This court noted that this purpose was shared by the armed violence statute. Walden , 199 Ill. 2d at 396. Accordingly, because this court concluded the offenses shared related statutory purposes, we moved on to step two of the cross-comparison analysis. This court agreed with the defendant that armed violence predicated on aggravated robbery was the more serious offense, and thus we held that the 15-year enhancement for armed robbery while in possession of a firearm was unenforceable. Walden , 199 Ill. 2d at 396-97. One month after Walden was filed, this court filed People v. Hill , 199 Ill. 2d 440 (2002). In Hill , the defendant was charged with home invasion while armed with a firearm (720 ILCS 5/12–11(a)(3) (West 2000)). He filed a motion to dismiss, claiming, inter alia , that section 12–11(a)(3) and its accompanying 15-year add-on sentence violated the proportionate penalties clause. On this issue, the trial court agreed with the defendant. The trial court concluded that the 21- to 45-year sentencing range for home invasion under section 12–11(a)(3), where the defendant need only threaten to use force, was unconstitutionally disproportionate to the 6- to 30-year sentencing range for home invasion under section 12–11(a)(1), where the defendant must use or threaten to use force, and home invasion under section 12–11(a)(2), where the defendant must intentionally cause injury. According to the trial court, “[t]he statute creates greater penalties for offenses which cause less harm.” See Hill , 199 Ill. 2d at 451. The State appealed directly to this court. An initial question was whether this court would allow a cross-comparison analysis of different offenses within the same statute. This court held that it would, noting that the State had not presented a single persuasive reason why comparing different offenses within the same statute was different than comparing offenses in different statutes. Hill , 199 Ill. 2d at 455. However, instead of determining statutory purpose from the statute as a whole, this court would have to determine the purpose of the separate statutory subparts. In doing so, this court discussed the contours of section 12–11 both before and after it was amended by Public Act 91–404. Hill , 199 Ill. 2d at 455-56. This court stated: “By comparing section 12–11’s current and previous forms, it becomes clear that the legislature, while not labeling it as such, essentially intended to break the offense of home invasion into two distinct categories: offenses committed without a firearm and offenses committed with a firearm. With respect to the former, we conclude that the purpose of subsections (a)(1) and (a)(2) is still to protect the safety of persons in their homes.  With respect to the latter, there is no question that subsection (a)(3) is still intended to protect people in their homes. Subsection (a)(3), however, has a second, more specific purpose. The legislature clearly added subsection (a)(3) in an effort to deter the use of firearms in conjunction with home invasions. Thus, subsection (a)(3) is intended to protect the safety of people in their homes from intruders carrying firearms and to deter such offenders by imposing a particularly severe penalty.” (Emphases added and in original.) Hill , 199 Ill. 2d at 457. Significantly, when considering one of the 15/20/25-to-life enhanced offenses, this court derived the purpose of the enhanced offense from the statutory language defining the offense and from the legislative purpose applicable to the enhancement. This was different from the Walden approach , in which this court looked solely to the codification of legislative purpose applicable to the enhancement. See Walden , 199 Ill. 2d at 396. Thus, the purpose of section 12–11(a)(3), as one of the 15/20/25-to-life enhanced offenses, was not merely to deter the use of firearms in the commission of felonies, it was to protect the safety of people in their homes from intruders carrying firearms. Hill , 199 Ill. 2d at 457. Because the purpose of section 12–11(a)(3) was different from the purpose of sections 12–11(a)(1) and (a)(2), this court decided that comparing those subsections was inappropriate. Hill , 199 Ill. 2d at 458-59. The State would later argue consistently that the Hill approach was the correct way to define the statutory purpose of all 15/20/25-to-life enhanced offenses, and that this court should not use this definition solely when doing a cross-comparison analysis within the same statute. We next considered a cross-comparison challenge to a 15/20/25-to-life enhanced offense in People v. Morgan , 203 Ill. 2d 470 (2003). In that case, the defendant was charged with attempted first degree murder. He moved to dismiss that charge, arguing that the 15/20/25-to-life enhancements for that offense violated the proportionate penalties clause. The trial court agreed with the defendant, finding that the enhanced sentences (Class X plus firearm enhancement) for attempted first degree murder shocked the moral sense of the community. Morgan , 203 Ill. 2d at 474. The State appealed, and this court affirmed. This court did not agree with the circuit court that the penalty was invalid under the first type of proportionate penalties challenge–whether the penalty is too serious for its particular offense. This court did find, nevertheless, that the penalty was invalid under the proportionate penalties clause when compared to the penalty for second degree murder (4 to 20 years). Two justices dissented, arguing that the first step of a cross-comparison analysis is determining whether the compared offenses share a related statutory purpose, and that the majority had not undertaken this analysis before concluding that second degree murder was more serious. Morgan , 203 Ill. 2d at 493-95 (Thomas, J., dissenting, joined by Kilbride, J.) Our cross-comparison approach to the 15/20/25-to-life enhanced offenses evolved further in Moss . In Moss , the defendants in 12 consolidated appeals were charged with various offenses, including attempted first degree murder, armed robbery, aggravated vehicular hijacking, and aggravated kidnapping. They each filed pretrial motions alleging that some of the 15/20/25-to-life provisions of Public Act 91–404 were unconstitutional. The trial courts hearing these motions agreed with the defendants and dismissed the charges against them. The courts compared the 15- and 20-year add-on sentences in Public Act 91–404 with the sentences for other offenses which require the possession or use of firearms, such as aggravated battery with a firearm (see 720 ILCS 5/12–4.2 (West 2000)). The trial courts concluded that the legislative purpose behind the 15/20/25-to-life sentencing provisions was the same as the legislative purpose behind aggravated battery with a firearm: deterring the use of firearms in the commission of felonies. The courts held that the 21- to 45-year sentencing range created by Public Act 91–404 for the charged felony offenses when committed with a firearm was unconstitutionally disproportionate to the 6- to 30-year sentencing range for the Class X felony of aggravated battery with a firearm. The State appealed directly to this court. This court reviewed the three proportionate penalties clause analyses, and focused on cross-comparison. Moss , 206 Ill. 2d at 522. This court observed that “[t]he issue regarding the first stage of a cross-comparison analysis has already been decided” in Walden , where this court looked at the purpose of the Public Act 91–404 amendments, rather than the purpose of the amended underlying offense. Moss , 206 Ill. 2d at 525. In making this statement , Moss impliedly reaffirmed that this was the approach we would take with the 15/20/25-to-life offenses generally, and that Hill ’s approach of combining the purpose of the underlying offense with the purpose of the enhancement was for use solely for cross-comparison challenges within the same statute. Continuing with step one of the cross-comparison analysis, Moss held that the 15/20/25-to-life enhanced offenses shared a legislative purpose with aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated discharge of a firearm. Moss , 206 Ill. 2d at 526. Thus, this court proceeded to step two of the cross-comparison analysis, which is determining which of the two offenses is more serious. When this court compared the offenses at issue–aggravated battery with a firearm, aggravated discharge of a firearm, and several felonies that had been enhanced by the 15/20/25-to-life firearm enhancements–it considered only the firearm elements of the enhanced offenses rather than the complete offenses. Moss , 206 Ill. 2d at 526-30. Thus, Moss extended Walden ’s approach of only looking at the purpose of the enhancement in step one to only considering the elements of the enhancement in step two. Accordingly, Moss concluded that the enhanced offenses at issue were less serious than aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated discharge of a firearm because they required merely that a person possess a firearm (15-year enhancement) or discharge a firearm (20-year enhancement), while aggravated battery with a firearm required a person to intentionally inflict injury with a firearm and aggravated discharge of a firearm required a person to discharge a firearm in the direction of another. Moss , 206 Ill. 2d at 530. However, when this court compared the penalties for the offenses to determine which was punished more harshly, it compared the penalties for the entire offenses; the court did not merely consider the enhancements. Moss concluded that the more serious offenses of aggravated discharge of a firearm and aggravated battery were punished less severely than the enhanced offenses, and thus all of the counts charging 15- and 20-year enhanced offenses had to be dismissed. Moss , 203 Ill. 2d at 530-32. The import of Moss was clear: if the enhancements in Moss were invalid, then every other 15- and 20-year enhancement was also invalid. For if the courts are going to compare only the firearm elements of the enhanced offenses, then the 15- and 20-year enhancements, no matter what the underlying offense, will always be less serious than intentionally inflicting injury with a firearm or discharging a firearm in the direction of another person. If every one of the 15- and 20-year enhancements is invalid, then the trial court in the present case was correct in concluding that the 15- and 20-year enhancements in the murder statute are invalid. Accordingly, the current state of this court’s cross-comparison proportionate penalties jurisprudence requires us to invalidate the 15- and 20-year enhancements in the murder statute, based on our conclusion that murder with a firearm is a less serious offense than aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated discharge of a firearm. This conclusion is obviously wrong.