Court Opinion

ID: 9531065
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:07:07.263432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:20.143788
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE WELCH, specially concurring: I subscribe to all of the majority opinion except for the statement, in "dicta, that “we know of no requirement that the prior approval of the State’s Attorney is required as a condition precedent to the filing of a complaint, and we would consider such approval surplusage.” (105 Ill. App. 3d 167, 170.) If, by this language, the majority intends to say that the charging instrument in this case was a complaint with a surplus signature by the assistant State’s Attorney rather than an improperly captioned information, then I must disagree. An information is defined as “a verified written statement signed by a State’s Attorney, and presented to a court, which charges the commission of an offense.” (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. 38, par. 102 — 12.) Certainly the document contained a written statement verified by Agent Trent, and the signature of the assistant State’s Attorney meets the requirement that the instrument be signed by a State’s Attorney. (People v. White (1961), 21 Ill. 2d 373, 172 N.E.2d 794; People v. Rehberger (1979), 73 Ill. App. 3d 964, 392 N.E.2d 395.) And, because the body of a charging pleading, not the caption, determines the validity of that document (People v. Sirinsky (1970), 47 Ill. 2d 183, 265 N.E.2d 505), the designation of the instrument as a “criminal complaint” cannot alone convert an otherwise valid information into a complaint. Nonetheless, the People argued in the trial court only that the charging instrument was a complaint and that a complaint is sufficient to commence a felony prosecution. They will not be heard to characterize this instrument as an information for the first time in this court, as the majority correctly holds.