Court Opinion

ID: 9729967
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:54:57.41039+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:02.688045
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE KARMEIER, also dissenting: I join in Chief Justice Thomas’ well-reasoned dissent, and I write separately only to add a few observations of my own. In recent years, this court has, with increasing frequency, strictly applied principles of procedural default in cases that have come before us. Some might argue that the court has developed a framework that is too rigid, restricting our own ability to reach important issues, and consequently depriving bench and bar of much needed guidance. Advocates of that position might well point to this court’s supervisory authority as enabling our review of issues when and where we see fit. See In re Estate of Funk, 221 Ill. 2d 30, 96-98 (2006) (our supervisory authority is “unlimited in extent and hampered by no specific rules or means for its exercise” and thus allows the court to “look beyond considerations of [forfeiture] in order to maintain a sound and uniform body of precedent or where the interests of justice so require”). However, whether one is an adherent of one position or the other, it is disingenuous to mischaracterize an issue simply in order to reach it, and that is what I believe the majority opinion does here. In that respect, this is a watershed case and a pivotal precedent. Henceforth, this court will have much greater latitude to reach issues, because, as Chief Justice Thomas notes, “the argument does not have to be the same, it merely has to relate to the same subject.” Hereafter, a claim that the circuit court erred in sentencing arguably preserves every conceivable sentencing issue. This decision will also make life easier for litigants, as it will allow for much abbreviated postjudgment motions. In any event, it is clear that the trial judge in this case was not given the opportunity to address the specific error which defendant now alleges on appeal. Pursuant to one line of authority, the consequence of that omission is issue forfeiture. At the least, this disposition calls those precedents into question, and I foresee this case being cited frequently by those who would seek to avoid the consequences of procedural default. Beyond that, in my view, the majority improperly reweighs the evidence and substitutes its judgment for that of the trial court (see generally People v. Streit, 142 Ill. 2d 13, 19 (1991)), justifying that action under the guise that the circuit court considered an improper aggravating factor in sentencing. Apparently, the precedent we can take from that portion of the majority opinion is that a sentencing court may not consider a defendant’s willingness to violate an order of protection as evidence of future dangerousness. Disregard of court orders counts for nothing. As Chief Justice Thomas amply demonstrates, there was evidence of future dangerousness. The majority opinion muddles the difference between the evidence before the circuit court and the conclusions the court ultimately drew, and thus the majority improperly reweighs the evidence. Since the majority obviously believes that the defendant’s sentence was excessive, and that a six-year sentence of imprisonment is appropriate, the court should simply impose that sentence. By remanding this cause for resentencing before a different judge, the majority not only wastes judicial resources, but also administers an undeserved slap in the face of the sentencing judge, who did nothing to warrant such treatment. To the contrary, the record shows that the sentencing judge conscientiously weighed the appropriate aggravating and mitigating factors when he imposed the defendant’s 10-year sentence. Certainly, this case is nothing like People v. Dameron, 196 Ill. 2d 156 (2001), the case cited by the majority to support its action, and it is not surprising that the majority does not discuss Dameron. In Dameron, the sentencing judge repeatedly referenced evidence and sources not of record in handing down a sentence of death. Given the facts of this case, Dameron is no authority for the assignment of resentencing to a different judge. The court today effectively eviscerates its own procedural default jurisprudence, it ignores evidence of future dangerousness, and it sets an ill-advised precedent insofar as it requires sentencing before a different judge under these circumstances. Thus, I cannot subscribe to the majority opinion. CHIEF JUSTICE THOMAS and JUSTICE CARMAN join in this dissent.