Court Opinion

ID: 9716637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:46:39.354093+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:47.412685
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HEIPLE, dissenting: The majority holds that a defendant who pleads guilty in exchange for a cap on the length of his sentence may not challenge a sentence that is imposed within the range of that cap without first moving to withdraw his guilty plea. This holding is not only inconsistent with this court’s precedents, it is illogical as well. In People v. Evans, 174 Ill. 2d 320 (1996), we held that when a defendant agrees to plead guilty to certain charges in exchange for the State’s dismissing other charges and recommending to the trial court a specific sentence, the defendant may not seek reconsideration of that sentence once imposed by the trial court unless he also moves to withdraw his guilty plea. We reached this conclusion by reasoning that, under the circumstances presented in Evans, a defendant who challenges only his sentence violates the terms of his plea agreement with the State. Such a defendant seeks to obtain the benefits of his plea agreement (the dismissal of certain charges) without fulfilling his obligations under that agreement (the acceptance of the specific sentence specified in the agreement). Evans, 174 Ill. 2d at 327. We thus held that in order to challenge a sentence which the trial court has entered upon a specific recommendation made by the State as part of a plea agreement, a defendant must also move to withdraw his guilty plea and vacate the judgment so that, in the event the motion is granted, the parties are returned to the status quo. Evans, 174 Ill. 2d at 332. The majority contends that the reasoning employed by this court in Evans also applies, to cases in which the defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for the State’s dismissing certain charges and recommending to the trial court a cap on his sentence. The majority argues that, just as in Evans, allowing such a defendant to seek reconsideration of his sentence without also moving to withdraw his guilty plea unfairly binds the State to the terms of the plea agreement while excusing the defendant from compliance with those terms. 186 Ill. 2d at 74. The majority is incorrect. When the instant defendants agreed to plead guilty, they did so because the State agreed to recommend that they serve no more than a particular length of time in prison. Presumably, if the State and the defendants had been able to agree on an appropriate sentence, they would have decided to recommend that specific sentence to the trial court. In the absence of such agreement, neither party was entitled to expect the entry of any particular sentence within the recommended range. In other words, at the time a plea agreement involving a sentencing cap is accepted by the trial court, the appropriate sentence, as far as the two parties are concerned, has yet to be determined. A defendant thus does not violate any term of such an agreement by seeking reconsideration of the sentence imposed by the trial court. This situation is no different than that where a defendant enters an open or blind plea, thus exposing himself to the maximum statutory sentence. In such a case, the maximum sentence is the cap. In that situation, the defendant may challenge the length of his sentence without moving to withdraw his plea of guilty. People v. Wallace, 143 Ill. 2d 59 (1991). The reason this court required the defendants in Evans to move to withdraw their guilty pleas before challenging their sentences is that the specific sentences contained in the plea agreements there demonstrated that the parties had already settled on appropriate sentences. In a sentencing cap situation, however, there is no such consensus, and so a defendant does not renege on his plea agreement if he seeks to have the trial court or an appellate tribunal review the sentence initially imposed. The majority’s argument implies that in agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for a recommended sentencing cap, defendants were also agreeing not to challenge any sentence imposed below that cap. No such term was ever a part of the defendants’ bargains, and the majority is wrong to rewrite the agreements to include such a term. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.