Court Opinion

ID: 9520502
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:41:22.896251+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:46:20.090068
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE McDADE, dissenting: I respectfully dissent from the opinion of the majority because I believe the finding that defendant’s actions constitute forgery unnecessarily and incorrectly stretches the statutory meaning of “intent to defraud.” Defendant does not dispute the fact that she wrote a letter on letterhead of the Peru Public School District and signed it with a name other than her own. She does dispute that this was done for the purpose of defrauding anyone. As noted by the majority, the statute defines “intent to defraud” as “an intention to cause another to assume, create, transfer, alter, or terminate any right, obligation or power with reference to any person or property.” 720 ILCS 5/17 — 3(b) (West 2000). In the specific situation before us, defendant signed the name of a teacher in the Peru Public School District to a letter that she, herself, had written to Judge Lanuti, apparently hoping to persuade him to sentence her more leniently following her conviction for shoplifting. I believe this would appropriately be characterized as an attempt to influence the exercise of his discretion. No right, obligation or power of Judge Lanuti was affected by virtue of defendant’s action. His right to sentence defendant upon her conviction, his obligation to sentence her justly and within the statutory range, and his power to exercise his discretion in determining where within the range her actual sentence should fall all remained intact despite the receipt of defendant’s letter. If we consider this particular exercise of the court’s discretion without the fact of an unauthorized signature, we can see that the judge was not “defrauded.” We know that judges in criminal cases receive letters — sometimes they are flooded with them — from people advancing arguments for greater or lesser leniency in sentencing a convicted defendant. Some of the letter writers are truthful, honestly portraying defendant as worthy of compassion or deserving of the maximum penalty. Others are perhaps devious or misleading, but hopeful of gaining either more favorable or more punitive treatment. And still others may be downright dishonest in putting forth their arguments. It is the function of the judge to review and weigh all of this input. The dishonest letters do not modify any right, obligation, or power of the judge any more than the truthful ones do. Similarly, Muzzarelli’s letter with the false signature did not modify, nor was it capable on its face of modifying, any right, obligation or power of Judge Lanuti. Indeed, the State reports at page 12 of its brief that, while the judge did not actually know the document was false prior to sentencing, he had concerns about it because it was on a school district letterhead and suggested a term limited to weekends. He testified that he considered the letter (as he was statutorily required to do) but did not know how much weight he gave it. The statute does not, in fact, require that he give it any weight or any credence — only that he read and assess it. It bears noting that the letter did not achieve its purpose. The defendant was not sentenced to weekends as the letter recommended but, rather, was required to serve two years in the Department of Corrections. I believe that this is the first time the forgery statute has been applied to this particular situation, and I think we must be cautious not to extend it beyond the legislature’s intended reach. Defendant has cited a plethora of cases, ranging from ancient to recent, finding the statute inapplicable because the interest affected was not a legal right in property or money. In arguing that the statute is applicable in the present circumstance, the State relied almost exclusively on the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision in People v. Hagan, 145 Ill. 2d 287, 583 N.E.2d 494 (1991), in which the court found that a letter misrepresenting defendant’s bank balances in two accounts was capable of defrauding. In my opinion, neither Hagan, People v. Gawlak, 276 Ill. App. 3d 286, 657 N.E.2d 1057 (1995), nor People v. Merchant, 5 Ill. App. 3d 636, 283 N.E.2d 724 (1972), each of which is discussed in the opinion, supports the result reached by the majority. In Hagan, the counterfeit letter was capable of altering or terminating the right of a property owner to enter into a lease agreement only with a person with adequate financial resources because the letter represented falsely that defendant was financially secure rather than relatively insolvent. In Gawlak, defendant falsified labels on barrels of hazardous waste at the disposal facility where he was employed. In so doing, he impeded the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s right and obligation to monitor and regulate hazardous waste by providing data that falsely indicated there was no problem with the waste levels. Similarly in Merchant, defendant’s forged prescription deprived the pharmacist of his right, power and obligation to issue regulated medication only when authorized by a doctor to do so. In each of these cases, a legal right has been either short-circuited or deprived. By contrast, a judge’s statutory right, power or obligation to consider evidence and information in mitigation or aggravation is not undermined by a false letter, even one with a counterfeit signature. My departure from the opinion of the majority is very narrow but, I think, very important. We open a Pandora’s box and render a statute vague and overly broad by judicial action when we artificially stretch its reach, and I think that is what this decision does. Moreover, there is no need to do so because there are other more appropriate legal vehicles for punishing this defendant’s misconduct. For these reasons, I believe the trial court should have granted the motion to dismiss, and having not done so, should have granted defendant’s motion for directed verdict. I would reverse defendant’s conviction for forgery and I, therefore, dissent.