Court Opinion

ID: 9539896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:11:26.586295+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:27.152876
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: I disagree neither with the majority’s view that the circuit court was bound to follow the mandate it received from this court nor with the cases the majority cites in support of that proposition. My difference is with regard to what our supervisory order instructed Judge Schreier to do. Our direction to the circuit court was to resentence the defendants “in accordance with law.” As I understand the law it affords to a trial judge, so long as he has jurisdiction and for 30 days after sentencing, the opportunity to correct any errors he concludes he has made in a criminal case. This correction can take the form of allowing a motion for a new trial or an acquittal. This was our holding in People v. Van Cleve (1982), 89 Ill. 2d 298, 304-05, and in People v. Heil (1978), 71 Ill. 2d 458, 461. In Van Cleve we said: “We consider that a trial judge who has denied a motion for a directed verdict at the close of the evidence can enter a judgment of acquittal following a guilty verdict, if the judge concludes that the refusal to direct a verdict was erroneous.” 89 Ill. 2d 298, 303-04. Thus, I believe that Judge Schreier properly had jurisdiction to order a new trial for the defendants after this court by its supervisory order vacated the sentence of probation. After that there was no final judgment in this case, for section 5 — 1—12 of the Unified Code of Corrections defines “judgment” as including “the sentence pronounced by the court.” (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. 38, par. 1005—1—12.) Because a final judgment had not been entered in the case Judge Schreier retained the inherent power to vacate any of his orders or factual findings at any time prior to (Van Cleve), or for 30 days after (Heil), a final judgment. The fact that the trial judge had already denied defendants’ motion for a new trial did not preclude considering a second motion or reconsidering the first motion for a new trial during this period. Had it been the intention of this court to issue a supervisory order which precluded the trial court from doing anything other than imposing a sentence of six years or more, I believe that we would have been ignoring the law and the inherent authority of the trial judge to enter such orders as he deems necessary to correct any errors he had made so long as he retains jurisdiction. I dispute the narrow interpretation that the court gives to the mandate we issued in this case. The majority construes that mandate as permitting only resentencing, but this interpretation ignores the express terms of the supervisory order which directed the circuit court judge to resentence the defendants “in accordance with law.” (Emphasis added.) In this case, “law,” as I construe our order, included the judge’s inherent power to reconsider whether the defendants should have a new trial when he later concluded that he did not give the defendants a fair trial. This is particularly significant here because of the posture in which the petition for the issuance of a writ of mandamus comes to us. As the majority points out, the supervisory order was required because Judge Schreier, in trying the case, had followed the appellate court opinion in People v. McCarty (1981), 93 Ill. App. 3d 898, which at the time of trial was the controlling law. However, after the trial, and while an appeal in this case was pending in this court, we reversed that appellate court decision. (People v. McCarty (1981), 86 Ill. 2d 247.) The only issue which we considered in entering the supervisory order was whether cocaine could properly be classified as a narcotic. We gave no attention to any objection the defendants might have raised to their conviction on any other ground in the event we held that cocaine was a narcotic. Thus, any errors which defendants may have found in the trial had not been reviewed by any court prior to Judge Schreier’s allowance of a new trial. I support Judge Schreier’s position not by reference to any of the evidence in this case, but rather on the authority a court has so long as it retains jurisdiction. I see no way in justice and in fairness to circumvent the trial judge’s own statement that he had not given the defendants a fair trial. This was an expression of conscience which I believe our judicial system must respect so long as it was made in good faith. There is no suggestion here that Judge Schreier was acting in any other manner. For these reasons, and particularly in view of the trial judge’s frank acknowledgment that he had not given the defendants a fair trial, I believe that the writ of mandamus should not issue and that this court should respect Judge Schreier’s order granting a new trial before another circuit court judge as a proper and just order and one entered “in accordance with law.”