Court Opinion

ID: 9861274
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:51:48.071682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:27:56.310416
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE O’MALLEY, specially concurring: While I believe that a remand for sentencing on defendant’s convictions for aggravated discharge of a firearm would be inappropriate as contrary to the one-act, one-crime rule (see People v. King, 66 Ill. 2d 551, 566 (1977)), I cannot accept the majority’s claim, based on a misreading of Dixon, that a remand for sentencing is inappropriate because it is not necessary to ensure that defendant is punished in this case. As I show below, if the majority’s interpretation of Dixon is correct, then Dixon, interestingly, no more supports its own result than the result the State seeks in this case. According to the majority, the supreme court in Dixon assumed jurisdiction over an unappealed, unsentenced conviction so that “a nonfinal, unsentenced conviction could be reinstated after a greater conviction was vacated.” 339 Ill. App. 3d at 905. The court in Dixon, the majority claims, remanded the cause for sentencing on defendant’s unsentenced, unappealed conviction only because defendant might otherwise go unpunished. 339 Ill. App. 3d at 905. This court has no power to remand the cause for sentencing on defendant’s unsentenced, unappealed convictions, the argument continues, because we have sustained defendant’s conviction and sentence for aggravated battery with a firearm and, hence, defendant is already punished and there is no need for further sentencing. Dixon, the majority emphasizes, must be “narrowly construed as not sanctioning the State to seek review of unappealed and unsentenced convictions when the greater offense has not been reversed and vacated.” 339 Ill. App. 3d at 906. The majority cites two appellate court cases that supposedly join Dixon in precluding “the imposition of a remand and resentencing without the vacation of the greater offense.” 339 Ill. App. 3d at 905. As I understand it, the rule that the majority claims to have derived from Dixon provides that a reviewing court has no authority to remand a cause for sentencing on an unsentenced, unappealed conviction when (1) the remand is not necessary to ensure that the defendant is punished; or (2) the offense underlying the unsentenced, unappealed conviction is a lesser included offense of a crime that underlies a conviction that the defendant does not challenge or that the court affirms on appeal. I agree in part with this. There is no disputing the proposition that a court cannot lawfully enter convictions on both an offense and its lesser included offense. See People v. Smith, 183 Ill. 2d 425, 431-32 (1998) (it is improper to enter convictions on both the greater offense and the lesser included offense). Certainly, this court could not remand this cause for sentencing on defendant’s convictions of the aggravated discharge of a firearm if those offenses are in fact lesser included offenses of aggravated battery with a firearm. However, the majority’s rationale for refusing to remand defendant’s aggravated discharge of a firearm convictions for sentencing is not that aggravated discharge of a firearm is a lesser included offense of aggravated battery with a firearm. The majority never analyzes that issue, which requires an examination of the allegations contained in the State’s charging instrument. See People v. Baldwin, 199 Ill. 2d 1, 7 (2002) (Illinois courts follow the “charging instrument” approach in determining lesser included offenses). Instead, the majority concludes that a remand for sentencing is not appropriate because we have affirmed defendant’s conviction and sentence for aggravated battery with a firearm and thus a remand is not necessary to ensure that defendant receives punishment in this case. This rationale has no basis in Dixon. In Dixon, the defendant was convicted of armed violence, aggravated battery, mob action, and disorderly conduct. The trial court ruled that the convictions of mob action and disorderly conduct merged into the convictions of armed violence and aggravated battery, and the court therefore sentenced the defendant on the latter two convictions alone. The defendant appealed only from the armed violence and aggravated battery convictions. The appellate court affirmed the aggravated battery conviction, reversed the armed violence conviction, and refused the State’s request that the mob action and disorderly conduct convictions be remanded for sentencing. People v. Dixon, 96 Ill. App. 3d 1201 (1981) (unpublished order under Supreme Court Rule 23). The defendant and the State both filed cross-appeals in the supreme court. After rejecting the defendant’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated at trial, the supreme court addressed the State’s argument that the appellate court erred in refusing to remand the mob action and disorderly conduct convictions for sentencing. Responding to the State, the defendant argued that the court had no jurisdiction over the convictions of mob action and disorderly conduct because he had not appealed them. Dixon, 91 Ill. 2d at 353. The court disagreed, citing Rule 615(b)(2), which provides: “Powers of the Reviewing Court. On appeal the reviewing court may: (2) set aside, affirm, or modify any or all of the proceedings subsequent to or dependent upon the judgment or order from which the appeal is taken!.]” 134 Ill. 2d R. 615(b)(2). The court reasoned that the appellate court should have remanded for sentencing on the two unappealed convictions because “the appeal was properly before the appellate court with regard to defendant’s convictions for armed violence and aggravated battery, and the failure to impose sentences upon the two unappealed convictions had been intimately related to and ‘dependent upon’ the appealed convictions within the meaning of Rule 615(b)(2).” Dixon, 91 Ill. 2d at 353. To interpret Rule 615(b)(2) otherwise, observed the court, “could have mischievous consequences.” Dixon, 91 Ill. 2d at 354. That is, had the appellate court vacated both the aggravated battery and armed violence convictions yet refused to remand for sentencing on the unappealed convictions, then “it is conceivable that the crimes could go unpunished.” Dixon, 91 Ill. 2d at 354. Accordingly, the supreme court vacated the disorderly conduct and armed violence convictions1 but remanded the cause with directions for the trial court to impose a sentence on the mob action conviction to run concurrently with the sentence on the aggravated battery conviction. Dixon, 91 Ill. 2d at 356. Dixon nowhere suggested that the power to remand a cause for sentencing on an unsentenced, unappealed conviction depends on whether the remand is necessary to insure that the defendant is punished. The text of Rule 615(b)(2) contains no such condition; it provides that a court has jurisdiction over any proceeding that is “dependent upon the judgment or order from which the appeal is taken.” 134 Ill. 2d R. 615(b)(2). Rule 615(b)(2) was the sole authority that the supreme court in Dixon relied on in refuting the defendant’s argument that the court had no power to remand the cause for sentencing on the defendant’s unsentenced, unappealed conviction. Having found that the rule authorized the remand, the court proceeded to note that, if a remand for sentencing on an unappealed, unsentenced conviction was never permissible, then in some instances a defendant whose remaining convictions were reversed on appeal might escape punishment. However, nowhere does Dixon suggest that remanding the cause for sentencing on an unsentenced, unappealed conviction is appropriate only if necessary to ensure that the defendant receives punishment in the case. The majority confuses a beneficial effect of Rule 615(b)(2) with the scope of the rule. Dixon’s outcome itself flatly defies the majority’s characterization. In Dixon, the supreme court remanded for sentencing on the defendant’s unsentenced, unappealed conviction of mob action despite having affirmed the defendant’s conviction of and sentence for aggravated battery. Thus, the court remanded the cause for sentencing on the defendant’s unsentenced, unappealed conviction even though the affirmance of the aggravated battery conviction ensured that the defendant would be punished even without a remand. Therefore, if the majority is correct that Dixon somewhere stated that a remand for sentencing on an unsentenced, unappealed conviction is appropriate only where the defendant would otherwise go unpunished, then Dixon flouted its own holding. The majority accuses the State of seeking to do mischief, but in reality it is not the State that has portrayed Dixon as a legal oddity. In Dixon’s wake this district has shown no qualms about remanding a cause for sentencing on an unsentenced, unappealed conviction even though other convictions and sentences in the case were affirmed; consequently, a remand for sentencing on the unappealed conviction was not necessary to ensure that the defendant was punished. See, e.g., People v. Baldwin, 256 Ill. App. 3d 536, 545 (1994); People v. Lucien, 109 Ill. App. 3d 412, 420-21 (1982). Neither of the two appellate court decisions cited by the majority supports its peculiar notion that Rule 615(b)(2) does not permit a reviewing court to remand for sentencing on an unsentenced, unappealed conviction unless necessary to ensure that the defendant is punished. In Cooper, the court refused to remand for sentencing on the unappealed conviction, having agreed with the trial court that the offense underlying it was a lesser included offense of the offense underlying the appealed conviction, which the appellate court affirmed. See Cooper, 283 Ill. App. 3d at 93. Cooper nowhere acknowledged the notion that a remand for sentencing on an unsentenced, unappealed conviction is appropriate only where necessary to ensure that the defendant is punished. Felton serves the majority no better. In Felton, the reason the appellate court refused the State’s request for a remand for sentencing is that the conviction for which the State sought a sentence had been vacated below, the trial court having determined that the underlying offense, aggravated battery, was a lesser included offense of armed violence, on which the defendant’s other conviction was based. The appellate court explained that a remand for sentencing on the aggravated battery offense was impossible because “there remain[ed] no incomplete judgment in the trial court upon which sentence [might] be entered.” Felton, 108 Ill. App. 3d at 769. The court distinguished Dixon, where “there remained in the trial court an incomplete, nonfinal judgment of conviction upon which to act.” Felton, 108 Ill. App. 3d at 769. Here, unlike in Felton, there remain unsentenced judgments of conviction upon which sentences may be entered. Therefore, the majority’s reliance on Felton is misplaced.   The State did not challenge the appellate court’s reversal of the armed violence conviction and conceded that the disorderly conduct conviction merged into the mob action conviction.