Court Opinion

ID: 9861211
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:49:09.006016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:27:36.075139
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE DOYLE, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. I completely agree with the majority’s rejection of the State’s argument that, under Sleboda, the defense must request preservation of a controlled substance as a precondition to later objecting to its destruction. The materiality of the wrecked automobile in Sleboda, which was argued to be potentially exculpatory, was a matter of legitimate dispute. This court observed that when the defense has made a timely request for preservation of certain evidence, it will be relieved of the usual burden of demonstrating that the exculpatory value of the evidence was readily apparent at the time of its destruction. The prosecutor may not readily foresee that a particular object in his evidence locker holds exculpatory significance; therefore, the defense must have an opportunity to red flag the importance of the object by requesting its preservation. When the State proceeds to destroy the evidence in the face of such a request, it will not be heard to dispute its materiality. However, in controlled substances cases, these considerations become irrelevant. Unlike other species of prosecutions, which may involve a variety of items of evidentiary material of varying exculpatory value and relevance, the sine qua non in a controlled substances case is the alleged contraband itself. It has inherent potential for being conclusively exculpatory. Its character as such, however, can be ascertained only following testing. Drug evidence is, therefore, without further inquiry, presumptively material. There is no need to inquire whether such evidence possessed readily apparent exculpatory value when it was lost or destroyed, or whether a specific request for its preservation was made. I agree, therefore, that the Taylor guidelines for preservation of drug evidence remain valid. The State must be responsible, from the outset, for taking reasonable measures to preserve a testable sample of the seized substance to provide the defense an opportunity to perform its own analysis. Taylor, 54 Ill. App. 3d at 457-58. In the present case, it is undisputed that the substance was destroyed by officers of the State. Further, the materiality of the destroyed substance cannot be doubted. However, I must respectfully disagree with the trial court and our majority that the inquiry was thereby concluded and that the trial court’s only remaining function was to mechanically find a due process violation requiring dismissal of the indictment. In my opinion, a determination that materially exculpatory evidence (or evidence specifically earmarked for preservation) has been destroyed or lost by the State is only one aspect of the court’s due process evaluation. An equally essential, but often more troublesome, analysis must be made of the circumstances of the destruction or loss before it can be known what consequences are to attach. In the present case, the State alleges that the destruction was occasioned through its inadvertence or negligence, as opposed to any corrupt motive or bad faith. The Taylor and Dodsworth cases fail to resolve how the court’s ultimate ruling should be affected by a finding of inadvertence or negligence. Because these cases limit themselves to prescribing the consequence of unnecessary destructive testing of substances, the "necessary-unnecessary” formula adopted therein is not directly applicable to the present question of how to handle a finding of inadvertent destruction. After concluding that the State must sustain a heavy burden of showing that its deliberate destructive testing was "necessary,” the Dodsworth court commented, "By analogy to that statement, we also conclude that if the destructive testing may be excused on any grounds such as accident, other inadvertence or even negligence, a similar burden is placed upon the State to show that this was the reason for the destruction.” (Emphasis added.) (Dodsworth, 60 Ill. App. 3d at 210.) Dodsworth declined to rule on whether any of these reasons would constitute an acceptable excuse, noting that this issue was not before the court. In Tsombanidis, however, the Appellate Court, First District, directly addressed this crucial issue under facts comparable to the present case. In that case, a miscommunication between a prosecutor and a drug agent resulted in an inadvertent destruction of the substance. Following the guilty plea of a codefendant, the prosecutor directed the agent to routinely destroy the drug evidence in the codefendant’s file. The agent carried out the instructions; however, neither the prosecutor nor the agent was aware that the file also contained evidence against the defendant. Drawing upon a comparison of the reasoning and result in Youngblood with that of Taylor and its progeny, the Tsombanidis court concluded that although the agent was negligent, the record did not reflect that he acted in bad faith. Accordingly, the court applied the Youngblood standard of bad faith and determined that the defendant endured no violation of his due process rights. As illustrated in Tsombanidis, although the physical act of destroying the substance might be portrayed by some as, in that limited sense, "intentional,” it is the decision to destroy which, for our purposes, must be the focus of any motive analysis. If that decision was the product of inadvertence or failure to employ ordinary care, then the destruction should be viewed as negligent, rather than deliberate or intentional. Considering that Taylor and Dodsworth purport to address only the limited subject of whether consumptive testing is "necessary or unnecessary,” as opposed to the question of accidental or negligent destruction of evidence, I do not find those cases to conflict with the principles of Youngblood. In any event, I submit that Tsombanidis provides the correct approach in those cases in which it is claimed that evidence has been lost or destroyed by negligence or inadvertence. Unless it has been determined that the State’s actions were motivated by bad faith, there should be no finding of a denial of due process of law. The Youngblood bad-faith standard has been recently recognized by our supreme court in the context of evidence other than drugs. (See People v. Ward (1992), 154 Ill. 2d 272, 298-99 (no due process violation where State’s failure to preserve alleged brain matter could "at worst be described as negligent” and there was no evidence of bad faith).) Several other courts, citing Youngblood, have adopted this approach. (United States v. Barton (9th Cir. 1993), 995 F.2d 931; United States v. Boyd (3d Cir. 1992), 961 F.2d 434; Griffin v. Spratt (3d Cir. 1992), 969 F.2d 16; United States v. McKie (D.C. Cir. 1991), 951 F.2d 399, 403; United States v. Malbrough (8th Cir. 1990), 922 F.2d 458; Bailey v. United States Parole Comm’n (N.D. Ill. 1991), 769 F. Supp. 1025; United States v. Dougherty (W.D. Wis. 1989), 774 F. Supp. 1181, 1187; United States v. Lov-It Creamery, Inc. (E.D. Wis. 1989), 704 F. Supp. 1532,1548.) Parenthetically, although the issue may not be presented in this case, it would appear to be a reasonable assumption that conduct amounting to "gross negligence,” or a pattern of conscious indifference to the discovery rights of the defense could, in appropriate circumstances, be deemed to be tantamount to bad faith on the part of the State. It is evident to me from the trial court’s written order that the dismissal of the indictment was based solely upon the court’s narrow finding that the State destroyed the evidence in the face of a specific motion to preserve. I would, therefore, reverse and remand for a further hearing in which both parties may address the issue under what I believe to be the correct standard, i.e., whether the State’s destruction of the evidence was undertaken in bad faith or whether, as alleged, the destruction is excusable as having been occasioned through only negligence or inadvertence.