Court Opinion

ID: 9819597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:28:27.776461+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:31.295117
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE STEIGMANN, dissenting: Because I believe the trial court erred by denying defendant’s motion to dismiss the State’s supplemental petition to revoke probation on double-jeopardy grounds, I respectfully dissent. The majority finds Howell to be instructive, but I do not. Indeed, I doubt that the Fifth District Appellate Court in Howell even correctly stated the facts of the case before it on appeal. In Howell, the defendant was convicted of burglary and placed on two years’ probation. During his term of probation, the State filed a criminal charge of theft against him. The State later filed a petition to revoke his probation, alleging that the defendant had violated the terms of his probation by committing the same theft offense. The Howell court then wrote the following: “When defendant appeared ready for trial on the theft charge, the State moved to dismiss the complaint, and a nolle prosequi was entered over defendant’s objection. At the subsequent hearing on the petition to revoke probation, the court denied defendant’s motion to dismiss based on double[-]jeopardy grounds.” Howell, 46 Ill. App. 3d at 301, 360 N.E.2d at 1213. The foregoing description of events is hardly remarkable, and nothing about it suggests that (1) the State would have moved for dismissal with prejudice or (2) the trial court would have ordered the dismissal to be with prejudice. Yet, in the very next paragraph, the Howell court wrote the following: “The sole issue raised by defendant on this appeal is whether the State is barred by the doctrines of double jeopardy and collateral estoppel from proceeding on a petition to revoke probation, grounded on the commission of a criminal offense, after a criminal complaint based on the same facts and phrased in the same language has been dismissed with prejudice.” (Emphasis added.) Howell, 46 Ill. App. 3d at 301, 360 N.E.2d at 1213. The Howell court provided no explanation for its use of the phrase “with prejudice,” and I believe the court erred by including it. Based upon my 20 years of experience in central Illinois criminal courts involving thousands of cases, I do not recall a single instance in which either the State moved to dismiss a case with prejudice or the trial court granted the State’s motion to dismiss and added those words. Yet, if Howell is to be taken at face value, the phrase “with prejudice” appears to be an afterthought, given that the Fifth District did not even include that phrase in its initial description of trial court proceedings when the State moved to dismiss the complaint. All the Fifth District mentioned was that the State’s nolle prosequi was entered over defendant’s objection. Leaving aside the questionable authority Howell provides for the majority’s decision, the more recent supreme court decision in Creek, 94 Ill. 2d 526, 447 N.E.2d 330, requires this court to reverse the trial court’s judgment and conclude that the Clay County circuit court’s dismissal with prejudice on the same facts was equivalent to a final adjudication on the merits, thereby barring the State in Coles County from using those facts to revoke defendant’s probation. The majority seeks to avoid Creek’s application by questioning the legitimacy of the Clay County circuit court’s order. However, this court should not accept the State’s effort to use this appeal as a collateral attack upon the Clay County proceedings. If the State wished to challenge the legitimacy of the Clay County circuit court’s order dismissing with prejudice the case pending there, it should have done so in Clay County. The State cannot acquiesce (through the actions of the Clay County State’s Attorney) to a dismissal with prejudice in Clay County and then, in effect, try to mount a collateral attack upon that order when it serves to bar a petition to revoke probation in another county of this state.