Court Opinion

ID: 9744088
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:53:04.693781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:46.540672
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HEIPLE, dissenting: In what amounts to a pure power play, nothing else, the majority of this court has chosen to reduce the defendant’s sentence from 10 years to 7 years. This same majority initially reversed the defendant’s first sentence and remanded the cause for resentencing by a different judge. No error of any sort was alleged to have occurred at the second sentencing hearing. Nonetheless, the majority finds that the 10-year sentence is too severe. In arriving at what the majority believes is a correct figure of seven years, it arbitrarily chose eight voluntary-manslaughter cases from the Third Appellate District from 1985, determined that the median sentence imposed in those eight cases was six years and two months, and then reduced the defendant’s sentence in this case to seven years. It goes without saying that there is no scientific yardstick for determining beyond peradventure the exact amount of punishment which the State should impose for a crime. G. W. F. Hegel was correct when he opined that “reason cannot determine *** any principle whose application could decide whether justice requires for an offense (1) *** forty lashes or thirty-nine, or (2) a fine of five thalers or four.” G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (English translation 1971). Knowing this to be the case, the State legislature has imposed a range of sentence of 4 to 15 years for voluntary manslaughter. Within that range, the sentencing judge weighs various factors in determining what he believes to be the appropriate sentence. While sentences are subject to review for abuse of discretion, the law is clear that the reviewing court is not called upon to substitute its own judgment for that of the trial court. That is precisely what has occurred in this case. A majority of this court has substituted its own judgment for that of the trial court in a case where the trial court did not exceed its discretion. In this usurpation of the trial court function, the majority apparently believes the defendant to be a fine young lady with great future potential. They find she has been a model prisoner who is no longer mentally ill and who has job opportunities upon her release from custody. One also gathers from the majority’s analysis that the victim in this case may have deserved to be shot, cut into pieces and his body parts distributed about central Illinois. Reference is made to my initial dissent in this case for details of this grisly crime and the majority’s initial erroneous decision to remand this case for resentencing. See People v. McCumber (1985), 132 Ill. App. 3d 339, 345, 477 N.E.2d 525. Parenthetically, it should be noted that if the sentence reduction to seven years sticks, the defendant’s release from custody will be all but imminent. This is so because Illinois gives one day of credit for each day served plus some additional days for good conduct and the possibility of early release under supervised conditions. A 7-year sentence under such formula translates into something less than 3V2 years. This crime occurred approximately 3Vs years ago, and the defendant has been in custody for a goodly portion of that intervening time. I make no comment on the defendant’s rehabilitation or lack of it. I likewise make no comment on whether the initial sentence in this case should have been 10 years or something more or something less. Such comments would not be germane. The only issue here is whether the sentence imposed was within the statutory range and whether the trial judge exceeded his discretion. It is clear that, since the sentence was within the permissible range and since the trial judge did not exceed his discretion, the 10-year sentence imposed is not a fit subject for appellate tampering. What is really at issue here is the rule of law versus the rule of men. The majority decision in this case institutes a de novo sentencing procedure in the appellate court. In so doing, it subverts justice and does violence to the rule of law. Accordingly, I dissent.