Court Opinion

ID: 9709363
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:46:01.117948+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:48.138533
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE EGAN, specially concurring: The majority opinion cogently points out that McCormick’s treatise on evidence has recognized with criticism that the reported cases "abound” with instances of the State offering out-of-court statements to explain police procedure. The case cited by the majority which quoted McCormick, People v. Cameron, was decided in 1989. But the Illinois Appellate Court has condemned the use of the substance of conversations between police officers and witnesses at least 10 years before Cameron. (See People v. Johnson (1979), 68 Ill. App. 3d 836, 386 N.E.2d 642.) The Johnson court referred to People v. Coleman (1974), 17 Ill. App. 3d 421, 308 N.E.2d 364, in which the court approved the testimony of a police officer that he had a conversation with a witness and then proceeded to a hospital where the defendant was found and arrested. The court in Coleman pointed out that the officer did not testify to the substance of the conversation but merely to the fact that a conversation took place. Coleman was decided 21 years ago. I have previously expressed my views on the question in People v. Johnson (1990), 202 Ill. App. 3d 417, 564 N.E.2d 843 (new trial ordered because of the use of hearsay testimony of officer), and in People v. Rodriguez (1991), 227 Ill. App. 3d 397, 592 N.E.2d 18. In both cases it was pointed out that the ultimate authority in Illinois, the supreme court, said that it was proper for a police officer , to testify that after he spoke to the victim he went to look for the defendant. But the supreme court expressly held that it would have been error to permit the officer to testify to the contents of the conversation he had with the victim. People v. Gacho (1988), 122 Ill. 2d 221, 254-55, 522 N.E.2d 1146. In the more recent case of People v. Jones (1992), 153 Ill. 2d 155, 606 N.E.2d 1145, the supreme court adhered to Gacho and held that the substance of a conversation between a police officer and a third party was inadmissible if the conversation would involve "any matter relevant to the trial.” (153 Ill. 2d at 160.) In the case before us, there is no question that the substance of the conversation involved a matter material to the trial. In Johnson we said that regardless of what some appellate court opinions had said, the supreme court in Gacho had resolved any question on the matter. In Rodriguez we "express[ed] our hope that in the future the State would follow the directions of the supreme court in People v. Gacho and would not persist in skirting, and often violating, the rules of admissibility governing hearsay.” 227 Ill. App. 3d at 410. Alas, our words, the words of Cameron, Johnson, and especially Gacho and Jones, have fallen on deaf prosecution ears. I confess to a feeling of personal frustration when today we must reverse an otherwise proper conviction because the State insists on introducing this improper evidence. What makes my feeling of frustration even stronger is that the improper evidence was unnecessary. Jurors are not fools. The State could have established in the minds of the jurors the inference that the informant had given some information involving narcotics at 2971 Dearborn simply by following the procedure that was followed in Gacho. Unfortunately, the problem created by the introduction of this evidence persists; and I have the nagging suspicion that it persists because some prosecutors are ever confident that we will write off the error as harmless.