Court Opinion

ID: 9713909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:26:10.79724+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:21.710283
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE COOK, specially concurring: The question has been asked in. other contexts whether offenses “arise from unrelated courses of conduct.” Coleman, 166 Ill. 2d at 257, 652 N.E.2d at 327. Perhaps the test that finds the most offenses to be related is the “independent motivation test.” Under that test, a prisoner who stole a motor vehicle on prison grounds as part of his plan of escape could not be sentenced to consecutive terms for the escape charge and the theft charge, because the theft was not independently motivated or otherwise separable from the conduct that constituted the offense of escape. People v. Whittington, 46 Ill. 2d 405, 409-10, 265 N.E.2d 679, 681-82 (1970); see also 730 ILCS 5/5 — 8— 4(a) (West 1996) (court shall not impose consecutive sentences for offenses that were committed as part of a single course of conduct during which there was no substantial change in the nature of the criminal objective). At the other end of the spectrum is the “multiple acts test,” which allows concurrent sentences whenever two offenses are supported by more than one physical act, unless one offense is a lesser included offense of the other. Under the multiple acts test a defendant can be sentenced to concurrent sentences where he enters a dwelling with the motivation to commit a rape. People v. King, 66 Ill. 2d 551, 559-60, 363 N.E.2d 838, 841 (1977). (Since 1988, however, consecutive sentences are mandatory where one of the offenses is aggravated criminal sexual assault. See 730 ILCS 5/5 — 8—4(a) (West 1996).) It is not clear whether the majority adopts the independent motivation test, the multiple acts test, or some third test. Strickland may have employed the independent motivation test. The majority states that possession of the weapon here was a separate offense from any battery committed with the weapon because (1) the elements of possession of a weapon do not require use of the weapon, and (2) defendant committed the offense of possession of a weapon before he committed the offense of battery with the weapon. 296 111. App. 3d at 188. It may be that the majority has chosen to apply the “abstract elements test” once used to determine whether one offense is a lesser included offense of another. See People v. Hamilton, 179 Ill. 2d 319, 327, 688 N.E.2d 1166, 1171 (1997). I conclude that the proper test to determine whether offenses arise from unrelated courses of conduct for purposes of extended-term sentencing is the least restrictive test, the multiple acts test. Here the court could have found that there were separate acts in that defendant possessed the weapon at a time separate from the time when he used the weapon to commit the battery. Possession of a weapon and battery with a weapon are not lesser included offenses of each other, at least where they occur at different times. Accordingly, the trial court properly sentenced defendant to an extended-term sentence for aggravated battery.