Court Opinion

ID: 9717745
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:09:47.140169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:53.834296
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE ROMITI, dissenting: When defendant pled guilty he had been incorrectly informed by the trial court that the maximum sentence he would in fact receive would be 20 years, notwithstanding any prior statement by the court concerning a longer possible sentence. Yet defendant received a term of twenty years plus three years’ mandatory supervised release. The court had also failed to inform the defendant that by giving up his right to a trial he was waiving the right to be confronted by witnesses. Nor did the court, ever question defendant to determine whether coercion or other unstated promises were a factor in obtaining his plea. When this 17-year-old defendant, at the next available opportunity (his sentencing hearing), told the court he had not understood the proceedings and wished to withdraw his plea, the court summarily denied his request without any attempt to elicit the nature of defendant’s claimed misunderstanding. The court then failed to adequately instruct the defendant on the significance of the requirement that he file a written petition setting out the legal basis of his request to withdraw his plea. On this record I cannot agree that the defendant knowingly and voluntarily pled guilty and therefore I must respectfully dissent. I believe it important to stress that it is clear under Illinois Supreme Court cases construing Supreme Court Rule 402 (73 Ill. 2d R. 402), that the trial court is required to inform the defendant of any mandatory supervised release periods accompanying his jail sentences. People v. Wills (1975), 61 Ill. 2d 105, 330 N.E.2d 505, cert. denied (1975), 423 U.S. 999, 46 L. Ed. 2d 374, 96 S. Ct. 430, so held, expressly overruling People v. Krantz (1974), 58 Ill. 2d 187, 317 N.E.2d 559. People v. McCoy (1979), 74 Ill. 2d 398, 385 N.E.2d 696, applied the Wills holding although it found that despite that omission under the facts before it there was a voluntary and understanding plea. The majority seems to suggest that by citing to Krantz for the proposition that substantial rather than literal compliance with Rule 402 is all that is required, the court in McCoy somehow revived, sub silentio, the Krantz holding that Rule 402 does not by its literal terms require admonitions concerning mandatory supervised release periods. But, of course, the unchanging law since the adoption of Rule 402, as set out explicitly in that rule, has been that only substantial compliance was required. Thus citing to Krantz for that proposition did nothing to revive the separate holding of Krantz concerning the literal requirements of Rule 402. The United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, has held that this omission alone, under circumstances where the defendant thus receives a longer sentence (including the mandatory supervised release term) than he was told he would receive, constitutes a violation of that defendant’s constitutional right to due process. Thus, in United States ex rel. Baker v. Finkbeiner (7th Cir. 1977), 551 F.2d 180, the defendant had pled guilty to a charge of armed violence after the trial court indicated it would concur in the State’s recommendation of a one- to two-year sentence. The defendant was informed that the charge carried with it a one- to three-year possible jail term but was not told of an additional mandatory parole period of two years. Significantly, the reviewing court distinguished an earlier case in which a defendant was told he could receive up to 15 years’ imprisonment but was not told of a mandatory three-year parole term. (Bachner v. United States (7th Cir. 1975), 517 F.2d 589.) The Bachner court had found no basis for vacating the defendant’s guilty plea but the Baker court noted that in Bachner the trial judge had not indicated his concurrence in the plea negotiations. That judge had informed the defendant he could receive up to 15 years’ imprisonment and then had sentenced the defendant to a term (including the unstated parole period) less than that period, so that there was no actual prejudice to the defendant. In Baker, which was an appeal from the denial of a habeas corpus petition, the court found that even under the stricter standard applicable to such a collateral attack there had been a due process violation because the two-year mandatory parole period which defendant received without being informed of it constituted a substantial addition to the one- to two-year prison term he was told he would receive. Subsequently the court in United States ex rel. Ferris v. Finkbeiner (7th Cir. 1977), 551 F.2d 185, also found such a due process violation where a defendant had pled guilty in exchange for a negotiated term of five to 10 years in prison but was incorrectly told by the trial court that the mandatory five-year parole period would not apply if he served the full 10-year term. See United States ex rel. Williams v. Morris (7th Cir. 1980), 633 F.2d 71, vacated as moot sub nom. Lane v. Williams (1982),_U.S. _, 71 L. Ed. 2d 508, 102 S. Ct. 1322. In People v. McCoy (1979), 74 Ill. 2d 398, 385 N.E.2d 696, the Illinois Supreme Court distinguished Baker and Ferris on precisely the grounds that make those cases on point here. The McCoy court noted that the defendant had only been promised a recommendation by the State of a one- to three-year sentence. He had been warned of the possibility of receiving 20 years. In fact that defendant received one to three years. Thus, even including the mandatory parole period of which he was not advised, the defendant received a lesser sentence than that which he was informed he might receive. Here as I have noted the defendant was affirmatively told by the court that he would receive a maximum of 20 years but in fact received an additional three years’ supervised release. For that reason the decisions in Baker and Ferris are directly applicable. It is also noteworthy that the McCoy decision concerned a petition for post-conviction relief so that the defendant there was held to the high burden of establishing a substantial denial of his constitutional rights. We are, of course, reviewing a direct appeal. I would therefore hold that under the reasoning of Baker and Ferris the defendant’s due process rights were violated when he was not told of the mandatory supervised release period he would receive in addition to the stated term of 20 years in return for his plea of guilty. The majority correctly notes that these cases have not been followed by this court in the past. But those Elinois appellate court cases were either decided on the basis of the pre-Wills law that Rule 402 did not even require this admonishment (People v. McCollum (1979), 71 Ill. App. 3d 531, 390 N.E.2d 16; People v. Cosey (1978), 66 Ill. App. 3d 670, 384 N.E.2d 95; People v. Reese (1978), 66 Ill. App. 3d 199, 383 N.E.2d 759; People ex rel. Swiderski v. Brierton (1978), 65 Ill. App. 3d 153, 382 N.E.2d 628; People v. Irons (1977), 54 Ill. App. 3d 50, 369 N.E.2d 558 (all involving pleas entered before the effective date of Wills)), or they relied on those pre-Wills cases (People v. Robinson (1980), 82 Ill. App. 3d 937, 403 N.E.2d 604), or they factuaUy resembled McCoy or Bachner in that the defendant in fact received a shorter sentence (including mandatory supervised release) than he was advised he might receive. (People v. Coultas (1979), 75 Ill. App. 3d 137, 394 N.E.2d 26.) In addition, all of these cases involved collateral attacks on convictions rather than direct appeals so that the defendants in those cases were faced with a more rigorous standard of review on appeal. I am persuaded by the Elinois Supreme Court’s reasoning in McCoy that when faced with facts such as those presented to us in this case that court will choose to follow the Federal cases and thus bring uniformity to the law in this area. See United States ex rel. Williams v. Morris (7th Cir. 1979), 594 F.2d 614. But even assuming that this ground alone does not suffice to require vacation of defendant’s guilty plea, I would find that this omission, together with the other omissions I have cited, require a finding that the trial court failed to substantially comply with Rule 402 and that defendant did not voluntarily and intelligently plead guilty. (People v. Waldorf (1981), 94 Ill. App. 3d 976, 419 N.E.2d 428.) The majority, citing People v. Sullivan (1973), 12 Ill. App. 3d 394, 297 N.E.2d 586, appears to find that a defendant who is informed that he is waiving his right to a trial necessarily understands by that admonishment that he is waiving such “ancillary” rights as the right to confrontation of witnesses. Such a holding would render superfluous the specific admonishments established by Rule 402 and I do not construe Sullivan to so hold. In that case the defendant contended that he was not advised concerning his right to confront witnesses. The reviewing court first noted that the admonishment was not required under the then-applicable Supreme Court Rule 401(b). (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1969, ch. 110A, par. 401(b).) The court also found substantial compliance with Rule 402 and finally, noting that defendant was not stranger to the criminal justice system, held that based on the record before it the defendant’s plea was voluntarily and understandingly made. I do not construe this as indicating that admonishment of the right to trial includes by reference all rights “ancillary” to that trial. Nor can it be said, based on this record which contains no reference to any previous criminal history of the defendant, that at age 17 he was so familiar with the criminal justice system that he could be said to understand, without being told, the specific consequences of waiving his right to trial. These latter factors, the defendant’s young age and the absence from the record of any indication of prior criminal involvement, made it especially important that the trial judge comply with the Rule 402(b) requirement that the “court, by questioning the defendant personally in open court, 000 shall determine whether any force or threat or any promises, apart from a plea agreement, were used to obtain the plea.” (73 Ill. 2d R. 402(b).) Contrary to the majority’s suggestion of no factual basis for defendant’s, claim that this requirement was omitted, the State has conceded the omission but contends that the failure to so inquire was harmless error, citing People v. Ellis (1974), 59 Ill. 2d 255, 320 N.E.2d 15. For the reasons I have cited in this dissent I do not share the State’s confidence that: “* ° 0 upon review of the entire record it can be determined that the plea of guilty made under the terms of a plea agreement was voluntary, and was not made as the result of force, threats or promises other than the plea agreement * ° e.” (People v. Ellis (1974), 59 Ill. 2d 255, 257, 320 N.E.2d 15, 16.) Accordingly I would reverse defendant’s convictions and remand the cause so that he may plead anew.