Court Opinion

ID: 9724811
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:15:11.740394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:10:45.324223
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE CLARK, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. At the defendant’s sentencing hearing, a probation officer was allowed to testify as to the emotional and psychological effects of the defendant’s crime upon surviving members of the victim’s family. As the majority freely concedes, this was error, and error of Federal constitutional magnitude. (Booth v. Maryland (1987), 482 U.S. 496, 96 L. Ed. 2d 440, 107 S. Ct. 2529.) The majority manages, nevertheless, to hold that the defendant’s sentence of death does not violate the Federal Constitution. I am not sure that I understand how the majority reaches this result. While acknowledging that the defendant’s claim of incompetence also puts into issue the merits of his original claim that he was prejudiced by the admission of victim impact evidence (122 Ill. 2d at 373), the majority goes on to slight the merits of the victim impact claim in favor of the claim of incompetence. Assuming, apparently, that the defendant’s trial counsel waived the victim impact claim at sentencing, the majority then goes on to hold that a claim of counsel’s incompetence in thus waiving the victim impact issue has in turn been waived by the defendant’s failure to raise this claim of incompetence on his first post-conviction petition. A review of the entire sequence of events reveals that the issue of victim impact sentencing is properly preserved for our review. At the time of Free’s initial appeal, the majority opinion affirming his death sentence reached two alternative holdings on the victim impact issue. The majority first held that the “failure to object to the admission of this evidence operates as a waiver of the right to consider the question on appeal.” (People v. Free (1983), 94 Ill. 2d 378, 425 (hereinafter Free I).) After stating that Free had waived the issue, however, the majority went on to consider the merits of his claim, stating that: “This court has held that testimony pertaining to a victim’s surviving family is improper. (People v. Bernette (1964), 30 Ill. 2d 359.) However, the evidence complained of was not introduced at the guilt phase of the trial, or at the phase wherein the existence of aggravating factors must be proved.” Free I, 94 Ill. 2d at 425-26. The second alternative was essential to the majority’s opinion because of the plain error rule. Error of constitutional dimension, which affects substantial rights, is plain error (see People v. Wagner (1982), 89 Ill. 2d 308, 311), which will preclude the operation of the waiver doctrine. If admission of victim impact evidence violated the eighth amendment to the United States Constitution, then the failure to object to such evidence could not operate as a waiver. It was therefore necessary for the Free I majority to consider whether admission of victim impact evidence violated Free’s substantive eighth amendment rights. The first Free majority concluded that the admission of such evidence during the aggravation-mitigation phase of the sentencing hearing did not violate Free’s constitutional rights. Free I, 94 Ill. 2d at 425-26. It is now clear from Booth that the Free I majority (Simon and Clark, JJ., dissenting) erred as to the substantive issue. However, the majority fails to acknowledge that Booth tacitly overrules the Free I court’s holding as to waiver; for if victim impact evidence implicates substantial constitutional rights, its admission must be plain error, and the waiver doctrine cannot apply. Given this conclusion, the next question must be: Has the defendant nevertheless waived the victim impact issue by failing to raise it in either of his two post-conviction petitions? I believe the answer must be no. As to Free’s first post-conviction petition, the majority acknowledges that Free alleged a denial of equal protection and due process because of “the Illinois Court[’]s inconsistent decisions on death penalty cases as to the admission of evidence relating to the effect of the death on the victim’s family.” (122 Ill. 2d at 375.) This claim was rejected, again on the ground of waiver. (People v. Free (1986), 112 Ill. 2d 154 (hereinafter Free II).) In his second petition, the one presently before us, Free again contends that the victim impact evidence “was inadmissible under the prior decisions of this court and as a matter of Federal constitutional law.” 122 Ill. 2d at 373. I do not understand how the majority supports its conclusion that either of these two petitions waived the issue of the victim impact statement’s admissibility. The majority opinion deals only with the waiver of the competence issue, which, after Booth, is clearly peripheral to the defendant’s major claim. Moreover, I cannot accept the majority’s position as to the waiver of either issue for two additional reasons. First, the acceptance of the majority’s position would place attorneys representing death-row inmates on their post-conviction appeals in a difficult ethical bind. Normally in such a case, all properly preserved and nonfrivolous issues will have been considered by us on direct review, since death sentences and the underlying convictions upon which they are based may be appealed to this court as a matter of right. (107 Ill. 2d R. 609.) Post-conviction counsel may believe, perhaps rightly, that our determinations of these issues will nevertheless be eventually overturned by the United States Supreme Court. How then should counsel proceed? If he simply re-raises the issues argued on direct appeal, he may fall afoul of Rule 7 — 102 of the Code of Professional Responsibility, which provides that an attorney shall not “knowingly advance a claim or defense that is unwarranted under existing law, except that he may advance such claim or defense if it can be supported by a good-faith argument for an extension, modification, or reversal of existing law.” (107 Ill. 2d R. 7 — 102.) If counsel nevertheless files a petition and omits a particular claim, he will have, according to the majority, deprived his client of the right to re-raise such a claim on a subsequent petition. Lastly, if he files no petition at all and simply waits for a favorable ruling from the United States Supreme Court in a case similar to that of his client, he is powerless to prevent his client from being killed by lethal injection. He must choose between the Scylla of waiver and the Charybdis of execution. Confronted with this dilemma, Free’s attorney on his first post-conviction petition rephrased what was originally an eighth amendment claim as an equal protection claim so as to make a good-faith argument for the overruling of Free I. His attorney on his second post-conviction petition similarly rephrased it as a claim based upon the incompetence of counsel. Both attorneys were acting out of respect for this court’s rulings in Free I and Free II. Rather than merely assert the court was mistaken, they used novel arguments in a good-faith attempt to convince the court to rule in their favor. Second, I believe that the invocation of the waiver doctrine may not always be appropriate in a case which involves a death sentence clearly premised upon inadmissible evidence. More than the life of this one defendant is at stake. As the United States Supreme Court has stated: “It is of vital importance to the defendant and to the community that any decision to impose the death sentence be, and appear to be, based on reason rather than caprice and emotion.” (Emphasis added.) Gardner v. Florida (1977), 430 U.S. 349, 358, 51 L. Ed. 2d 393, 402, 97 S. Ct. 1197, 1204. The court’s decision in Free I was explicitly premised upon the proposition that the rules of evidence are not applicable to capital sentencing hearings. The majority continues to adhere to this principle despite the fact that death sentencing hearings, unlike any other form of sentencing, may involve juries rather than judges. It is now clear, especially after Booth, that the majority’s approach to death sentencing is not entirely correct. Death sentencing should not be a verbal free-for-all in which both prosecution and defense search for “the most colorful attention getter” that will divert the jury’s attention. (People v. Free (1983), 94 Ill. 2d 378, 433 (Clark, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).) I can only repeat what I said in the original Free case, and urge this court to adopt the following rules of evidence for capital sentencing hearings: “If the evidence offered is extraneous to the facts and circumstances of the case or the character of the defendant, it is not admissible; if it would tend to divert the jury’s attention from the aggravating or mitigating factors before them, it should be excluded; and if the evidence impinges upon any fundamental constitutional guarantee, it cannot be admitted at the sentencing hearing.” People v. Free (1983), 94 Ill. 2d 378, 433 (Clark, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). JUSTICE SIMON joins in this dissent.