Court Opinion

ID: 9884440
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:57:18.185772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:38.527667
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice House, also dissenting: I join in the dissent of Mr. Justice Underwood. Additionally, I wish to again pay my respects to our rule that all material witnesses connected with the taking of a confession must be produced or their absence explained when the voluntariness of a confession is raised. Various members of the court have expressed their dissatisfaction with it, (see dissent in People v. Dale, 20 Ill.2d 532; special concurrence in People v. Sims, 21 Ill.2d 425,) and the legislature, by adoption of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963, has since seen fit to add the provision that objection must be made in the trial court. Ill. Rev. Stat. 1965, chap. 38, par. 114 — 11(d). As was pointed out in my special concurrence in the Sims case, the rule was born as obiter dicta in People v. Rogers, 303 Ill. 578, where the trial judge had refused to admit the confession until all witnesses had been called. Since Sims there have been six or more cases (including People v. Bullocks, 23 Ill.2d 515, where the opinion was written under compulsion of the then majority by the writer of this dissent) which were reversed in whole or in part as a result of the rule. (See e.g., People v. Wright, 24 Ill.2d 88; People v. Smith, 25 Ill.2d 428.) The admission or refusal to admit a confession is a matter of competency and should be left to the sound discretion of the trial judge. If this rule is sufficiently salutary to merit its retention, it is odd indeed that it has not been adopted and followed by other jurisdictions. My cursory research does not indicate that a single State is following it, and none has been called to our attention. The stringent safeguards and restrictions imposed upon the taking and admission of confessions by the Supreme Court of the United States in such cases as Escobedo and Miranda seem more than ample to me and we are not justified in further adding to the burden of law enforcement agencies. The test of time shows that the rule has not lived up to its billing as a useful tool to the trial courts, (People v. Jennings, 11 Ill.2d 610,) but, rather, its application has definitely become mechanical and, too often, has resulted in unwarranted reversals with a consequent further burdening of the trial court dockets. It is my hope that my colleagues will carefully scrutinize the rule under existing conditions and expunge it in the next case which furnishes a proper vehicle.