Court Opinion

ID: 9724872
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:18:33.615324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:07.388522
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: I dissent. I believe that our death penalty statute is unconstitutional for the reasons I stated in People v. Lewis (1981), 88 Ill. 2d 129, 179 (Simon, J., dissenting) and People v. Silagy (1984), 101 Ill. 2d 147, 184-85 (Simon, J., dissenting). I also disagree with the majority’s suggestion in the instant case that counsel for the defendant in a capital case is under some obligation to file a post-trial motion in the trial court, thereby preserving only the most promising issues for review and relieving this court of some of its burden as a reviewing tribunal. (102 Ill. 2d at 31-32.) I do not believe the defendant should be forced to make a binding decision of this type in the trial court. Decisions as to which errors are the most serious are often best made only after a thorough review of the record, a review which may not be possible within the limited time the losing party has to file a post-trial motion, and which in some cases may be impossible because of delays in preparing the transcript of the trial. Procedures or rales of review which automatically limit a defendant who faces the death penalty to only those issues which his attorney remembers well enough at the end of trial to make the basis of a post-trial motion, regardless of whether or not he chooses to file such a motion, would reduce the chances that an erroneous decision will be reversed. Especially in an appeal involving the death penalty, I believe we should refrain from insisting that it is the obligation of counsel to file a post-trial motion which places him in peril of waiving any issues he may neglect to include in such a motion. Besides, it is useless to urge counsel to file such motions in cases where the death sentence has been imposed when, in the event they are not filed, we are nevertheless commanded by our constitution, as the majority concedes, to review all errors raised on appeal. Moreover, a defendant who elects not to file a written motion for a new trial is not precluded from appealing errors which occurred during the trial. (People v. Pierce (1980), 80 Ill. App. 3d 514, 516.) A defendant is free to choose between filing a written motion for a new trial, in which event he waives objections not included, and appealing without such a motion, in which event he waives nothing to which he has made a proper objection during the trial. A mandatory limitation of the type the majority appears to suggest would be a sharp departure from our present system, which allows every losing party to frame his own post-trial strategy within the ordinary limitations of the waiver rule. A capital case, in which there is only one level of review at the State level and the consequence of losing is death, should not be the first in which such a novel departure is advanced.