Court Opinion

ID: 9523393
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:41:30.167243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:05:13.690593
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE UNVERZAGT, specially concurring: I agree with the majority that this matter must be remanded to the circuit court of Kane County for a Batson hearing. I do not agree with the majority’s view that this court’s decision in People v. Parker (1988), 166 Ill. App. 3d 123, is undermined by our supreme court’s decision in People v. Evans (1988), 125 Ill. 2d 50. The majority’s reference to Evans is obviously to this language: “Simply because black veniremen are peremptorily challenged does not, without more, raise the specter or inference of discrimination. Batson, 476 U. S. at 101, 90 L. Ed. 2d at 91, 106 S. Ct. at 1725 (White, J., concurring) (it is not unconstitutional, without more, to strike one or more blacks from the jury); People v. Hooper (1987), 118 Ill. 2d 244, 247-49 (Ryan, J., specially concurring) (the court must avoid arbitrarily deciding this delicate question solely from the number of blacks peremptorily challenged); Phillips v. State (Ind. 1986), 496 N.E. 2d 87, 89 (use of peremptory challenges against black jurors does not, by itself, raise an inference of racial discrimination).” 125 Ill. 2d at 64. Nothing this court expounded in the Parker case disagreed with the above supreme court dissertation. In Parker this court determined “that any time that all members of defendant’s race have been excluded from the jury” the final element constituting a prima facie case has been met by the defendant. It is then incumbent upon the State to articulate a neutral explanation for the peremptory strike of the jurors. (Parker, 166 Ill. App. 3d at 127.) The Parker case, like the case at hand, involved the exclusion of the only black juror. In the case of United States v. Chalan (10th Cir. 1987), 812 F.2d 1302, the United States Court of Appeals held that the fact the government used its peremptory challenges to strike the last remaining juror of defendant’s race is sufficient “ ‘to. raise an inference’ that the juror was excluded ‘on account of [his] race,’ thereby satisfying the final portion of the Batson test. Id.” 812 F.2d at 1314. Our supreme court has not ruled on this question. The rule of stare decisis requires that absent compelling reasons for so doing, courts are reluctant to abandon or to modify an earlier decision of the court soon after its adoption. (Moehle v. Chrysler Motors Corp. (1982), 93 Ill. 2d 299.) As our supreme court has pointed out in Moehle, “[t]he People and the bar of this State are entitled to rely upon our decisions with assurance that they will not be lightly overruled.” Moehle, 93 Ill. 2d at 304, citing Graham v. General United States Grant Post No. 2665, V.F.W. (1969), 43 Ill. 2d 1, 8; Chicago Title & Trust Co. v. Shellaberger (1948), 399 Ill. 320, 343.