Court Opinion

ID: 9744488
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:04:32.353989+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:49.673699
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE HARRISON, dissenting: This matter is before us on Caffey’s direct appeal from his convictions and sentence of death. During the pendency of Caffey’s appeal, our court adopted a comprehensive set of new rules governing the conduct of all cases in which the State is seeking the death penalty. With certain exceptions, the new rules took effect March 1, 2001, and apply to all cases pending on direct review, including cases commenced before the rules were enacted. People v. Hickey, 204 Ill. 2d 585, 631-36 (2001) (Harrison, C.J., dissenting); see also People ex rel. Birkett v. Bakalis, 196 Ill. 2d 510, 513 (2001). Although the new rules are procedural in nature, the innovations they introduce are not mere technicalities. They are indispensable safeguards for achieving an accurate determination of innocence or guilt. Whether they will eliminate all of the constitutional defects in the present death penalty law we cannot yet say. That must await the test of time and experience. What we can say now is that any conviction and sentence obtained without the aid of the new rules cannot be deemed reliable and must be set aside. Hickey, 204 Ill. 2d at 634 (Harrison, C.J., dissenting). Presently, some 160 defendants face death sentences in this state. The task of retrying those defendants will be formidable, but it is no more formidable than dealing with the direct appeals and post-conviction challenges involving the existing convictions and sentences. Addressing the problems which have permeated those convictions and sentences has imposed heavy burdens on the courts. The morass of litigation attendant to the present system of capital punishment has become a significant drain on the resources of this court, the circuit courts, the attorney general, the public defenders and the local State’s Attorneys. The costs go beyond budgets and manpower. The dearest cost, in fact, may have nothing to do with human or financial resources. It may be in the harm inflicted on integrity of the criminal justice system by the court’s refusal to acknowledge deficiencies so egregious that a Republican governor was forced to step in and suspend the implementation of every sentence of death we approved. Protestations by this court that the judiciary is working as it should are pointless. If we truly believed our system of capital punishment was working as it should, we would not have empowered a committee to consider new rules for death cases and we would not have adopted the comprehensive new rules that committee proposed. The rules we have adopted represent as fundamental a change in criminal procedure as any in recent Illinois history. Having possessed the courage and foresight to adopt those rules, we must not now shrink from our duty to put them into effect. Accordingly, because Caffey was tried, convicted and sentenced without the benefit of the new rules, his convictions and death sentence should be vacated, and the cause should be remanded to the circuit court for a new trial. Even if Caffey were not entitled to a new trial in accordance with the new rules, his sentence of death could not stand. For the reasons set forth in my partial concurrence and partial dissent in People v. Bull, 185 Ill. 2d 179 (1998), the Illinois death penalty law is void and unenforceable because it violates the eighth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution (U.S. Const., amends. VIII, XIV) and article I, section 2, of the Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const. 1970, art. I, § 2). Absent the new rules, there is no basis for altering that conclusion. At a minimum, Caffey’s sentence of death should therefore be vacated, and he should be sentenced to a term of imprisonment. 720 ILCS 5/9 — l(j) (West 1994). Because he was convicted of murdering more than one victim, the term of imprisonment must be natural life. 730 ILCS 5/5 — 8—l(a)(l)(c)(ii) (West 1994). JUSTICE KILBRIDE, also dissenting: For the reasons set forth in my dissents in People v. Hickey, 204 Ill. 2d 585, 636-40 (2001) (Kilbride, J., dissenting), and People v. Simpson, 204 Ill. 2d 536, 581-85 (2001) (Kilbride, J., dissenting), I agree with Chief Justice Harrison that defendant’s convictions and sentence should be set aside because the trial proceedings were not conducted in accordance with the new supreme court rules governing capital cases. The procedures in capital cases prior to this court’s adoption of the new rules were inherently unreliable and did not adequately protect a defendant’s constitutional rights. Consequently, since the new rules were promulgated to address the deficiencies of constitutional dimension that regularly occurred under the old system, the rules must be applied retroactively to all capital cases currently pending on direct appeal. See People v. Hudson, 195 Ill. 2d 117, 126 (2001), citing Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 328, 93 L. Ed. 2d 649, 661, 107 S. Ct. 708, 716 (1987). For those reasons, I respectfully dissent.