Court Opinion

ID: 9527814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:34:34.078597+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:14.109679
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE MANNING, dissenting: The majority has chosen to sua sponte raise and rule upon the issue of whether or not the defendant received the effective assistance of counsel at trial. While I certainly support the court’s obligation and right to sua sponte raise issues, especially in criminal cases, where the ends of justice so demand, I disagree that the instant case is an appropriate one to do so because of the factual matrix.1  As is shown in the majority opinion, defense counsel chose to stipulate to the contents of police reports which contained contradictory information to that of the trial testimony of the two sole eyewitnesses. As the majority so aptly points out, “[t]he benchmark for judging any claim of ineffectiveness must be whether counsel’s conduct so undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 686, 980 L. Ed. 2d at 692-93,104 S. Ct. at 2064. Our supreme court has stated that effective assistance of counsel refers to competent, not perfect, representation, and that mistakes in trial strategy, or tactics, or judgment do not of themselves render representation ineffective. (People v. Stewart (1984), 104 Ill. 2d 463, 491-92, 473 N.E.2d 1227, 1240.) In the instant case, trial counsel’s maneuver could have been an attempt to place the inconsistent reports before the jury without giving the witnesses an opportunity to offer an explanation for the inconsistency. We must look to the totality of trial counsel’s performance in determining ineffectivéness claims. (People v. Mitchell (1984), 105 Ill. 2d 1, 473 N.E.2d 1270; Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 80 L. Ed. 2d at 694, 104 S. Ct. at 2065.) Defense counsel set forth a defense, challenged the credibility and perceptions of the People’s witnesses, and performed in a generally reasonable and competent manner. The majority has set forth a strategy which perhaps it, as well as many criminal lawyers, may have followed. That, however, is not the standard. The jurors, contrary to the majority’s statement, were fully apprised that these uniformed officers had made contradictory statements. They were fully apprised because the State entered into a stipulation with defense attorney and the stipulation, setting forth the contradictory statements, was read aloud, in open court to the jurors. The triers of fact, notwithstanding the contradictions, and in full compliance with their duty as jurors, weighed all of the evidence including the physical evidence relating to the damage to defendant’s car, injuries to the victims’ bodies, and the scrape marks on the concrete wall, and decided adversely to the defendant. We must assume that the jury considered the impeachment, but nevertheless decided credibility in favor of the State. I am not convinced that the defense counsel’s failure to recall the officers to cross-examine them was not trial strategy. Additionally, I am not convinced that, assuming the failure was error, the outcome would have differed in light of the totality of the evidence presented by the State. Accordingly, I would affirm.   The court at oral argument sua sponte raised a question regarding the performance of counsel at trial. Both sides responded and were subsequently granted leave to file supplemental briefs addressing the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel.