Court Opinion

ID: 9716640
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:46:39.765901+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:47.495544
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE FREEMAN, also dissenting: I respectfully dissent. Defendant filed his petition on July 3, 1995. At that time, the law in this state provided an automatic rule of reversal for those defendants who were entitled to a fitness hearing by virtue of their ingestion of psychotropic drugs. See People v. Brandon, 162 Ill. 2d 450 (1994). By the time the parties completed their oral arguments in this case in September 1999, the law had changed from one of automatic reversal to a case-specific inquiry. See People v. Burgess, 176 Ill. 2d 289 (1997); People v. Neal, 179 Ill. 2d 541 (1997). Unfortunately for defendant, this court has again changed the law in this area by virtue of the recent decision in People v. Mitchell, 189 Ill. 2d 312 (2000). In Mitchell, this court held, contrary to prior precedent, that a psychotropic drug claim couched in terms of a denial of due process is not cognizable under the Post-Conviction Hearing Act. The court further held that, in order to establish ineffective assistance of counsel for counsel’s failure to request the statutorily mandated fitness hearing, a defendant must show that the outcome of the hearing would have resulted in a finding that defendant was, in fact, unfit. I dissented in Mitchell, arguing that the decision was contrary to stare decisis. See Mitchell, 189 Ill. 2d at 362 (Freeman, J., dissenting, joined by Harrison, C.J., and McMorrow, J.). Consistent with that dissent, I continue to believe that the court’s action in Mitchell was unwarranted. That said, I wish to stress what I perceive to be the unfortunate and unjust result of the court’s decision in Mitchell. My colleagues today hold that defendant’s allegations and supporting affidavits do not establish that petitioner would have been found unfit if a hearing had been conducted. 189 Ill. 2d at 535-36. Frankly, I am not surprised that defendant’s evidence does not meet this high standard because at the time defendant filed his petition, all that was required under our case law to succeed on such a claim was evidence showing the defendant’s ingestion of a psychotropic drug under medical direction at the time of the proceedings. Defendant’s claim fails today simply because at the time he pleaded his Brandon claim defendant did not have the foresight to know that this court would, several months after the date of his oral argument, raise the quantum of evidence necessary to assert a successful ineffective assistance of counsel claim. This fact leads me to conclude that a majority of this court is uninterested in providing meaningful relief to those defendants who raise this claim via the right to effective assistance of counsel. JUSTICE McMORROW joins in this dissent. Dissenting Opinion Upon Denial of Rehearing