Court Opinion

ID: 9727075
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:19:06.56361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:33.308099
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE MILLER, specially concurring: I agree with the court’s holding that the defendant must be granted a new trial. My reasons for reaching that conclusion are different from those relied on by the majority opinion, however, and therefore I write separately. The defendant in the present case was originally charged with two counts of murder, one count of armed violence, and one count of concealment of a homicidal death. The charges alleged the defendant’s murder of his wife during the evening of February 27, 1987. The defendant was tried by a jury in September 1988 and was found guilty of the two murder counts and of the one count of concealment of a homicidal death; the defendant was not tried on the armed violence charge. At the time of trial, section 115 — 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963 (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1987, ch. 38, par. 115 — 1) required the State’s consent to a defendant’s jury waiver in certain instances. Section 115 — 1 provided: “All prosecutions except on a plea of guilty or guilty but mentally ill shall be tried by the court and a jury unless the defendant waives such jury trial in writing or, in a criminal prosecution where the offense charged is first degree murder, a Class X felony, criminal sexual assault or a felony violation of the Cannabis Control Act or the Illinois Controlled Substances Act both the State and the defendant waive such jury trial in writing.” As the majority notes, the requirement of prosecutorial consent to a defendant’s jury waiver in the instances specified was the product of two amendments to section 115 — 1. The requirement originally was limited to cases in which the only offenses charged were felony violations of the Cannabis Control Act or the Illinois Controlled Substances Act. (See Ill. Rev. Stat., 1986 Supp., ch. 38, par. 115 — 1.) Effective January 1, 1988, Public Act 85— 463 amended section 115 — 1 by adding first degree murder, Class X felonies, and criminal sexual assault to the list of prosecutions where the State could insist on a jury trial. At the same time, the legislature deleted language limiting application of the statute to cases in which the only offenses charged were those specified in the statute. It was under this version of section 115 — 1 that the present defendant was tried. On its face, the requirement of prosecutorial consent contained in section 115 — 1 is limited to cases in which at least one of the enumerated offenses, or a felony of the class specified, is charged. It is not apparent that the statute was applicable in this case. The defendant contends that he was not tried for an offense or class of offense listed in the provision. The defendant stood trial on charges of murder and concealment of a homicidal death, neither of which, according to the defendant, is an offense or is included in a class of offense specified in section 115 — 1. The only response made by the State in this regard is that the offense of murder differs from the offense of first degree murder in name only, and that the two crimes are otherwise identical. The State therefore would construe the statutory reference to the current offense of first degree murder as including the former offense of murder. That argument, however, cannot be reconciled with our decision in People v. Shumpert (1989), 126 Ill. 2d 344, which held that application of the statute defining the offense of first-degree murder to acts occurring before that provision’s effective date would violate the constitutional prohibition against ex post facto legislation. I would note that although the defendant was also originally indicted on a Class X charge of armed violence, he did not go to trial on that offense, and the State makes no effort to use that charge as the basis for applying section 115 — 1 in the present case. Only if we conclude that the prosecutorial consent provision of section 115 — 1 is applicable to the present case does it then become necessary to determine the effect to be accorded to this court’s decision in People ex rel. Daley v. Joyce (1988), 126 Ill. 2d 209., Joyce invalidated, on State constitutional grounds, the original amendment that added to section 115 — 1 the requirement of prosecutorial consent to jury waivers by defendants charged with certain drug felonies. The present defendant challenged in the circuit court the constitutionality of the statute and sought to avoid its application to his case. Given the rationale of this court’s decision in Joyce, it is readily apparent that the later amendment to section 115 — 1 enlarging the scope of the consent requirement must also fall. Thus, it should be enough in the present case to hold that the subsequent amendment was similarly invalid and that the defendant, tried under that regime, must be tried again. The majority nevertheless concludes that the statutory language invalidated by the court’s decision in Joyce must be considered void ab initio, and thus of no effect from its inception. As the majority acknowledges, the theory of ab initio invalidity may produce harsh effects, ignoring as it does the justified reliance that society has quite properly reposed in a previously unchallenged legislative enactment. (See 1 N. Singer, Sutherland on Statutory Construction §2.07, at 34-35 (Sands 4th ed. 1985) (“Based on superficial analogies, there are cases, mostly older ones, in which it has been asserted that in legal contemplation an unconstitutional act is as inoperative as if it had never been passed. However difficult it may have been to deny that an unconstitutional act had produced actual results as a matter of fact, many courts have felt compelled to declare that such an act has been void ab initio, from which it was thought to follow that such an act could not be allowed to have any legal effects”).) To say that a statute, eventually declared unconstitutional, had absolutely no legal effect, as the majority asserts, simply cannot be accepted at face value. Moreover, the majority transmutes the notion of ab initio invalidity into a constitutional requirement, declaring that due process commands that a decision invalidating a statute on constitutional grounds be accorded complete retroactivity. (135 Ill. 2d at 397-98.) Such an interpretation dramatically alters the traditional view regarding the potential effects of such decisions. Discussing the significance of a declaration of statutory invalidity, the Supreme Court has stated: “The courts below have proceeded on the theory that the Act of Congress, having been found to be unconstitutional, was not a law; that it was inoperative, conferring no rights and imposing no duties, and hence affording no basis for the challenged decree. [Citations.] It is' quite clear, however, that such broad statements as to the effect of a determination of unconstitutionality must be taken with qualifications. The actual existence of a statute, prior to such a determination, is an operative fact and may have consequences which cannot justly be ignored. The past cannot always be erased by a new judicial declaration. The effect of the subsequent ruling as to invalidity may have to be considered in various aspects,— with respect to particular relations, individual and corporate, and particular conduct, private and official. Questions of rights claimed to have become vested, of status, of prior determinations deemed to have finality and acted upon accordingly, of public policy in the light of the nature both of the statute and of its previous application, demand examination. These questions are among the most difficult of those which have engaged the attention of courts, state and federal, and it is manifest from numerous decisions that an all-inclusive statement of a principle of absolute retroactive invalidity cannot be justified.” Chicot County Drainage District v. Baxter State Bank (1940), 308 U.S. 371, 374, 84 L. Ed. 329, 332-33, 60 S. Ct. 317, 318-19. Rather than automatically conclude that all unconstitutional statutes must be deemed to have been void from their inception, the more appropriate course, it seems to me, requires that we determine in an individual case or category of cases the effect that should be accorded a subsequent declaration of statutory invalidity. When, for example, a statute defining a criminal offense is declared unconstitutional, the ab initio principle often is invoked. (See, e.g., People v. Zeisler (1988), 125 Ill. 2d 42; People v. Manuel (1983), 94 Ill. 2d 242; People v. Sarelli (1973), 55 Ill. 2d 169, 170-71.) This is not to say, however, that such effect must be the inevitable consequence in every case. The majority’s broad-ranging discussion resolves nothing, except this appeal, and serves only as a herald of further problems.