Court Opinion

ID: 9706084
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:31:13.229621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:19.031036
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE COOK, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. I have no difficulty with the cases considering the entire weight of the substance where the pure drug is diluted in order to assist in its distribution. The legislature could rationally conclude that a drug can be distributed to a greater number of people in a mixed state and can therefore be considered more dangerous. People v. Mayberry, 63 Ill. 2d 1, 9, 345 N.E.2d 97, 101 (1976); Chapman v. United States, 500 U.S. 453, 465, 114 L. Ed. 2d 524, 538, 111 S. Ct. 1919, 1927-28 (1991). Even apart from distribution, mixing the drug with another substance may make it more difficult to recognize the drug, thereby hampering law enforcement. People v. Butler, 304 Ill. App. 3d 750, 709 N.E.2d 1272 (1999) (cocaine added to wine and placed in champagne bottles); People v. Kucharski, 346 Ill. App. 3d 655, 667-68, 806 N.E.2d 683, 693 (2004). The statute contains broad language: “any substance containing methamphetamine.” 720 ILCS 570/401(a)(6.5)(D) (West 2000). Despite the broad language of the statute, however, where a controlled substance is unintentionally adulterated, the weight of the adulterating agent must be discounted. Kucharski, 346 Ill. App. 3d at 668, 806 N.E.2d at 694 (applying section 401(c)(ll) (720 ILCS 570/401(c)(ll) (West 2000))). In Kucharski, balloons containing drugs were removed from defendant’s digestive tract'. The drugs were weighed while they were wet and adulterated with defendant’s bodily fluids. Including the full weight of materials that are being processed to produce methamphetamine presents a different question. Defendant argues that methamphetamine is a powder produced from a liquid and a substantial weight of liquid is required to produce a small amount of methamphetamine. No Illinois cases address this question, but the federal cases are informative. Recognizing that other cases had differed, the Sixth Circuit held that using the entire weight would not be in keeping with the legislative intent, that the defendants were not attempting to increase the amount of methamphetamine they had available to sell but were attempting to distill methamphetamine from the otherwise uningestable byproducts of its manufacture. United States v. Jennings, 945 F.2d 129, 137 (6th Cir. 1991). “It seems fortuitous, and unwarranted by the statute, to hold the defendants punishable for the entire weight of the mixture when they could have neither produced that amount of methamphetamine nor distributed the mixture containing methamphetamine.” Jennings, 945 F.2d at 136. In 1993, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were amended to make it clear that “mixture or substance” did not include “waste water from an illicit laboratory used to manufacture a controlled substance.” 18 U.S.C.S. app. § 2D1.1 (2004). I certainly agree that manufacturing and selling methamphetamine are terrible crimes and that severe penalties should be imposed. The legislature, however, has chosen to establish different degrees of these terrible crimes. It runs counter to the legislative intent to impose the most severe punishment on all manufacturers, even those who could not have manufactured or distributed anything close to 900 grams of a substance containing methamphetamine. Where there is some ambiguity, we are constrained by law to interpret a criminal statute in favor of the accused, under the rule of lenity. People v. Davis, 199 Ill. 2d 130, 140, 766 N.E.2d 641, 647 (2002). If defendant’s argument is wrong, the legislature can always amend the statute. If the prosecution’s argument is wrong, that incentive may not exist.