Court Opinion

ID: 9860321
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:18:07.904932+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:21:04.324194
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE STEIGMANN, specially concurring: I agree completely with the majority opinion’s analysis regarding the limits of the felony murder rule and why it should not apply in this case. Another way to look at the key holding in this case — that the predicate felony underlying a charge of felony murder must involve conduct with a felonious purpose other than the killing itself — is that the predicate felony must involve conduct other than that inherent in the killing itself. I write this special concurrence because the majority opinion has the effect of seriously calling into question the continuing validity of the Kidd decision of this court. The basis for that statement follows. Because the majority opinion initially appears inconsistent with the 1975 supreme court decision in Viser, the majority distinguishes Viser on the facts. Although the majority’s effort has merit, it may prove unnecessary if the supreme court, upon further review, chooses to address the felony murder rule as the majority does rather than adhering to Viser. (See, e.g., People v. Roy, 201 Ill. App. 3d 166, 185, 558 N.E.2d 1208, 1221 (1990), where this court declined to adhere to a long-standing standard of review in sex offense cases — that the evidence had to show, in addition to the requirements in any other criminal case in which the sufficiency of evidence is challenged on appeal, that the complainant’s testimony was either clear and convincing or corroborated by other evidence — and implicitly concluded that the Supreme Court of Illinois, when it again considered the matter, would agree with the abandonment of that standard. That implicit prediction was proved correct in People v. Schott, 145 Ill. 2d 188, 202, 582 N.E.2d 690, 696-97 (1991).) The justification for this conclusion is twofold: (1) the majority opinion does not hold that no aggravated battery or aggravated discharge of a firearm could ever serve as the predicate felony justifying the felony murder instruction; and (2) Illinois homicide law has undergone a fundamental change since the Viser decision was rendered, and this change places the supreme court’s continued adherence to Viser in doubt. First, as the majority opinion makes clear, some aggravated batteries and aggravated discharges of a firearm will remain a basis for a felony murder instruction as long as those crimes are not “merely incidental to the murder” — that is, where those crimes involve conduct other than that inherent in the killing itself. Examples where those crimes have served as a proper predicate for the felony murder rule exist in both Jenkins and Pugh. Second, Illinois homicide law underwent a fundamental change with the enactment in 1986 of Public Act 84 — 1450, which (1) changed the name of the offense of murder to first degree murder and (2) abolished the offense of voluntary manslaughter and substituted for it the offense of second degree murder. As the supreme court wrote in People v. Jeffries, 164 Ill. 2d 104, 111, 646 N.E.2d 587, 590 (1995), “[t]he intent of the legislature in enacting Public Act 84 — 1450 was to remedy the confusion and inconsistency that had developed in regard to the [previous] murder and voluntary manslaughter statutes.” One of the means the legislature used in doing so was to change the burden of proof in section 9 — 2, which previously defined voluntary manslaughter (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1985, ch. 38, par. 9 — 2). Under the old law, when the defendant in a murder case presented evidence of a factor in mitigation (either serious provocation or unreasonable belief) that must have been present to reduce an offense of murder to voluntary manslaughter, the State had the burden to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, the absence of a factor in mitigation in order to obtain a murder conviction. Jeffries, 164 Ill. 2d at 113-14, 646 N.E.2d at 591. However, under the current section 9 — 2, now defining the crime of second degree murder, the defendant bears the burden to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, one of the factors in mitigation that must be present to reduce an offense of first degree murder to second degree murder, although the State still bears the burden to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, the elements of first degree murder. 720 ILCS 5/9 — 2 (West 1996). This revision constituted a fundamental change in Illinois law, as shown by the supreme court’s recognition of a heretofore unknown legal entity: the lesser mitigated offense. In Jeffries, the court rejected the defendant’s argument that second degree murder, like voluntary manslaughter, which it replaced, was a lesser included offense of first degree murder and instead concluded that “second degree murder is more accurately described as a lesser mitigated offense of first degree murder.” (Emphasis in original.) Jeffries, 164 Ill. 2d at 122, 646 N.E.2d at 595. The court explained that second degree murder is a lesser offense because its penalties upon conviction are lesser, and it is a mitigated offense because it is first degree murder plus defendant’s proof by a preponderance of the evidence that a mitigating factor was present. Jeffries, 164 Ill. 2d at 122, 646 N.E.2d at 595. The new section 9 — 2, defining second degree murder, also differed from its predecessor section 9 — 2, defining voluntary manslaughter, by providing that a person commits second degree murder “when he commits the offense of first degree murder as defined in paragraph ] (1) or (2) of subsection (a) of [s]ection 9 — 1 of this Code” and either mitigating factor is present. 720 ILCS 5/9 — 2(a) (West 1996). Previously, section 9 — 2(a), defining voluntary manslaughter, simply stated that “[a] person who kills an individual without lawful justification commits voluntary manslaughter” if, at the time of the killing, he acted under serious provocation or imperfect self-defense. Ill. Rev. Stat. 1985, ch. 38, par. 9 — 2(a). The only reason for this change in the defining language appears to be to eliminate the charge of felony murder as being a basis upon which a jury could be instructed that it could return a second degree murder conviction as a lesser mitigated offense. Yet, in Kidd, this court held that, “[i]n order to give some meaning to the second degree murder statute, there must be some limit on a prosecutor’s ability to charge felony murder,” and concluded that the legislature could not have intended to prohibit a defendant — no matter what the facts— from obtaining a second degree murder instruction when the State has charged only felony murder. Kidd, 295 Ill. App. 3d at 166, 692 N.E.2d at 459-60. In so concluding, this court cited Viser and seemed to be particularly troubled by the idea, as the majority discussed, that aggravated battery could in almost any case under Illinois law serve as the predicate felony for a felony murder instruction, thus permitting “a prosecutor [to] avoid the provocation defense in an intentional or knowing murder case by charging felony murder based upon an aggravated battery upon the person killed.” Kidd, 295 Ill. App. 3d at 165, 692 N.E.2d at 459. Although I wrote a special concurrence in Kidd disagreeing with the majority’s analysis of section 9 — 2 (Kidd, 295 Ill. App. 3d at 168-71, 692 N.E.2d at 461-63 (Steigmann, J., specially concurring)), I understood the concerns that prompted the majority opinion there. However, the majority’s concerns in Kidd, and the construction of section 9 — 2 of the Criminal Code that the majority gave in Kidd to avoid the “absurd results” about which Kidd expressed concern, are both fully addressed and assuaged by the majority opinion in this case, restricting the predicate felony to conduct with a felonious purpose other than the killing itself — that is, the predicate felony must involve conduct other than that inherent in the killing itself. Thus, the judicial gloss given to section 9 — 2 of the Criminal Code by the majority opinion in Kidd may — and should — no longer be followed by the trial courts of Illinois.