Court Opinion

ID: 9819536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:27:19.099054+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:31.174564
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE APPLETON, dissenting: I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision, to wit, that the term “pending legal proceeding” in section 32 — 4a(a) includes a police report or even a police contact. Defendant threatened Sherry after Sherry complained to the police and the police interrogated David Crawford but before the filing of a formal charge or even an arrest. Unless the statute says otherwise, we must give words and phrases in the statute their common, ordinary meaning. People v. Laws, 200 Ill. App. 3d 232, 236, 558 N.E.2d 638, 640 (1990). Section 32 — 4a(a) does not specifically define “pending legal proceeding”; therefore, we must give the phrase its common, ordinary meaning. “Legal proceedings” are “proceeding^] *** instituted in a court or tribunal.” (Emphasis added.) Black’s Law Dictionary 906 (7th ed. 1999). Thus, a police investigation is not a “legal proceeding.” “Pending” means “Remaining undecided; awaiting decision.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1154 (7th ed. 1999). When defendant threatened her, Sherry was not “expected to serve as a witness in a pending legal proceeding” (see 720 ILCS 5/32 — 4a(a) (West 2000)), because there was no “pending legal proceeding” at the time. While arising in a different context, the term “pending court proceedings” was defined in People ex rel. Hopf v. Barger, 30 Ill. App. 3d 525, 332 N.E.2d 649 (1975). There, the defendants were charged with a violation of “An Act in relation to Meetings” (the Open Meetings Act) (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1971, ch. 102, par. 42) for their participation in a closed meeting to discuss with the city council committee, its attorney, and others, the subject of contemplated litigation, to wit, annexation of land. The court there said: “We must agree with defendants’ contention that ‘pending’ cannot be reasonably interpreted to include preliminary discussion with an attorney to secure advice on either the bringing of suit or the defense of a suit which is either threatened or likely to be brought against the city. *** The traditional concept of litigation begins in terms of ‘notice, pleading, trial[,] and appeal’ [citation], and presumably it is at that point that the litigation is ‘pending.’ ” Barger, 30 Ill. App. 3d at 536-37, 332 N.E.2d at 659. Cf. United States v. Ellis, 652 F. Supp. 1451, 1452-53 (S.D. Miss. 1987) (grand jury proceeding not “pending” until it has actually begun); Johnson v. McCaughan, Carter & Scharrer, 672 P.2d 221, 222 (Colo. App. 1983) (action is “pending” after it is commenced by either filing a complaint or serving a summons). These facts disclose a pending citizen complaint to the police, not a pending legal proceeding. The majority reads into the definition of the statutory term at issue the possibility of a legal proceeding. What if the police were investigating a complaint and, during the investigation, someone threatened a potential witness, but the State nevertheless determined, after the threat, that it would not prosecute because the complaint was ill-founded? The majority’s unwarranted expansion of the statute’s plain and ordinary meaning would make it applicable to such conduct. I agree with the majority that miscreants should not be allowed to threaten or harass a witness — either prior to or after such a witness lodges a complaint with the police. Such conduct is properly prosecuted as the offense of intimidation. 720 ILCS 5/12 — 6 (West 2000). That is what this defendant did, on these facts, and she should have been charged with and prosecuted for that offense, not for harassing a witness. I would reverse her conviction for harassment of a witness, an offense that is patently inapplicable to her case.