Court Opinion

ID: 9884948
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:25:48.652314+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:42.793953
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Crampton, dissenting: I cannot concur in the decision of the court. While the minutes or entries made by the judge need not be in the formal terms required for a judgment of record, they should be reasonably free of ambiguity and uncertainty. Unless the words he uses are clear and definite, they can serve neither to adequately direct the clerk nor to sufficiently inform the defendant of his punishment. They should be so complete that it will be unnecessary for a non judicial or ministerial officer to supplement them in order to ascertain their meaning, and they should inform the defendant, in a clear and unambiguous manner, of the nature and extent of his punishment. (See People ex rel. Clancy v. Graydon, 329 Ill. 398.) In none of the cases at bar can it be determined from an inspection of the entry which of the sentences is to be served first and which is to succeed the other. A direction that the sentence is “to run consecutively with sentence in Cause 64970,” for example, says nothing as to which of the two must be served first. It is vague and uncertain, and insufficient to impose consecutive sentences. (See People v. Hardgrave, 406 Ill. 211.) The clerk has no power to control the effect of a sentence of the court -by designating the time at which it is to begin. The determination of whether two sentences shall be successive, and the designation of which one shall succeed the other, are clearly judicial functions. Where, as here, the judge fails to state that the particular sentence is to commence at the expiration of a different one, the clerk cannot alter the effect of the judgment by expanding the order. In none of the cases at bar can it be determined from an inspection of the entry which of the sentences is to be served first and which is to succeed the other. Where a sentence is indefinite and uncertain as a consecutive sentence, it and the other sentence mentioned therein will be held concurrent, to be served at the same time, and it was so held in the Hardgrave case cited above. The judgment entries in the present case differ materially from that considered in People v. Ferguson, 410 Ill. 87, wherein a different result was reached. In that case the entry in question read as follows: “Sentence to run consecutively with sentence heretofore (emphasis supplied) imposed on Indictment 75757. Sentence to start at expiration of sentence heretofore imposed on Indictment 75757-” The words “Sentence to start at expiration of” leave no doubt as to which is first. And even in the absence of such language the use of the word “heretofore” in referring to the other sentence could reasonably imply that it is to be served first. But here there is no indication whatever as to which shall precede the other. While the validity of a judgment does not depend upon a particular mode of expression, its language must afford a basis for something more than mere speculation. It should inform the defendant, in a clear and unambiguous manner, of the nature and extent of his punishment. I think that the entries in question fail to contain the clear and specific terms required for consecutive sentences, and that the sentences should therefore be held to run concurrently.