Court Opinion

ID: 9742909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:22:27.974643+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:37.625510
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Craven concurs in the result but dissents in the reasoning and therefore concurs. I concur in the reasoning but disagree with the result and therefore dissent. My observations will — hopefully—be brief. FIRST. I am in full accord with Mr. Justice Trapp’s analysis and treatment of the Dangerous Drug Abuse Act of Illinois and his thoughtful comparison of it with corresponding Federal legislation. In that reasoning, I concur. SECOND. But I cannot agree with his conclusion that the letter from the Department of Mental Health cannot be made of record, even at the reviewing stage. Illinois Supreme Court Rule 366(3) clearly provides that a reviewing court may “order or permit the record to be amended by correcting errors or by adding matters that should have been included.” And I am of the belief that this provision is applicable to the situation posited here. That letter to Judge Berkowitz was an official one from the Department of Mental Health, involving a particular case pending before him, and was sent to him in his official capacity as the presiding judge. It was not sent to him in his generic capacity, nor was it a personal communication. I think he simply erred in not considering it as evidence and in not placing it of record. When a judge mistakenly fails to put an official communication to him in the file of the case to which it applies does not mean that it should not have been so deposited. Judges err every day. Yet even when they rule correctly — but for the wrong reasons — as long as reviewing courts can sustain them, we do. Our situation does not seem to me to be that much different. It is merely a variation. The judge presiding should have considered the letter, admitted it into evidence and made it a part of the record and file. He didn’t. But the letter still exists and I believe that we have the authority to correct the error and settle the matter right here, rather than ship it back for more footwork!