Court Opinion

ID: 9516622
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:47:23.434709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:28.690371
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HEIPLE delivered the opinion of the court: The State appeals from a decision by the appellate court which permitted defendant to appeal the length of his prison sentence without first filing a motion to withdraw his guilty plea. We affirm. BACKGROUND On June 10, 1997, defendant was charged with the offenses of aggravated battery and robbery. On June 23, 1997, defendant pled guilty to robbery in exchange for the State’s dismissal of the aggravated battery charge. The circuit court of Lee County sentenced defendant to seven years in prison. On August 1, 1997 defendant’s attorney filed a motion to reconsider defendant’s sentence. Defendant did not move to withdraw his guilty plea. The trial court denied defendant’s motion and defendant filed a notice of appeal. In the appellate court, defendant’s attorney filed a motion to remand the cause to the circuit court. The motion alleged that defense counsel had failed to file a certificate of compliance as required by Supreme Court Rule 604(d). Defendant therefore sought a remand for the filing of such a certificate. In response to defendant’s motion, the State urged the court to affirm defendant’s conviction on other grounds. The State argued that defendant’s plea was a “negotiated plea” because the State had agreed to drop the aggravated battery charge in exchange for defendant’s guilty plea. Accordingly, under the rationale of People v. Evans, 174 Ill. 2d 320 (1996), defendant could not ask the court to reconsider the length of his sentence without having first filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea. The appellate court, with one justice dissenting, held that defendant could properly challenge the length of his sentence even though he had not filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea. The appellate court found Evans distinguishable because the defendant in Evans had pled guilty in exchange for a specific sentencing recommendation. In contrast, the agreement between defendant and the State in the instant case was silent as to the sentence defendant could receive. Accordingly, Evans did not preclude defendant’s appeal under the facts of this case. However, because defendant’s attorney had failed to file in the trial court a certificate of compliance with Rule 604(d), the appellate court ordered a remand to the trial court for the filing of such a certificate. No. 3 — 97—0633 (unpublished order under Supreme Court Rule 23). This court granted the State’s petition for leave to appeal. 177 Ill. 2d R. 315. DISCUSSION In arguing for a reversal of the appellate court’s decision, the State goes to great lengths to characterize defendant’s plea in this case as a “negotiated plea.” Defendant, for his part, argues with equal force that the failure of the parties to agree upon a sentence precludes his plea from being considered “negotiated.” Indeed, the parties’ focus on whether the plea constituted a “negotiated plea” is understandable. In Evans, this court held that: “[F]or a defendant to prevail in a challenge to a sentence entered pursuant to a negotiated plea agreement, the defendant must (1) move to withdraw the guilty plea and vacate the judgment, and (2) show that the granting of the motion is necessary to correct a manifest injustice.” (Emphasis added.) Evans, 174 Ill. 2d at 332. While that terminology used in Evans was perfectly appropriate and adequate to dispose of the issue before the court in that case, it did not, nor did it purport to, address every conceivable type of plea agreement. As Justice Freeman correctly observed in his special concurrence in People v. Linder, “not all ‘negotiated’ pleas are the same.” People v. Linder, 186 Ill. 2d 67, 77 (1999) (Freeman, C.J., specially concurring). Indeed, there are at least four distinct plea scenarios which can occur when a defendant decides to enter a plea of guilty. First, a defendant may simply enter a “blind,” or “open,” plea without any inducement from the State. In such a case, both the defendant and the State may argue for any sentence permitted by law. Likewise, the trial court in such a case exercises its full discretion and selects the defendant’s sentence from the range provided by the relevant statute. Because such a plea involves no agreement between the defendant and the State, a defendant’s ability to appeal his conviction or sentence is limited only by the straightforward terms of Rule 604(d). At the other extreme, a defendant may enter a fully negotiated plea under which he agrees to plead guilty in exchange for a specific sentencing recommendation by the State. This was the fact pattern addressed in Evans. In that case, two defendants had each pled guilty pursuant to plea agreements under which the State agreed to drop other pending charges and to recommend a specific sentence. The trial courts accepted the plea agreements and entered judgment thereon. Subsequently, however, each defendant sought to reduce his respective sentence by filing a motion for sentence reconsideration. After those motions were denied, the defendants filed appeals arguing that their sentences were excessive. Relying primarily on contract-law principles, this court in Evans rejected the defendants’ attempts to reduce the sentences to which they had agreed as part of their plea bargains without first moving to withdraw their guilty pleas. This court recognized that a contrary rule would permit defendants to hold the State to its side of the bargain, by eliminating the possibility of convictions on the dropped charges or sentences in excess of the agreed-upon recommendation, while reneging on the agreement by trying to unilaterally reduce the sentences to which they had agreed. This court considered a slightly different type of plea agreement in People v. Linder, 186 Ill. 2d 67 (1999). In that case, we considered the consolidated appeals of two defendants who pled guilty pursuant to agreements under which the State agreed to drop other pending charges and to recommend a sentence not to exceed an agreed-upon cap. Under this third type of plea bargain, the State’s ability to argue for the full range of penalties provided for in the Unified Code of Corrections was constrained by the terms of its agreements with the defendants. After the trial judges in Linder accepted the defendants’ guilty pleas and imposed sentences within the caps, both defendants sought on appeal to challenge the sentences imposed upon them as excessive. Once again relying upon the contract-law principles described in Evans, this court held that such appeals were improper where the defendants had not moved to withdraw their guilty pleas. The majority reasoned: “By agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for a recommended sentencing cap, a defendant is, in effect, agreeing not to challenge any sentence imposed below that cap on the grounds that it is excessive.” Linder, 186 Ill. 2d at 74.1 Accordingly, this court held that it would be fundamentally unfair to permit defendants to unilaterally modify their sides of the plea bargains while simultaneously holding the State to its side of the bargain. The instant case involves a fourth type of guilty plea which is fundamentally different from the pleas this court considered in Evans and Linder. Here, as in Evans and Linder, the State agreed to drop certain charges against defendant in exchange for defendant’s plea of guilty to another charge. In stark contrast to the facts of Evans and Linder, however, the plea bargain in the instant case was utterly silent as to the sentence which defendant would receive. In this case, therefore, both the State and the defendant were free to argue for any sentence provided for in the Unified Code of Corrections. Likewise, the trial court was able to exercise its full discretion in selecting any sentence permitted by law. Accordingly, where the record is clear that absolutely no agreement existed between the parties as to defendant’s sentence, defendant manifestly cannot be breaching such a nonexistent agreement by arguing that the sentence which the court imposed was excessive. Defendant never agreed, impliedly or otherwise, to accept whatever sentence the trial court might have imposed. As a consequence, the contract principles which guided this court’s decisions in Evans and Linder cannot prevent defendant from appealing the length of his sentence under the facts of this case. CONCLUSION For the reasons stated above, the judgment of the appellate court, remanding the cause to the circuit court for the filing of a certificate of compliance with Rule 604(d) and for further proceedings, is affirmed. Judgment affirmed. JUSTICE RATHJE took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.   But see Linder, 186 Ill. 2d at 82-83 (Heiple, J., dissenting) (arguing that defendant did not impliedly agree to accept any sentence below the agreed-upon cap).