Court Opinion

ID: 9745725
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 13:29:10.603371+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:04.308901
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE McDADE, specially concurring in part and dissenting in part: I agree with all but one part of the majority’s decision. 1. Ineffective Assistance of Counsel I concur with the analysis of defendant’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel based on the Illinois Constitution, but write separately to indicate my belief that the assistance was also ineffective based on the fifth amendment to the United States Constitution. The majority notes that defendant’s fifth amendment right to counsel does not include the same guarantee of effective or competent assistance contained in the sixth amendment, because the former protects defendant only from a coerced confession. I do not deny that the general consensus of the cases is supportive of that conclusion. I do not, however, believe that the conclusion adequately addresses the challenge raised by defendant because it relates only to the boundaries of the attorney’s functions under the two amendments. When a person who has been given Miranda warnings but has not yet been charged asks for legal representation, inherent in that request is an expectation that the attorney will be competent to render advice consistent with defendant’s best interest and untainted by any competing or conflicting interests. This expectation is reasonable and is fully justified by the attorney’s ethical obligation, imposed in all 50 states, not to undertake representation when a conflict exists. It is my understanding that an attorney has the ethical duty, regardless of the nature or parameters of the representation, to advise anyone who is relying on his/her skill or judgment that there is an actual or potential conflict of interest. With specific regard to this case, I do not believe that that obligation, or the corresponding right of the defendant to rely on it, is dependent on whether representation was undertaken pursuant to the fifth or sixth amendment to the United States Constitution. For this reason, I would find that counsel’s failure to advise defendant of his relationship with the victim and her to decide whether or not to waive any conflict and put her fate in his hands was a violation of the United States Constitution’s fifth amendment as well as of the Illinois Constitution. 2. Brady Violation The majority finds that the failure of the State to disclose the laboratory report confirming the lab’s inability to analyze the water found with the victim was a discovery violation pursuant to Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 10 L. Ed. 2d 215, 83 S. Ct. 1194 (1963). But, it says, the violation is harmless because even if the report had been divulged, there was no reasonable probability that it would have affected the outcome of the trial. I cannot agree with that conclusion and, therefore, dissent from it. The State’s case against this defendant was purely circumstantial. Success in prosecuting her was dependant on the State being able to put together enough evidentiary pieces, none of which was dispositive standing alone, that cumulatively made a case for defendant’s guilt. To this end, and knowing that there was no way of tying any water to this defendant, the State produced three witnesses in an apparent attempt to associate defendant with Danny Edwards and the two of them with the purchase of bottled water of some kind. As is shown in the majority opinion, not one of the three provided any evidence that defendant, either alone or in concert with Edwards, had purchased any water of any kind. The majority acknowledges that the testimony had “extremely low probative value.” 336 Ill. App. 3d at 888. In point of fact, it had no probative value at all — a fact which leaves me wondering why the witnesses were produced at all if not to bolster the State’s case by innuendo, and why the State has battled in the circuit court and before this court to keep the evidence in. I have to wonder if the jury, too, strove, possibly successfully, to find some significance in this testimony which, although admittedly without legal probity, had acquired some worth or utility simply by virtue of having been presented. For that reason, I cannot agree with the majority that the failure to provide the defense with a way to keep that testimony out is immaterial. I believe the Brady violation was material and I would reverse the dismissal of counts IX and X of the postconviction petition and require a hearing on this issue on remand.