Court Opinion

ID: 9712226
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:49:30.109698+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:11.058747
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE FREEMAN, also dissenting: I find myself in a somewhat unusual situation in this case, for I agree with the majority that the better rule is that inconsistent verdicts should simply be allowed to stand. This is how I believed the issue should have been resolved in Klingenberg. See Klingenberg, 172 Ill. 2d at 285-89 (Miller, J, dissenting, joined by Freeman, J.). And yet I must dissent. The basis for my departure from the majority is the doctrine of stare decisis.3 I must agree with Justice McMorrow that neither the majority nor the special concurrence has given sufficient reason that stare decisis should not dictate our result. Disagreement with the analysis employed in previous cases is simply not sufficient — such an exception would wholly swallow the rule. Accordingly, I join parts I, II, and IV of Justice McMorrow’s dissent. I do not join part III of her dissent, because I believe that if stare decisis is to be abandoned, the better course is to do away with inconsistent verdict analysis altogether, as the majority does.  This doctrine did not dictate nay vote in Klingenberg, which was the first Illinois case to consider whether we should continue to reverse inconsistent verdicts in the wake of Powell. That decision by the high court, reanalyzing and reaffirming the repudiation of the doctrine in the federal courts, was sufficient cause to reweigh the issue’s merits.