Court Opinion

ID: 9819277
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:21:39.411847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:11:32.976712
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE KUEHN, dissenting: It appears that litigants can no longer escape trial’s commencement in venues inhabited by people likely to be unfair to their pursuits. Today’s decision immanently alters their statutory right to obtain a venue transfer prior to trial. The change-of-venue statute’s design to bypass a potentially unfair juror base before trial begins hereafter yields to an opponent’s right to conduct voir dire examination. Parties advantaged by an area’s prejudice will simply raise the objection that this case validates. Thus, venue-change requests universally fall prey to demands for the very thing they seek to avoid — the start of trial in a hostile venue. The majority reasons that reputable inhabitants’ perceptions of prejudice at large are speculative of the prejudice that may or may not infect a litigant’s specific jury panel. Absent discourse with actual venire members, it is impossible to assign actual prejudice to them. The majority notes that an accurate measure of actual prejudice infecting the specific jury panel compels voir dire of that panel. This, of course, is absolutely true. It is mindless, however, of the change-of-venue statute and its express purpose. Defendants’ assertion of the right to conduct voir dire cannot constitute a valid objection to venue change without the sacrifice of the statute’s design and the contradiction of its express terms. If a party’s right to venue change must await a jury panel, voir dire examination, and discovery of actual prejudice in the minds of jury panel members, the right is effectively abrogated. The majority’s reasoning embraces the notion that randomly selected jurors might not harbor the same prejudice known to exist among the inhabitants at large. It follows that voir dire examination becomes a necessary adjunct to any decision to change venue. To obtain a venue change, a party must commence trial and expose a degree of actual juror prejudice incapable of being culled from the jury. Clearly, this is not what our law contemplates. If it did, the change-of-venue statute would be pointless. The change-of-venue statute contemplates a determination that sufficient prejudice infests the potential juror base to jeopardize the discovery of unbiased, free-thinking jurors necessary to fair trials with just outcomes. The statute authorizes the trial court to decide whether an area’s prejudice toward a party is pervasive enough to potentially evade safeguards in the jury selection process. The statute’s procedures exist in the recognition of prejudice’s insidious nature. Its machinery is designed to avoid voir dire examination. It allows a party to evade voir dire's test of conscience and candor in venues where it is known in advance of trial that jurors will be drawn from a populace that harbors widespread prejudice toward that party. The trial court, in the exercise of sound discretion, must decide in advance of trial whether prejudice exists and, if so, whether its potential impact warrants departure from the forum without an attempt to impanel a jury. The decision rests upon whether pretrial affidavits convince the trial court that enough prejudice exists to conclude that a party may not receive a fair trial in the venue. The touchstone is not, as the majority states, "whether prejudice has actually infected the population of the county to a degree that a fair and impartial jury cannot be found.” (Emphasis added.) 292 Ill. App. 3d at 826. The majority’s reasoning relies on cases that are inapposite. Where trial courts exercise discretion to forego venue change and proceed to trial, the voir dire process is a valuable tool with which to assess discretion’s abuse. The cases stand for nothing more. They certainly do not confer the right to demand voir dire examination to parties that oppose a venue-change request. As much as I disagree with the majority’s view of the law, I disagree more with its view of the facts. The majority believes that Judge Herndon abused his discretion. In effect, it concludes that no reasonable decision-maker would adopt the view taken by Judge Herndon. The problem with his decision, we are told, is a total absence of evidence to support his belief that Karla Morgan may not receive a fair trial in Bond County. In my view, this record not only supports trial in a different venue, it compels it. First, this is not a suit to recover damages for the death of a stillborn baby. It is a suit to recover for Karla Morgan’s loss of childbearing organs, a circumstance that deeply impacts her marriage to John Morgan. Bond County inhabitants’ attitudes toward the Morgan marriage bear directly on the lawsuit. The record presents the following circumstances based on evidence in the form of affidavits and exhibits in support and opposition of the venue-change petition. Karla Morgan is Caucasian. Bond County people are mostly Caucasian. Only 2% of Bond County inhabitants are black-skinned and Karla Morgan is married to one of them. The Morgan marriage is decidedly uncommon for the area. It is so novel that people simply identify Karla Morgan as "the white woman that married that black man.” On occasion, her epithet assumes an overtly negative tone. Some people simply refer to Karla Morgan as "that nigger lover.” Whether inhabitants identify plaintiff by a politically correct epithet or reduce it to a simple racial slur, the characterization unmistakably implies the prejudgment of her marriage’s worth, a marriage that can no longer beget children because of the alleged malpractice. The Morgans’ marriage, their daughter’s death, and their lawsuit against the area’s only hospital are common topics of discussion among the populace. People can be heard "talking distinctively about the Morgans and how it is a blessing that their baby died, because it was going to be half and half.” Without question, the community exhibits a widespread individualized prejudice toward Karla Morgan and her lawsuit. It has as its core a ubiquitous disapproval of Karla Morgan’s interracial marriage. It manifests itself in repeated comments about Karla Morgan, her child’s death, and her lawsuit. These comments speak to prospective jurors who believe that her child’s death bestowed a blessing and who believe that her lawsuit is a spurious assignment of blame. The specific animus toward plaintiff and her interracial marriage coincides with a broader community prejudice toward blacks in general, which brings me to my final point. The majority totally misses the mark in its discussion of Ku Kluxery and this record. The Ku Klux Klan rally was designed to educate Bond County inhabitants on the Klan’s creed of hatred toward integration and its evils. Interracial marriage is one of those evils. The Grand Titan of the Federation Klans-Knights of the Ku Klux Klan cancelled the rally because "after meeting with officials and discussing the racial situation with various individuals *** [he] did not find any racial problems justifying the rally.” The Ku Klux Klan’s Grand Titan is a specialist among specialists in racial prejudice. He lives by a creed steeped in a tradition of hatred toward integration — a creed that debases interracial marriage. His affidavit’s assessment of Bond County attitudes toward interracial marriage is a compelling part of this record. His cancellation of Klan activity in Bond County offers an eerie confirmation of the affiants’ perceptions. After an investigation of the area’s racial situation, the Grand Titan determined that Klan activity in Bond County was unnecessary. When the Grand Titan of the Ku Klux Klan observes a racial pearl, it is quite reasonable to imply the presence of racial poison. The Grand Titan’s stamp of approval for an area’s racial views depicts an area where a white woman married to a black man may not receive a fair trial. I believe a reasonable decision-maker might well adopt the approach taken by Judge Herndon and allow Karla Morgan a different juror base. For the reasons stated, I dissent.