Court Opinion

ID: 9523922
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:48:20.774384+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:08:34.961967
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE MILLER, specially concurring: I concur in the judgment of the court. Unlike the majority, however, I would hold that the defendant’s third-amended post-conviction petition was a repetitive filing and warrants dismissal on that ground alone. As the majority opinion recounts, the circuit court dismissed the defendant’s second-amended post-conviction petition and later denied the defendant’s motion for reconsideration, in which the defendant sought, among other things, leave to supplement the second-amended petition. The defendant then filed a notice of appeal from those rulings. About seven months later, while the appeal was. pending, the defendant filed a third-amended post-conviction petition. Besides repeating a number of old claims, the third-amended petition raised new challenges to the performance of trial counsel and to the impartiality of the jury used at trial. If the procedural history recited by the majority demonstrates anything, it is that the defendant’s third-amended post-conviction petition was a repetitive filing and is barred from consideration by the rule that severely limits the submission of successive post-conviction petitions. Section 122 — 3 of the Post-Conviction Hearing Act provides, "Any claim of substantial denial of constitutional rights not raised in the original or an amended petition is waived.” (725 ILCS 5/122 — 3 (West 1994).) This court has consistently held that a defendant may file successive petitions only in exceptional circumstances, as when the original proceedings were deficient in some fundamental way and the defendant can demonstrate both cause for his failure to present his claims in a timely manner and prejudice from the procedural default. (People v. Flores (1992), 153 Ill. 2d 264, 273-80; People v. Free (1988), 122 Ill. 2d 367, 376-78.) The reasons marshalled by the majority in support of its consideration of the defendant’s third-amended post-conviction petition are unpersuasive. The majority opinion first mentions that the post-conviction judge apparently did not regard the third-amended petition as a successive filing; the majority notes that the judge, in disposing of the third-amended petition, ruled on issues he had previously decided and declined to reject other contentions as waived, even though the argument was then made that these claims were being presented in a successive filing. 169 111. 2d at 368-69. I do not see how the post-conviction court’s rationale for disposing of the defendant’s third-amended petition prevents this court from determining whether or not the defendant could file that petition in the first place. The post-conviction judge’s reasons for dismissing the petition are not binding on this court, which may affirm the judgment below on any ground supported by the record (Material Service Corp. v. Department of Revenue (1983), 98 Ill. 2d 382, 387); after all, "the question before a reviewing court is the correctness of the result reached by the trial court, and not the correctness of the reasoning upon which that result was reached” (People v. York (1963), 29 Ill. 2d 68, 71). That the post-conviction judge failed to recognize the defendant’s third-amended petition as an invalid successive filing does not mean that this court must now follow the same course. The majority also notes that the defendant’s appeal from the dismissal of his second-amended petition lay dormant in this court for several years while the third-amended petition was being litigated in the circuit court. (169 Ill. 2d at 369.) The majority apparently believes that as long as a reviewing court has not yet disposed of one post-conviction petition, a defendant is free to file additional petitions. No authority is offered in support of this remarkable proposition, which squarely conflicts with the considerations of finality that underlie the statutory bar to successive post-conviction petitions. The operation of that prohibition should not depend on the progress of the defendant’s initial petition through the channels of appellate review. Notably, the majority does not attempt to fit this case within the limited range of exceptions to the rule disallowing successive post-conviction petitions. The majority fails to explain in what way the original proceedings were deficient or fundamentally unfair. (See Free, 122 Ill. 2d at 376.) Nor does the case involve the presentation of a new, previously unavailable claim of ineffective assistance of counsel on direct appeal, an issue that this court has said may be presented in a successive petition. (See Flores, 153 Ill. 2d at 280.) The majority insists that the circumstances in this case are unusual, but I believe that the only thing unusual about the case is the majority’s failure to enforce the customary bar against successive post-conviction petitions.