Court Opinion

ID: 9860719
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:30:50.217409+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:26:33.628337
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE McCORMICK, specially concurring: In Davis, as in this case, the trial court entered two separate convictions for a single act. (Davis, 156 Ill. 2d at 153.) The defendant in Davis, like defendant here, failed to raise the one-act-one-crime issue either on direct appeal or in his post-conviction petition. (Davis, 156 Ill. 2d at 152.) The two defendants raised the issue only on appeal from denial of petitions for post-conviction relief. (Davis, 156 Ill. 2d at 158-59.) Our supreme court in Davis held that the defendant there waived the argument, and the courts could not invoke the plain error doctrine to review a claim waived in this manner. Davis, 156 Ill. 2d at 159. Despite this holding the court in Davis, in the exercise of its supervisory authority, vacated the improper conviction for the lesser offense. (Davis, 156 Ill. 2d at 160.) Here, defendant’s improper convictions for aggravated battery and armed violence subject him to much the same prejudice that the supreme court found the defendant faced in Davis (156 Ill. 2d at 160). Although this case presents virtually the same grounds which led our supreme court to vacate the improper convictions and remand for resentencing, this court is without the supervisory authority the supreme court invoked in that case. Supervisory authority vests solely in the supreme court. (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VI, § 16; see Jam Productions, Ltd. v. Dominick’s Finer Foods, Inc. (1983), 120 Ill. App. 3d 8, 13-14, 458 N.E.2d 100.) We have the general power vested in courts to correct the record, remedy errors of mistake and to supply omissions. However, this power does not extend to correcting the actual declared judgment of the trial court where the purported error in the underlying post-conviction proceeding is waived. Only the supreme court can vacate an improper conviction under these circumstances.