Court Opinion

ID: 9525016
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:59:14.032638+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:12:34.865782
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE O’MALLEY, concurring in part and dissenting in part: The majority’s holding will award a subclass of defendants a sentencing windfall that is blatantly contrary to the legislature’s intent, and, in light of the currently-contemplated initiative to reorganize our Criminal Code, it could have far-reaching consequences. The effects of this holding are not confined to reckless homicide defendants who may receive a sentencing windfall. Criminal Law Edit, Alignment and Reform (CLEAR), an independent commission charged with revising our state’s Criminal Code, has proposed a sweeping redraft and reorganization of the Code. If the legislature acts upon CLEAR’s recommendations, the reasoning used in this case will wreak havoc upon our criminal justice system on an enormous and unprecedented scale. Under the majority’s holding, a defendant who was charged with drug-influenced reckless homicide prior to the legislature’s enactment of Public Act 93 — 213, who was concurrently convicted of nothing that carries a more severe penalty than drug-influenced reckless homicide, and who was not sentenced until after the enactment of Public Act 93 — 213, is subject to a sentencing range less than half as severe as the otherwise applicable sentencing range. Compare 720 ILCS 5/9— 3(e) (West 2000) (3- to 14-year sentencing range for drug-influenced reckless homicide) with 720 ILCS 5/9 — 3(a) (West 2004) (2- to 5-year sentencing range for reckless homicide).1 The majority’s holding creates a window for defendants who were charged but not yet sentenced at the time Public Act 93 — 213 was enacted, and defendants who fall into that window receive starkly more favorable sentencing treatment than other defendants who are guilty of precisely the same misconduct, solely because of the timing of the proceedings against them. It is inconceivable as a matter of common sense that, in reorganizing the Criminal and Vehicle Codes in response to our supreme court’s decision in Pomykala, the legislature intended that a defendant be subject to a sentence potentially nine years longer simply because either his sentence was issued one day before the window began or he was charged one day after the window began. However, under the majority’s holding, we have just such an absurd result. A defendant charged one day before the enactment of Public Act 93 — 213 but sentenced after it is subject to a maximum 5-year sentence, but a defendant sentenced for the same crime that day, or a defendant charged one day later, is subject to a maximum 14-year sentence. Practical considerations of legislative intent aside, I disagree with the majority’s analysis of defendant’s argument that he was denied due process by virtue of the fact that he was not advised of his right to elect to be sentenced under either the law in effect at the time of the offense or the law in effect at the time of sentencing. Under my view, defendant did have a right to such an election, but for the reasons I detail below, any failure to advise him of that right was harmless, because he was subject to the same sentencing scheme under either the law in place at the time of his offense or the law in place at the time of his sentencing. Defendant was convicted of drug-influenced reckless homicide (720 ILCS 5/9 — 3(e) (West 2000) (hereinafter, reckless homicide 2000)), which required proof that defendant unintentionally killed another while driving a vehicle and under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Defendant argues that, under the law in effect at the time of his sentencing, reckless homicide (720 ILCS 5/9 — 3(a) (West 2004) (hereinafter, reckless homicide 2004)) carries a lower sentencing range. However, a conviction for reckless homicide 2004 requires proof that a defendant unintentionally killed another while driving a vehicle— there is no provision requiring that the defendant was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the offense. Therefore, the conduct described under the label “reckless homicide 2000” is different from the conduct described under the label “reckless homicide 2004.” Current aggravated DUI (625 ILCS 5/11 — 501(d)(1)(F) (West 2004) (hereinafter, aggravated DUI 2004)), on the other hand, describes exactly the same conduct as reckless homicide 2000 — it requires proof that a defendant unintentionally killed another while driving a vehicle and under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Therefore, under the law in effect at the time defendant was sentenced, his conduct was labeled “aggravated DUI” and not “reckless homicide,” and he would be sentenced under the provisions of aggravated DUI 2004. In my view, then, because the sentencing ranges (as well as the elements) for reckless homicide 2000 and aggravated DUI 2004 are identical (compare 720 ILCS 5/9 — 3(e) (West 2000) (Class 2 felony, 3- to 14-year sentencing range) with 625 ILCS 5/11 — 501(d)(2) (West 2004) (Class 2 felony, 3- to 14-year sentencing range)), defendant’s election as to which set of laws to be sentenced under would have been meaningless. The majority devotes considerable analysis to the issue of whether the State could have amended the indictment to charge defendant with aggravated DUI 2004, and from that discussion it concludes that, because the State could not have amended the indictment in response to an election for sentencing under the law in effect at the time of sentencing, defendant would have been entitled to sentencing under a less onerous sentencing scheme if he had so elected. 369 Ill. App. 3d at 173-78.1 agree with the majority that, under Tellez-Valencia, the State could not have amended the indictment to charge defendant with a crime that did not exist at the time of the offense, but that issue has no bearing on this case. While a prosecutor could not ask for sentencing (or a conviction or an indictment) under a law not in effect at the time of the alleged offense, a defendant may elect to be sentenced under a later law. Indeed, in any case where the defendant invokes the rule that he may elect to be sentenced “under either the law in effect at the time the offense was committed or [the law] in effect at the time of sentencing” (Hollins, 51 Ill. 2d at 71), the defendant will opt to be sentenced under a set of laws under which a prosecutor could not charge him. Therefore, the fact that the State could not have amended the indictment is an effective counterargument to the State’s contention that defendant suffered no prejudice because a superceding indictment would have mooted his election, but it is irrelevant to the sentencing issue presented here. That said, I must note that, while I may personally disagree with our supreme court’s holding in TellezValencia and find the dissent more persuasive, even in Tellez-Valencia the defendants were not granted a windfall as a result of a technicality, but instead faced retrial with unchanged sentencing provisions. Thus, not only does Tellez-Valencia not dictate the result the majority reaches (in fact, it is not even relevant to this sentencing issue), even Tellez-Valencia itself did not lead to the absurd sentencing consequences the majority reaches. Rather, as the Tellez-Valencia dissent noted, it only led to a waste of judicial resources in the form of a new trial with the defendant facing the same sentencing scheme. I also disagree with the majority’s approach to determining which of defendant’s convictions was the more serious. The majority determines the seriousness of the two crimes of which defendant was convicted, reckless homicide 2000 and aggravated DUI (625 ILCS 5/11 — 5019(d)(1)(C) (West 2000) (hereinafter, aggravated DUI 2000)), by comparing the sentencing provisions of reckless homicide 2004 and aggravated DUI 2000. However, the rule upon which the majority relies in taking this approach, that the penalty assigned to an offense is the best indicator of the legislature’s view as to how serious the offense is (see 369 Ill. App. 3d at 180), is meant as an aid to determining the legislature’s intent. I do not understand how the sentencing provisions of reckless homicide 2004 can be used in this way to determine how the legislature viewed reckless homicide in 2000. Even assuming that reckless homicide 2000 and reckless homicide 2004 describe the same crime (which they do not), the fact that the legislature decreased the applicable sentence in 2004 has no bearing on the seriousness of the 2000 version of the offense. Therefore, I disagree with the majority’s reasoning that aggravated DUI 2000 is a more serious offense than reckless homicide 2000 because the maximum sentence associated with reckless homicide 2004 is lower than that associated with aggravated DUI 2000. Further, in resorting to what it views as the possible sentencing ranges under which defendant may elect to be sentenced to determine which conviction to vacate under the one-act, one-crime rule, the majority conflates the issues of the crime defendant should be convicted of and the sentencing scheme he may elect based on that conviction. The majority’s approach determines defendant’s sentencing options before determining his conviction. Of course, the trial court cannot consider a defendant’s sentence (except as it examines potential sentences for related convictions as an interpretive aid in applying the one-act, one-crime rule) until it determines defendant’s conviction. For the above reasons, I dissent from the portion of the majority opinion addressing defendant’s due process and sentencing election argument. I concur with the remainder of the opinion.  The majority holds that defendant here would not receive the windfall I describe, because he is eligible to be convicted and sentenced for former aggravated DUI, which carries a 1- to 12-year sentencing range.