Court Opinion

ID: 9744515
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:04:57.272048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:49.797550
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE HARRISON, dissenting: The system for imposing capital punishment in Illinois has collapsed. Trial proceedings had become so unreliable and appellate review so haphazard that the Governor was eventually forced to step in and declare a moratorium on future executions. That moratorium, announced on January 31, 2000, remains in effect. See People v. Simms, 192 Ill. 2d 348, 432 (2000) (Harrison, C.J., dissenting). Legislative and executive branch committees are investigating whether the failures in our death penalty law can be remedied or whether the death penalty should simply be abolished.1 As we await their conclusions, our court has formed its own committee to examine the problem. Based upon the work of that committee, we have adopted a comprehensive set of new rules governing the conduct of cases in which the State is seeking the death penalty. With certain exceptions, the new rules took effect March 1, 2001. The new rules clarify the duty of prosecuting attorneys (amended Rule 3.8 of the Rules of Professional Conduct), establish mandatory programs to improve the knowledge and skill of trial judges who may be called upon to preside over capital cases (Rule 43), extend criminal discovery rules to capital sentencing hearings (Rule 411), and impose on the State a duty to make a good-faith effort to identify material or information which tends to negate the guilt of the accused or reduce his punishment (Rule 412). The rules also create a new set of procedures that must be followed in capital cases. Among these are rules which require the State to give prompt notice of its intention to seek or reject imposition of the death penalty, limit eligibility to serve as defense counsel to attorneys who meet stringent new minimum qualifications, authorize discovery depositions in capital cases, mandate case management conferences after the State has disclosed its intention to seek the death penalty, and obligate the State to certify before trial that it has complied with its disclosure duties (Rule 416). In addition, new pretrial disclosure rules are imposed with respect to DNA evidence (Rule 417). As the committee comments to these rules indicate, they are designed “to ensure that capital defendants receive fair and impartial trials and to minimize the occurrence of error in capital trials.” 188 Ill. 2d R. 416, Committee Comments, at lxxii. These are objectives that were clearly not being met under the old law. Indeed, in many cases under the old law, there was no longer even a pretense of fairness or accuracy. A majority of this court expressly conceded the inherent unreliability of the system. People v. Bull, 185 Ill. 2d 179, 215-18 (1998). Appeals were illegally and summarily dismissed. People v. Kokoraleis, M.R 15833 (March 8, 1999). The case before us today illustrates many of the system’s shortcomings. Defendant is a polio victim with hearing and speech impediments whose intelligence is borderline retarded. The surviving victim’s initial description of her assailant bore no similarity to defendant, and when asked to identify defendant later, she stated that she had never seen him before. People v. Hickey, 178 Ill. 2d 256, 263-64 (1997). No fingerprints, shoe impressions or fiber evidence connected defendant to the crime. The murder weapon was not linked to him. A man seen by the victims’ automobile after the crime did not resemble defendant. Hickey, 178 Ill. 2d at 264-67, 273-74. What convicted defendant was DNA evidence. The DNA evidence used against him, however, was of dubious validity. The quality assurance standards of the laboratory were questionable. Hickey, 178 Ill. 2d at 271. The initial samples were destroyed through mishandling. The discovery of additional samples raised suspicions. Virtually all of the samples had degraded or were of poor quality. Hickey, 178 Ill. 2d at 272. In addition, the State employee who performed the tests was reprimanded for sloppy and unprofessional work, was found to have been dishonest, and was disciplined for stealing state property. Despite the weaknesses in the State’s case, the jury convicted defendant and he was sentenced to death. Despite the array of problems that developed before and during defendant’s trial, the majority has found a way to affirm the conviction and sentence. The formal process was honored. If the capital punishment debacle of the last few years has taught us anything, however, it is that adherence to the formal process; as it existed under the old law, can produce results that seem rational but are, in fact, completely unreliable. In addressing the shortcomings of the past, the new supreme court rules for capital cases reflect a basic shift in this court’s conception of what is necessary to provide capital defendants with a fair trial. Our tolerance for prosecutorial gamesmanship and professional incompetence has evaporated. From now on, the success of prosecutors will be gauged by how well they cooperate in the search for truth and justice, not by the number of convictions they secure. It cannot be any other way. The old priorities do not work. When convictions are prized above justice, innocent men are sentenced to die. It has happened too often in Illinois. It must stop. The evidence presented to our committee and the committee’s subsequent recommendations have persuaded us that the procedures contained in the new rules are indispensable for achieving an accurate determination of innocence or guilt. Those procedures will not necessarily assure that error will be eliminated from every murder case in which the State seeks the death penalty. Without them, however, no capital proceeding can be deemed reliable. As a general rule, changes in the law which are procedural in nature, as these rules are, apply to all cases pending on direct review without regard to whether the claims arose before or after the change in the law occurred. People v. Nitz, 173 Ill. 2d 151, 162 (1996), overruled on other grounds by People v. Mitchell, 189 Ill. 2d 312 (2000); Matter v. Chicago Board of Education, 82 Ill. 2d 373, 390 (1980). That is unquestionably so where the new law expressly defines its temporal reach to include pending cases. See Commonwealth Edison v. Will County Collector, 196 Ill. 2d 27, 38 (2001) (where legislature has clearly indicated what the temporal reach of an amended statute should be, that expression of legislative intent must be given effect absent a constitutional prohibition). The same is true of rules promulgated by this court. Our court has the authority to specify the particular date new rules or amendments to rules take effect. If we so specify, the effective date of the new rules “shall be as ordered.” 188 Ill. 2d R. 3(g). Once the effective date has been reached, the new rules are applicable to all cases pending on direct review, even cases which commenced before the rules were enacted. That is so because, as with new procedural statutes, rules of court which are procedural in nature have retroactive application. See Jarmon v. Jinks, 165 Ill. App. 3d 855, 863 (1987). Because rules of procedure apply retroactively, we have not hesitated to apply our new rules governing capital cases to cases coming before us on direct review. See People ex rel. Birkett v. Bakalis, 196 Ill. 2d 510, 513 (2001). We should take the same approach in cases such as this one which come before us in the context of post-conviction proceedings. A court’s adoption of new rules of court governing criminal procedure is analogous to its issuance of a judicial opinion recognizing new rules of criminal procedure. Where the court issues an opinion announcing new rules of criminal procedure and the rules are of constitutional dimension, the new rules may be invoked by other defendants in other cases on collateral review where such rules implicate the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the trial. People v. Caballero, 179 Ill. 2d 205, 220-21 (1997). To qualify for application under this principle, the new rules must be aimed at improving the accuracy of trial and be of such importance that they alter our understanding of the bedrock procedural elements essential to a fair trial. Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U.S. 227, 242, Ill L. Ed. 2d 193, 211, 110 S. Ct. 2822, 2831 (1990). For the reasons previously discussed, the new rules governing capital cases plainly meet this requirement. They represent a basic and unprecedented shift in our conception of what we must do to afford defendants a fair trial in death penalty cases and to assure that the results of such trials are consistently reliable. A new, irreducible standard has been set. Now that the new standard is in place, we cannot countenance any conviction or sentence in a capital case where the standard has not been followed. If the new rules are so essential to the fairness and accuracy of capital cases and if we are serious about our intention to improve the reliability of capital proceedings, we must disavow any presumption as to the fairness and accuracy of death penalty cases prosecuted under the old law. The only presumption to be made at this point is that any conviction and sentence obtained without the aid of the new rules is invalid. Because the defendant in the case before us was tried, convicted and sentenced without the benefit of the new rules, his conviction and sentence should therefore be vacated and the cause should be remanded to the circuit court for a new trial in conformity with our new rules. Even if defendant were not entitled to a new trial, I still could not join in the majority’s opinion. For the reasons set forth in my partial concurrence and partial dissent in People v. Bull, 185 Ill. 2d 179 (1998), the Illinois death penalty law violates the eighth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution (U.S. Const., amends. VIII, XTV) and article I, section 2, of the Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const. 1970, art. I, § 2). At a minimum, defendant’s sentence of death should therefore be vacated, and the cause should be remanded to the circuit court for imposition of a sentence of imprisonment. 720 ILCS 5/9 — l(j) (West 1994).  In the interim, the deterrent effect of the death penalty has been brought into serious question. Preliminary statistics compiled by the Illinois State Police show that during the first three quarters of 2000, when the Governor’s moratorium took effect and executions were halted, the murder rate in Illinois actually declined by 9.7% as compared to the same period a year earlier. By contrast, the overall crime rate declined by only 2.5%.