Court Opinion

ID: 9745404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:54:33.914057+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:00.239164
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE MILLER, specially concurring: I concur in the court’s judgment but write separately to explain further my conclusion that trial counsel was not ineffective. As the majority opinion explains, counsel’s presentation of evidence that could, in a proper case, support a compulsion defense enabled counsel to establish, at an early point in the proceedings, a theory of mitigation. The choice of evidence to present is a matter of trial strategy to which a court considering a claim of ineffective assistance will normally defer. Strickland v. Washington (1984), 466 U.S. 668, 689, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674, 694-95, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 2065; People v. Barrow (1989), 133 Ill. 2d 226, 247. I do not agree with the majority’s suggestion, however, that the defendant’s consent to counsel’s strategic choice was necessary. (148 Ill. 2d at 473.) A defendant alleging ineffective assistance must generally show that counsel’s performance was deficient and that the defense was prejudiced as a result. (Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687, 80 L. Ed. 2d at 693, 104 S. Ct. at 2064; People v. Albanese (1984), 104 Ill. 2d 504, 526-27 (adopting Strickland standard).) The burdens of production and persuasion are on the defendant; except in rare cases, courts do not presume the existence of either of these elements. For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in People v. Hattery (1985), 109 Ill. 2d 449, 468 (Miller, J., dissenting), I continue to believe that a defendant should not be relieved from establishing the Strickland components merely on the ground that counsel pursued, without the defendant’s of-record consent, a trial strategy that effectively acknowledged the defendant’s guilt to the trier of fact. The evidence of consent relied on by the majority in the present case demonstrates the practical difficulty of imposing such a requirement on the ineffective-assistance inquiry. In its discussion, the majority apparently is. alluding to an entry in trial counsel’s fee petition, submitted after the conclusion of the sentencing hearing. In that entry, counsel states that on a specified date he “outline[d] proposed strategy after having secured client’s approval for defense”; there is no indication of what counsel told the defendant on that occasion. If counsel had failed to make this particular entry, with its oblique reference to the client’s consent, would the majority then conclude that the defendant had established his claim? I do not believe that Strickland requires — or that Hattery contemplates — our combing records for whatever evidence of consent might be discerned.