Court Opinion

ID: 9725851
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:15:28.026137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:20.585868
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: The course the majority follows in disposing of this appeal is hypertechnical. Avoiding decision on the merits of defendant’s argument that he has been subjected to double jeopardy advances neither justice nor the need for orderly procedures. I prefer the appellate court’s more practical approach. That court, although acknowledging that the path the defendant took to the reviewing court was misconceived, in the interest of justice and under the authority of Supreme Court Rule 366(a)(5) (73 Ill. 2d R. 366(a)(5)) fashioned a remedy by treating defendant’s habeas corpus petition as a motion to dismiss the prosecution equivalent to a plea in abatement and a plea in bar (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1979, ch. 38, pars. 3—4(a)(2), 114—1(a)(2)) and by regarding the petition as consolidated with the case in which the defendant was prosecuted and convicted. The records of the circuit court of Madison County do not disclose any notice of appeal filed by the defendant from his criminal conviction. Thus the majority’s suggestion that resolution of the defendant’s contention should await appeal from his criminal conviction is unrealistic; it is now too late for him to prosecute such an appeal. The explanation, no doubt, for defendant’s failure to file a notice of appeal is that he assumed his pending appeal from the circuit court’s denial of his habeas corpus application would provide a vehicle for deciding the significance of his dismissal “with prejudice” and a further appeal would be unnecessary. The majority now tells us that he was mistaken in that conclusion. Thus, his next step, assuming he is not already exhausted by the barriers the law’s technicalities have placed in his path, is to file a post-conviction petition alleging his attorney improperly overlooked filing a notice of appeal from his conviction, thereby depriving him of effective assistance of counsel. Then he would be back in the circuit court and perhaps he would find it necessary to appeal again to the appellate court and even this court. Although I appreciate that ordinarily courts should not anticipate events that might happen in the future, a post-conviction proceeding appears to be such a likely prospect here that I think we should conserve judicial time by addressing, as the appellate court did, the merits of defendant’s double jeopardy contention. To do so under the circumstances of this case would not undermine the requirement that a party must file a notice of appeal within the time prescribed by the rules after a criminal conviction. The problem in this case is that defendant’s notice of appeal was filed before his conviction, but he was tried and convicted while his appeal was pending. Because the court prefers to delay its consideration of the substantive aspects of this case and in view of the possibility that this case may again reach this court, I feel I should refrain from expressing my views at this time on the double jeopardy question. I respectfully dissent however from the manner in which the court is disposing of this appeal; to raise the procedural barrier in this case is to complicate the litigation instead of to dispense justice.