Court Opinion

ID: 9724829
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:16:17.057771+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:06.799437
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE CLARK, concurring: If I were a philosopher-king or a Platonic Guardian I might adhere to the views of my learned brother Justice Simon on the propriety of sentencing a guilty but mentally ill (GBMI) defendant to death. Since, however, I am not a philosopher-king or a Platonic Guardian but only a judge sworn to uphold the laws of Illinois, I must endeavor to determine whether the legislature truly intended to exempt GBMI defendants from the death penalty. Since I agree with the majority that the legislature did not so intend, I concur. If the enactment of the GBMI statute precluded GBMI defendants from being sentenced to death, it would radically transform our capital punishment statutes. A large class of defendants, hitherto subject to the death penalty, would now be exempt. Before I could agree that the legislature intended such a change, I would need to see better evidence for it than that which the dissent provides. The dissent’s quotation from a statement by the bill’s co-sponsor proves little or nothing. Taken in context, the statement that a “guilty but mentally ill defendant, for example, can be ... sentenced exactly as a healthy defendant charged with the same crime, except that his sentence, either to probation, periodic imprisonment, or to the penitentiary, must include psychiatric and psychological treatment or counseling” (emphasis added) (82d Ill. Gen. Assem., Senate Proceedings, May 27, 1981, at 131) was obviously intended to reassure the legislators that a guilty but mentally ill defendant would receive no lesser punishment than a sane defendant convicted of the same crime. There is no indication that the co-sponsor’s list of possible punishments was intended to exclude the imposition of the death penalty. Had that been the intent, it would have been easy to include language so providing in the GBMI statute. More generally, I cannot agree that the provision of rehabilitative treatment to a prisoner condemned to death is an exercise in futility. A death row inmate is not a castaway on a desert island. He remains a member of society. He has civil rights and duties. A substantial fraction of his life may pass while he awaits execution. Pardon, commutation, or a successful appeal may abrogate his sentence entirely. He can do much good, or much harm, in the time which remains to him. Untreated, he may murder a fellow prisoner or a guard. Treated, he may be able to function as a useful member of prison society. I would far prefer to see a GBMI death row inmate talking to a psychiatrist instead of fashioning a shiv, and I am willing to believe that the legislature thought likewise. I therefore see no inconsistency in statutorily providing a condemned prisoner with the opportunity for psychiatric treatment. No one would argue that the treatment of an ordinary mental patient is rendered futile by the fact that the patient will not live forever. It is a truism that no one escapes from life alive; in that sense we are all under a sentence of death. I am also uncertain that exempting GBMI inmates from death would make much difference in the actual administration of the penalty. So long as GBMI defendants are not entitled to any reduction in their punishment, prosecutors will have little reason to contest pleas of GBMI. Should a GBMI finding mean the difference between life and death, however, prosecutors will be less likely to cooperate in supporting a GBMI plea. I also cannot agree with the dissent that there is an inconsistency between finding a defendant GBMI and failing to find as mitigation that he was suffering from extreme mental or emotional disturbance. I see no support for the dissent’s contention that there is a hierarchy of mental states, varying in degree of derangement from insanity to GBMI “mental illness” to extreme emotional disturbance. Without going into detail, I think that these mental states differ in kind, rather than merely in degree, for they appear in different contexts and serve different purposes. GBMI “mental illness” refers to a continuing state of mind which renders it likely that a defendant will benefit from treatment, while “extreme mental or emotional disturbance” refers to a state of mind which either makes it less likely that the persons who commit crimes while in such a state will actually be deterred by the death penalty, or which makes such persons less deserving objects of the community’s need for retribution. Finally, I note that this defendant was fully informed, on the record, that his voluntary plea of GBMI might result in the sentence of death. Had he not been so informed, I would have voted to reverse. JUSTICE WARD joins in this concurrence.