Court Opinion

ID: 9819447
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:25:26.238306+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:30.624549
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE STEIGMANN, specially concurring: Although I concur with the opinion in this case, I write this special concurrence to address an issue this court discussed in Peete, namely, the application of the supreme court’s decision in Atkinson. In Peete, this court rejected the State’s reliance on Atkinson as a basis for not using the Old Chief rationale on the ground that Old Chief dealt with prior convictions as an element of the crime, whereas Atkinson dealt with prior convictions for impeachment purposes. Peete, 318 Ill. App. 3d at 968. Although that observation is correct, this nonetheless is largely a distinction without a difference. The fundamental policy underlying both the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Old Chief and the mere-fact method of impeachment by prior conviction is the same: permit the State to introduce only such prior conviction evidence as is necessary to achieve the State’s legitimate goals without “dirtying up” the defendant. For the reasons discussed by the dissent in Atkinson, the supreme court’s decision in that case, rejecting the mere-fact method, is badly flawed and should be reconsidered. People v. Atkinson, 186 Ill. 2d 450, 464-72, 713 N.E.2d 532, 539-42 (1999) (Rathje, J., dissenting). Given the frequency with which efforts occur to impeach testifying defendants with their prior convictions and the importance that the rules governing these efforts be sound, one hopes that the new majority of the Supreme Court of Illinois will use the opportunity, when reviewing this court’s decisions to apply Old Chief to Illinois law, to overrule Atkinson.