Court Opinion

ID: 9520101
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:31:24.59446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:32.413735
License: Public Domain

Mr. PRESIDING JUSTICE BARRY, specially concurring: I concur generally with the majority opinion both as to the reasoning expressed therein and the result reached. Nevertheless, I wish to comment upon the case of People v. Walker (1st Dist. 1974), 18 Ill. App. 3d 351, 309 N.E.2d 716, which is relied upon by the State and the dissenting opinion. The Walker case involved the same offense of leaving the scene of an accident as here. The issue raised there was whether the indictment charging the offense was sufficient absent an allegation of the mental state of knowledge. The court upheld the conviction finding an allegation of mental state was not necessary. The court relied upon the case of People v. Fernow (1919), 286 Ill. 627, 122 N.E. 155, and People v. Player (1941), 377 Ill. 417, 36 N.E.2d 729, both of which are factually distinguishable. Both those cases upheld the validity of different absolute liability statutes, and neither can be interpreted as reading into the offense of leaving the scene of an accident the legislative intent to make such statute one of absolute liability. The failure of an indictment to allege all the elements of an offense, as in Walker, is not a jurisdictional defect. (People v. Rege (1976), 64 Ill. 2d 473, 356 N.E.2d 537.) Furthermore an indictment or information phrased essentially in the terms of the statutory offense has been held to be sufficient. (See People v. Grant (1974), 57 Ill. 2d 264, 312 N.E.2d 276, and People v. Grieco (1970), 44 Ill. 2d 407, 255 N.E.2d 897.) With regard to an error in jury instructions defining the elements of the crime charged, I believe there can be no such indulgent nature as with an indictment. In the case at bar the error occurred in a failure to instruct the jury as to a necessary element of the offense charged, the mental state of knowledge that an accident occurred. The statute (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 95%, par. 11 — 401(a)) proscribes leaving the scene of an accident involving injury or death. As the majority opinion correctly points out the jury must be properly instructed that the prosecution has the burden of proving that the accused had knowledge of the collision itself. It follows therefrom that the jury, if it concludes that the defendant had such guilty knowledge, may infer from the circumstances of the vehicular accident that the defendant also had knowledge that the collision was of such a violent character as to involve injury or death. In the instant case the defendant stopped, apparently within sight distance and looked back, and the jury could infer saw some result of the head-on accident that occurred. Thus the requirement of knowledge of the injury or death caused by the accident may be found from knowledge of the accident, and therefore may operate much the same as the requirement of only knowledge of the collision.