Court Opinion

ID: 9743241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:29:03.397695+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:23:33.346307
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: The majority opinion dramatically changes the law in Illinois governing the defendant’s rights at a restoration hearing and, therefore, I dissent. In these two cases, this court approves the use of stipulated expert testimony to deprive a defendant who has previously been adjudicated incompetent to stand trial of his statutorily guaranteed right to a fitness hearing (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 38, par. 104 — 16). The majority perceives a “clear” distinction between a stipulation that the defendant is now fit to stand trial (as was presented in People v. Reeves (1952), 412 Ill. 555) and a stipulation that a mental health expert, if called as a witness, would testify that the defendant is now fit to stand trial (the situation presented in this case). The distinction is meaningless, however, under the facts presented here. This court last ruled on this issue in 1952. The majority quotes the operative principle as set forth in Reeves, but then attempts to distinguish it away. (103 Ill. 2d at 115-16.) The quotation makes clear the concern that a defendant who is unfit to stand trial is incapable of making reasoned judgments, cooperating with counsel and guiding his own defense. This concern forms the linchpin of the current fitness statute: “A defendant is unfit if, because of his mental or physical condition, he is unable to understand the nature and purpose of the proceedings against him or to assist in his defense.” (Emphasis added.) (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 38, par. 104 — 10.) The Reeves court understood that as long as there was some possibility that a defendant was still unfit it was a contradiction in terms to allow him to stipulate to his own mental condition or to instruct his attorney to do so. The question is one of constitutional dimension since the defendant who is tried while unfit has been denied due process of law. (People v. McKinstray (1964), 30 Ill. 2d 611, 615; People v. Bender (1960), 20 Ill. 2d 45, 47-48; People v. Reeves (1952), 412 Ill. 555, 561.) Reeves further makes clear that the trial judge cannot direct a verdict on the basis of a stipulation alone. Doing so restricts the scope of the restoration hearing by excluding all evidence other than the stipulation, and thus short-circuits the provision of a full hearing. In this case no evidence other than the stipulation was presented to the court. Whatever the wording, under the circumstances, the stipulation determined the outcome of the hearing. I cannot agree with the majority’s suggestion to the contrary (103 Ill. 2d at 116). On a record which consists solely of a stipulation such as is presented here, there can be no conclusion other than that the defendant is fit to stand trial. Any other finding would be contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence and therefore an abuse of discretion by the trial judge. Since the procedure followed here had the same effect as directing a verdict on the basis of the stipulation alone, it violates the prohibition of Reeves. The majority further suggests that the trial judge “could” seek more information regarding fitness in these cases. (103 Ill. 2d at 116.) While the possibility remains open that the trial court “could” do this, I suggest that it is highly unrealistic to expect that the trial judge would, since this opinion holds that it is not necessary for the trial court to consider any evidence in addition to the stipulated psychiatric testimony. By stipulating to the expert’s testimony, two lawyers and a physician are expressing their professional opinions that the defendant is competent to stand trial. Why would a trial judge seek additional testimony if the defendant’s own counsel acts as though it would be futile to do so? If it is assumed that this defendant, like all others, acts through his attorney and is bound by his attorney’s strategic decisions, there is no reason for the trial judge to take matters into his own hands. With this opinion this court relies on a semantic technicality to emasculate the long-standing Illinois principle that defendants who have once been adjudicated incompetent require the special protection of the courts and cannot stipulate that protection away by their own actions or the actions of their attorneys. In People v. McKinstray (1964), 30 Ill. 2d 611, this court reversed the defendant’s conviction of reckless homicide obtained after the defendant testified that he understood the nature of the charge against him and was willing to try to cooperate with counsel although a psychiatrist testified that he was not able to. “To accept defendant’s opinion that he is able to co-operate with counsel in his defense, when the purpose of the hearing is to determine that very fact, would make a sham out of the sanity hearing.” (30 Ill. 2d 611, 616-17.) To allow defendant, through his counsel, to stipulate to unsworn expert testimony has the same effect. In cause No. 58816, I also dissent on the ground that the prosecution’s systematic exclusion of blacks from the jury deprived the defendant of his right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community. For the reasons explained in my dissent in People v. Payne (1983), 99 Ill. 2d 135, 140 (Simon, J., dissenting), I believe that the defendant’s rights under the sixth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution and article I, sections 2 and 13, of the Illinois Constitution have been violated. Justice Marshall’s recent dissent to the denial of certiorari in three Illinois cases (Williams v. Illinois, Dixon v. Illinois, Yates v. Illinois (1984), 466 U.S. _, _, 80 L. Ed. 2d 836, 836, 104 S. Ct. 2364, 2364 (Marshall, J., dissenting, joined by Brennan, J., on denial of certiorari)) should provide the incentive for us to reexamine a disturbing problem which will not resolve itself of its own accord. Justice Marshall’s eloquent analysis of the problem includes statistics which show without doubt that blacks are grossly underrepresented on the jury panels of black defendants accused of capital offenses in Illinois. Similar underrepresentation occurs in noncapital cases such as this one. This court has now rejected black defendants’ claims that the systematic exclusion of black persons from juries resulted in the denial of equal protection and of their right to a trial by a jury of their peers at least six times within one year. (People v. Payne (1983), 99 Ill. 2d 135; People v. Yates (1983), 98 Ill. 2d 502; People v. Cobb (1983), 97 Ill. 2d 465; People v. Williams (1983), 97 Ill. 2d 252; People v. Davis (1983), 95 Ill. 2d 1; People v. Gosberry (1983), 93 Ill. 2d 544.) The facts in those cases alone are enough to establish the systematic exclusion of a particular group in case after case which this court requires under Swain v. Alabama (1965), 380 U.S. 202, 13 L. Ed. 2d 759, 85 S. Ct. 824, in order to find a violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. In addition the sixth amendment, as applied to the State of Illinois through the fourteenth amendment, prohibits the exclusion of jurors solely on the basis of race. There can no longer be any doubt that the practice of excluding jurors on the basis of race is pervasive in Illinois and that it raises constitutional issues of the gravest dimension under two separate guarantees. Because I believe that this court has wrongly decided these constitutional issues, once again I dissent. See People v. Payne (1983), 99 Ill. 2d 135, 140 (Simon, J., dissenting); People v. Yates (1983), 98 Ill. 2d 502, 540 (Simon, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); People v. Davis (1983), 95 Ill. 2d 1, 54 (Simon, J., dissenting); People v. Gosberry (1983), 93 Ill. 2d 544, 549 (Simon, J., dissenting).