Court Opinion

ID: 9712009
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:44:18.272225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:09.068591
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE MILLER, specially concurring: I join the court in affirming the defendant’s convictions, and I join that part of the majority opinion holding that the State has failed to show that the error in the introduction of the victim impact evidence at the death penalty hearing (see Booth v. Maryland (1987), 482 U.S. 496, 96 L. Ed. 2d 440, 107 S. Ct. 2529) was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt (see Chapman v. California (1967), 386 U.S. 18, 17 L. Ed. 2d 705, 87 S. Ct. 824). Before reaching that conclusion, however, the majority suggests that the harmless-error doctrine may never be used in reviewing constitutional errors occurring in death penalty proceedings (121 Ill. 2d at 275), and I do not join that part of the opinion. The Supreme Court has found constitutional error occurring in the guilt-or-innocence portion of a capital trial to be harmless under Chapman in certain circumstances (see, e.g., Burger v. Kemp (1987), 483 U.S. 776, 782 n.5, 97 L. Ed. 2d 638, 650 n.5, 107 S. Ct 3114, 3119 n.5), and I believe that the same principle should apply to the sentencing portion of the proceeding as well. Therefore, I see no point in scolding the State for what the majority perceives to be the State’s “misunderstanding of both Booth and the harmless-error doctrine.” (121 Ill. 2d at 274.) The State’s argument that the error occurring here may be deemed harmless, in an appropriate case, is indeed consistent with Supreme Court precedent on this subject; it is the majority’s analysis that goes astray. The majority first asserts that the Supreme Court has never affirmed a death sentence under the harmless-error doctrine for constitutional errors and then posits, as “[a] possible explanation” for that, the supposed inability of a reviewing court to determine the effect of an error on the sentencing judge or jury. (121 Ill. 2d at 274.) It should be noted, however, that the Court has never held that harmless-error analysis is not appropriate in these circumstances, and that the majority’s “explanation” is not only hypothetical, but also misleading. The Court, in discussing an allegation of constitutional error at a death penalty hearing, said, “[The State] has made no attempt to argue that this error was harmless, or that it had no effect on the jury or the sentencing judge. In the absence of such a showing our cases hold that the exclusion of mitigating evidence of the sort at issue here renders the death sentence invalid.” (Hitchcock v. Dugger (1987), 481 U.S. 393, 399, 95 L. Ed. 2d 347, 353, 107 S. Ct. 1821, 1824.) Hitchcock thus suggests that the harmless-error doctrine is in fact applicable to constitutional errors occurring in capital sentencing proceedings; at the least, the Court has not yet foreclosed its application, nor should we. I, therefore, do not join in that portion of the opinion that suggests that the harmless-error doctrine may never be used in reviewing constitutional errors occurring in death penalty proceedings. Because the majority opinion goes on to test the constitutional error that occurred at the defendant’s sentencing hearing against the harmless-error standard set out in Chapman, I join the result reached by the majority. MORAN, C.J. and WARD, J., join in this special concurrence.