Court Opinion

ID: 9530928
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:05:17.858845+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:17.538325
License: Public Domain

Mr. PRESIDING JUSTICE JONES, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. The majority speaks both broadly and pointedly about the new Illinois sentencing act being designed to achieve a uniformity of sentencing for persons convicted of crimes. Such interpretation is unwarranted, for common sense tells us that we can achieve uniformity of sentencing only when we have uniformity of offenders. Such uniformity, of course, can never be. The majority speaks also of the limitations placed upon sentencing judges if they are to conform to the sentencing scheme of the new Illinois sentencing act. They find that the discretion of the sentencing judge is largely curtailed if not entirely abolished. Yet it is this discretion, and this discretion alone, that can discern, measure and evaluate the limitless nuances that serve to distinguish offenders, their offenses, and the appropriate sentence to be imposed. No statute could ever establish sufficient criteria with which a sentencing judge, much less a reviewing court, could classify offenders by their personalities, background, social and economic history, education, nature of offense, etc., so as to apply a uniform sentence to all who are equally culpable and equally capable (or incapable, as the case may be) of rehabilitation. I sense that the majority would abolish the discretion of the sentencing judge and place it in the court of review in order to assure that the several trial courts were in fact achieving uniformity in sentencing. If such is the case then it would be retrogressive to the entire criminal justice system. The best, if not the only, place for the exercise of discretion lies with that judge who deals at first hand with the offense, the offender, the trial and its witnesses. No other can properly evaluate the many factors brought to bear in the trial of a criminal case. The milieu in which an offender is tried, convicted and sentenced simply cannot be duplicated for a de novo consideration of sentence by a court of review by setting the proceedings down on paper. Far too much of the impact of a trial is lost in the transmission of words to paper. It has been, and must remain, sufficient for a court of review to consider what was done by the trial court and then determine whether, as a matter of law, there was a failure to conform to the required norm and that prejudice resulted to the defendant. In this case the record affirmatively shows that the trial court fully complied with the sentencing statutes, to a degree, in fact, we do not normally see in a sentence hearing. He found it necessary to impose a sentence of imprisonment to serve as a deterrent to others and forestall the abuse of the voting privilege. Of these considerations of the trial court the majority says nothing. The nexus of defendant’s offense was that she was depriving people of their right to govern themselves. Serious indeed. It is so regarded by the legislature. The defendant is adult and without question fully aware of the criminality of her act. When consideration is given to all the factors presented to the trial court, the sentence imposed must be deemed not to be, in the words of the statute, “inconsistent with the ends of justice.” The most that can be said for the position of the majority is that they disagree with the sentencing judge. I, however, disagree with the majority. I would affirm.