Court Opinion

ID: 9529977
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:56:04.899298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:58.139059
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE DOOLEY, specially concurring: I concur in the judgment of the court in affirming the conviction of defendant. As the majority’s opinion points out, the evidence of defendant’s conduct during and after the robbery showed an intent to commit armed robbery. An awareness that what we do today dictates tomorrow’s course of conduct in Illinois courts prompts this opinion. The extensive treatment of a subject, and the court’s position that voluntary intoxication may constitute a defense, is certain to proliferate a new aspect in criminal litigation. The defendant, it will be urged, was too intoxicated to intend to permit the particular crime which, like the charge here, required no specific intent. Thus, the majority contends, “We find insufficient evidence in this record from which the trier of fact could find that defendant’s intent to steal money from the victims, or in their presence, with force and intimidation, while armed with a dangerous weapon, was negated.” The duty of this court is to follow the mandates of the General Assembly in the absence of constitutional infirmity. (Belfield v. Coop (1956), 8 Ill. 2d 293, 306.) Here the task is a simple one. Section 18 — 1(a) of the Criminal Code of 1961 (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 38, par. 18—1(a)) defines the offense of robbery in the following words: “A person commits robbery when he takes property from the person or presence of another by the use of force or by threatening the imminent use of force.” Armed robbery, in turn, is defined by section 18—2(a) (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 38, par. 18—2(a)) as follows: “A person commits armed robbery when he violates Section 18 — 1 while armed with a dangerous weapon.” Neither section incorporates any requirement that a specific intent to commit the robbery must be proved. The court’s importation of such an element into the Code cannot be justified. The Committee Comments to section 18 — 1 state: “This section codifies the law in Illinois on robbery and retains the same penalty. No change is intended. *** No intent element is stated as the taking by force or threat of force is the gist of the offense and no intent need be charged, (See People v. Emerling, 341 Ill. 424, 173 N.E. 474 (1930).)” (Emphasis supplied.) Ill. Ann. Stat., ch. 38, par. 18—1, at 213 (Smith-Hurd 1970). The court rejects this explanation by the committee on the ground that Emerling itself was incorrectly decided, contending it was based on a “misreading” of People v. Hildebrand (1923), 307 Ill. 544, which specifically holds no proof of intent is required. Parenthetically, I note the meaning of the 1961 Criminal Code can hardly be appropriately ascertained by analyzing two cases decided 30 or more years before its enactment. The Illinois statutes in effect prior to the enactment of the present criminal code have, with an 1874 exception, always defined robbery in terms of the use of force or intimidation without regard to specific intent. See 1827 Ill. Laws 134, sec. 61; 1833 Ill. Laws 182, sec. 61; Ill. Rev. Stat. 1845, at 160, sec. 61; 1919 Ill. Laws 431, sec. 246. The exception consists of language added to the robbery statute which appears in the revised statutes of 1874. As revised, the section read: “Robbery is the felonious and violent taking of money, goods or other valuable thing, from the person of another by force or intimidation. Every person guilty of robbery shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary not less than one year nor more than fourteen years; or if he is armed with a dangerous weapon, with intent, if resisted, to kill or maim such person, or being so armed, he wounds or strikes him, or if he has any confederate present so armed, to aid or abet him, he may be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.” Ill. Rev. Stat. 1874, ch. 38, par. 246. This statute was considered in McKevitt v. People (1904), 208 Ill. 460. McKevitt had been indicted for robbery, and the indictment further charged that at the time he was armed with a weapon. The jury found him “guilty of robbery in manner and form as charged in the indictment.” (208 Ill. 460, 471.) The question before the court was whether defendant was guilty of ordinary robbery or of robbery in its aggravated form. It was held that only a conviction for the lesser offense could be sustained, since there was no basis for assuming that the jury had found that defendant had the requisite intent to kill or maim the victim. In 1919 the statute referred to was amended so as to delete the intent requirement. (1919 Ill. Laws 431.) The effect of the amendment was passed upon in People v. Hildebrand (1923), 307 Ill. 544, 555. There the indictment for robbery also charged that defendants were armed with a dangerous weapon. As in McKevitt, the jury found them “guilty of robbery in manner and form as charged in the indictment.” (307 Ill. 544, 555.) The sentence imposed exceeded what the statute authorized for robbery committed when not armed with a dangerous weapon. Defendants then argued that because the jury had made no finding that they had in fact been armed with a dangerous weapon, the sentence could not stand under the rule announced in McKevitt. That contention was rejected, with the court stating: “The statute under which the defendant in that case was convicted of robbery provided that if the person convicted was armed with a dangerous weapon, with intent, if resisted, to kill or maim the victim, he should be subject to the greater penalty. In 1919 this statute was amended so as to provide that if the defendant is armed with a dangerous weapon he shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary for any term of years not less than ten or for life. (Laws of 1919, p. 427.) No question of intent is involved. It is not required to be charged or proved. The mere fact of committing a robbery while armed with a dangerous weapon incurs the liability to the higher punishjnent.” (Emphasis supplied.) 307 Ill. 544, 555. People v. Emerling (1930), 341 Ill. 424, also involved a conviction for robbery while armed with a dangerous weapon. The court had instructed the jury that, “to constitute the offense charged in this case, the intent alleged in the indictment is necessary to be shown, but that direct and positive testimony is not necessary to prove the intent; it may be inferred from the facts and circumstances shown by the evidence.” 341 Ill. 424, 428. This court rejected a claim that the giving of this instruction was reversible error, stating: “In the present case no question of intent is involved. It was not required to be charged or proved. (People v. Hildebrand, 307 Ill. 544.)” (Emphasis supplied.) 341 Ill. 424, 428-29. There is nothing in Hildebrand or Emerling which can be construed as suggesting that in a case of robbery or armed robbery it must be proved that the defendant had the specific intent to commit the act. Again, in People v. Bartz (1930), 342 Ill. 56, this court affirmed a defendant’s robbery conviction and held the trial court properly refused an instruction to the effect that the defendant was not guilty of forming an intent, saying defendant could be convicted of a crime “which consists only of the doing of acts which are prohibited by law and in which intent is not an element” (342 Ill. 56, 67). To the same effect see People v. Johnson (1931), 343 Ill. 273, and People v. Cassidy (1946), 394 Ill. 245, cert. denied (1946), 329 U.S. 769, 91 L. Ed. 662, 67 S. Ct. 130. Multiple appellate court cases follow these authorities. See People v. Bray (1964), 52 Ill. App. 2d 384, People v. Berlin (1971), 132 Ill. App. 2d 697, People v. Hawkins (1973), 14 Ill. App. 3d 549, and People v. Mask (1975), 34 Ill. App. 3d 668, to list a few. Thus, one may put aside such cases as People v. McLaughlin (1929), 337 Ill. 259, where the charge was that defendant assaulted the victim with the intent to rob him, and where the evidence of that intent was found wanting. The question before us cannot be resolved on whether the committee improperly cited Emerling as authority for the proposition that intent need not be charged or proved in a robbery case. The stark fact is that the committee which drafted the Criminal Code of 1961 did not introduce into sections 18 — 1 or 18 — 2 a specific intent requirement. In interpreting the Code the views of the drafters obviously deserve consideration. (See People v. Touhy (1964), 31 Ill. 2d 236, 239.) It should also be noted that Hildebrand was cited with approval in the later case of People v. Johnson (1931), 343 Ill. 273, 277, and Emerling was so cited in People v. Cassidy (1946), 394 Ill. 245, 246. In the former of these two cases, moreover, the court rejected a contention that voluntary intoxication could be a defense to a charge of robbery. People v. Ware (1961), 23 Ill. 2d 59, also relied on by the majority, does not support its thesis. That case appears to have involved the inadvertent failure of a policeman to return property to a person from whom it had earlier been taken pursuant to an arrest. The construction given by the court to the word “felonious,” used in the robbery statute then in effect, as connoting intent does not aid in construing the present Code provision, which is without that term. Indeed, article 4 of the Code treats the question of intent in quite a different manner. Section 4 — 3 provides: “(a) A person is not guilty of an offense, other than an offense which involves absolute liability, unless, with respect to each element described by the statute defining the offense, he acts while having one of the mental states described in Sections 4 — 4 through 4 — 7.” Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 38, par. 4—3. Section 4 — 4 defines intent, and succeeding sections define the other three mental states, knowledge, recklessness, and negligence — all of which can exist without intent. Taken as a whole these provisions show that a person having any one of the four enumerated mental states may be guilty of an offense. Bartholomew v. People (1882), 104 Ill. 601, is relied upon by the majority. There the defense was based upon a statutory provision making drunkenness a defense if it were caused “by the fraud, contrivance or force of some other person, for the purpose of causing the perpetration of an offense. ” (104 Ill. 601, 606.) The narrow ground of this defense seems irrelevant both to the facts of the present case, which do not involve involuntary intoxication, and to the language of section 6 — 3 of the present code (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 38, par. 6—3), which now deals with that subject. People v. Lion (1957), 10 Ill. 2d 208, and People v. Hare (1962), 25 Ill. 2d 321, also mentioned by the court in this connection, deal with the offense of murder. The provisions of section 9 — 1 on this subject contain their own express references to the intent and knowledge of a defendant. These are not pertinent to whether the ingredient of intent is to be read into those sections of the Code dealing with robbery. The court has effected a far-reaching and, in my view, an unwise change in the Criminal .Code for reasons which cannot withstand analysis. In so doing it has opened up an entirely new defense in prosecutions for robbery and potentially for other offenses as well. The limiting effect on law enforcement seems obvious. As one writer on the subject has pointed out, a major effect of intoxication is that it releases inhibitions, thus facilitating behavior which may violate the law. “Save in extreme cases, the intoxicated actor is still aware of his actions and his purposes to the extent sufficient for the imposition of criminal liability.” (Paulsen, Intoxication as a Defense to Crime, 1961 U. Ill. L.F. 1, 4.) See also Remington and Helstad, The Mental Element in Crime—A Legislative Problem, 1952 Wis. L. Rev. 644, 669. I would affirm the conviction on- the basis of the statutory definitions of robbery and armed robbery as applied to these facts. Specific intent is not an ingredient of either of these crimes as delineated by the General Assembly. A glance at the past, the prologue of the present, supports this position.