People v. Allen

Defendant filed pro se postconviction petition, alleging actual innocence and raising related constitutional issues that State suborned perjury and coerced confessions, and attached unnotarized statement, styled as affidavit, wherein author took responsibility for victim's murder and stated that Defendant had no involvement in murder. Statement qualifies as other evidence for first-stage postconviction review. Circuit court's consideration that statement lacked "conclusive character" essentially weighed credibility of Defendant's petition and statement against Defendant's prior grand jury testimony, and testimony of detective and prosecutor. This analysis is more probing inquiry than is proper on first-stage review, where dismissal is proper only if petition has no arguable basis either in law or in fact. (FREEMAN, KILBRIDE, BURKE, and THEIS, concurring; THOMAS and KARMEIER, dissenting.)