Quick Takes on Illinois Supreme Court Opinions Issued Thursday, May 21, 2026
Leading appellate attorneys review the four Illinois Supreme Court opinions handed down Thursday, May 21.
People v. Marshall, 2026 IL 132129
By Benjamin Lawson, Third District Appellate Court
Per curiam
The defendant challenged his pretrial detention. While his case was pending, he pled guilty, received a sentence of probation, and was released from custody. His challenge to his pretrial detention was therefore rendered moot, and the appeal was dismissed.
Jimmie Masrhall, the defendant, was accused of aggravated battery and detained pending trial in Livingston County. He filed a motion seeking to be released under Supreme Court Rule 604(h)(2), and his motion was denied. The defendant appealed that decision claiming, for the first time on appeal, that the State had failed to prove he committed a detainable offense. The appellate court found he had waived the issue by failing to raise it in the trial court and affirmed his detention.
Before the Supreme Court, the State asserted that the defendant’s claim was moot, since he had pled guilty and been released on a sentence of probation. The defendant contended that the “public interest” exception to the mootness doctrine applied. The public interest exception arises when (1) the issue presented is of a public nature, (2) an authoritative determination is desirable for the future guidance of public officers, and (3) the issue is likely to recur.
The Supreme Court found that the law surrounding the review of pretrial detention claims, including whether those claims have been waived, is “not presently in disarray.” It also found that these issues “have not evaded judicial review,” and it declined to invoke the public interest exception to render an advisory opinion. Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed.
People v. Carroll, 2026 IL 131360
By Benjamin Lawson, Third District Appellate Court
Majority written by Justice Cunningham, joined by Justices Neville, Overstreet, Holder White, Rochford, and O’Brien.
Justice Tailor took no part in the decision.
Summary
Clarifies the forfeiture standard in the context of postconviction petitions. The appellate court found that the defendant’s claims had been forfeited on appeal because they were known to him at the time and could have been raised. However, the standard for forfeiture is whether the facts establishing the claim appear in the record, not whether the defendant knew them at the time of the appeal, and in this case the facts did not appear in the record. Nonetheless, the Court found the claims raised by the defendant were not meritorious. The defendant was unable to demonstrate prejudice resulting from any of his claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, and his claims of ineffective assistance of postconviction counsel did not show she rendered unreasonable assistance.
In March of 2020, the defendant, Roger Carroll, Jr., was convicted of murdering Bonnie Woodward and sentenced to 65 years’ imprisonment. The evidence at trial established that Woodward disappeared on June 25, 2010, from her workplace, a nursing home. She was seen that afternoon with a white male near her pickup truck. Her coworkers stated they had seen an unfamiliar gray Chevrolet Malibu in the parking lot.
Woodward’s 17-year-old stepdaughter, Heather, was also reported missing, and on July 3, 2010, Heather appeared alone at the local public library. She told police she had been staying with the defendant, his wife, Monica, and their son, Nathan. Police interviewed the defendant, and he consented to have his car searched. Fingerprints were recovered from the exterior driver’s door of Woodward’s truck, and analysts matched a fingerprint and a palm print to the defendant. A search warrant was issued for the defendant’s home, and police recovered multiple firearms, including a Stoeger Couger 9mm handgun. However, no evidence linking the defendant to Woodward’s disappearance was recovered from either the property or the defendant’s car.
On September 29, 2010, while the defendant’s property was being searched, police placed the defendant in a squad car and interviewed him for about three hours. They then transported him to the police station to memorialize the interview and record the conversation that occurred in the squad car. A transcript of the interview was presented to the jury. During the interview, the defendant explained that Heather had been staying with his wife’s parents about three hours south, and that he and his son, Nathan, had driven back to their home on the day Woodward disappeared. They then did some yard work and went out to dinner. The defendant stated he knew Heather through church and that she had stayed with his family beginning on June 17, 2010, but he denied knowing Woodward or speaking to her.
The investigation then stalled for nearly 8 years.
In early 2018, the defendant was involved in a domestic battery incident involving his wife, Monica. Monica reported the defendant attacked her in their home, striking her repeatedly in the neck and face with a Taser. During the attack, she reported that he said, “I have killed for you,” and “I am a monster.” The defendant was located in the woods near his home, where he had attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on insulin.
Nathan was granted immunity from prosecution, and he testified at the defendant’s trial that in 2016 he knew Heather through a church group. He was 16 years old at the time. He never met Woodward, but the defendant described her as a bad person who was “mean and aggressive and abusive” toward Heather. The defendant stated that Woodward needed to “go away and never come back.”
On June 25, 2010, Nathan and the defendant drove by Woodward’s workplace and noted she was at work. The defendant then drove back to their home where he showered, shaved, dressed, and loaded a handgun. He then drove away in his gray Chevrolet Malibu. Nathan, meanwhile, prepared a tent in the yard away from the house. The plan was to tell Woodward that Heather was staying in the tent to lure Woodward inside.
When the defendant returned home, Nathan heard eight or nine gunshots. When Nathan went outside, he saw feet clad in white sneakers and the lower part of human legs wearing tan “scrub pants.” The defendant then scooped up the body with a front loader and dumped it in a large brush fire Nathan had previously lit on the defendant’s instructions. Nathan saw Woodward’s phone in the defendant’s hands, took it, smashed it, and threw it into the fire. The two of them then burned the clothing they had been wearing and went to dinner.
For the next several days, Nathan and the defendant continually stoked the fire. After it burned out, the defendant scooped up the ashes with a tractor and dumped them into a creek behind the house.
Following Nathan’s confession, police went to the home with Nathan in 2018. There, they discovered a 9mm cartridge, a shell casing, and a projectile located in the area where Nathan said Woodward had been murdered. A forensic scientist with the Illinois State Police testified the projectile and shell casing had been fired from the Stoeger Couger handgun taken from the defendant’s residence. Police also located 27 bone fragments. No DNA analysis was performed on most of the bones, though the parties stipulated that the FBI determined they were “thermally altered bone fragments.” Two bones were subjected to DNA testing, but neither was a match to Woodward.
Amy Hart, a fingerprint expert with the Illinois State Police, testified that she had been sent 12 fingerprint “lift" cards, and she was able to match one fingerprint and one palm print from the lift cards to the defendant. She testified that she later made an additional eight identifications, six of which belonged to the defendant. On cross examination, counsel attacked the reliability of fingerprint analysis in general and Hart’s analysis in particular. Hart admitted she could not tell the age of the prints and did not know where the prints were taken from.
Woodward’s coworkers were called to testify. One coworker, April Cathers, testified she saw Woodward sitting in her truck with a man standing outside her door with his hands on the driver’s side door. She observed a gray Chevrolet Malibu in the parking lot but was unable to identify the defendant from a photo lineup. Another coworker, Wanda Bausily, stated she saw a man standing next to Woodward’s truck as she was leaving work on June 25, 2010, and she identified the defendant in court as the person she saw that day. At the time she was interviewed she was unable to identify the defendant from a photo lineup.
A jury found the defendant guilty of first-degree murder, and the defendant appealed, arguing his trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance for stipulating to the bone fragments’ DNA results, failing to move to strike Bausily’s in-court identification of the defendant, and failing to redact passages of his September 29, 2010, interview with police. The appellate court affirmed the defendant’s conviction.
On June 23, 2022, the defendant filed a postconviction petition alleging ineffective assistance of trial counsel based on counsel’s (1) failure to move to suppress his September 29, 2010, interview; (2) stipulation to the bone fragment evidence without having the fragments radiocarbon tested for age; (3) failure to interview Woodward’s coworkers; (4) failure to make the lack of DNA evidence against the defendant a central theme of the defense; (5) failure to file a motion for change of venue based on unfavorable pretrial publicity; (6) failure to use a fingerprint expert to attack the reliability of fingerprint evidence; and (7) failure to interview a news reporter about a news article stating that the man seen in the parking lot of Woodward’s workplace was a smoker.
The defendant asserted that these claims could not have been raised on direct appeal because they were not part of the trial record. He attached numerous documents, including his own affidavit, relating to each of the seven claims. His affidavit claimed that he had been questioned on September 29, 2010, without being allowed to speak to his attorney despite requesting to speak to a lawyer and having retained an attorney. He also provided an affidavit from his attorney. His affidavit further asserted he asked his trial counsel to perform radiocarbon dating on the bone fragments to determine their age, and he included documents showing he purchased the property in 1995. He also included an affidavit from an expert in radiocarbon dating stating that two bone fragments taken from the property possessed sufficient radiocarbon for testing and that one of the bone fragments more likely than not came from a species that died between 1996 and 1998.
The defendant’s affidavit claimed he urged trial counsel to introduce testimony from some of Woodward’s coworkers to undermine the in-court identification of the defendant by Bausily. He also stated that trial counsel failed to review all the test samples of DNA, and that counsel had failed to argue at trial that he had been excluded as the source of any of those DNA samples. His affidavit claimed he had numerous conversations with counsel about changing the trial venue, and he attached multiple newspaper articles discussing the case. The defendant’s mother provided an affidavit asserting she, too, had spoken with trial counsel but counsel told her they might receive another “unknown trial judge with more conservative views” than the judge presiding over the case at the time.
The defendant’s affidavit described hiring a fingerprint expert to challenge the State’s fingerprint evidence, but the expert was never called to testify. He included a copy of a check for $2,000 payable to the expert. The defendant also attached a 2013 news article referring to an unknown suspect seen in the parking lot as “a smoker,” and the defendant stated he was not a smoker.
The circuit court dismissed the defendant’s petition at the second stage, finding that claims (3) through (7) relied on information “known or readily available to” the defendant and trial counsel at the time of trial. It found those claims were forfeited. The circuit court denied the first two claims on their merits, finding they failed to set forth a substantial showing of a constitutional violation.
The defendant appealed, arguing the circuit court erred in dismissing his petition. He also claimed that postconviction counsel had a conflict of interest because his postconviction counsel was the same attorney as his appellate counsel. He also argued that postconviction counsel had provided unreasonable assistance in failing to properly present his claims.
The appellate court affirmed the dismissal, concluding that all of the defendant’s claims, including claims (1) and (2), were forfeited. It also rejected the defendant’s assertion that postconviction counsel had a conflict of interest because the underlying claims lacked merit. Finally, it held that the defendant was unable to demonstrate prejudice based on postconviction counsel’s alleged errors in presenting his claims.
The defendant appealed to the Supreme Court, which first found (as the State conceded on appeal to the Supreme Court) that the defendant’s claims were not forfeited. The facts supporting the defendant’s claims did not appear on the face of the original appellate record. They required substantiation by affidavits and other evidence, including a lengthy affidavit from the defendant himself, who did not testify at his trial. The Court held that it was irrelevant that these facts were “known” by the defendant at the time of his direct appeal. Instead, the question was whether the facts appeared on the face of the original appellate record, and here they did not.
Turning to the merits of the defendant’s claims, the Court first found that the defendant’s counsel’s decision not to seek suppression of the September 29, 2010, interview was a matter of trial strategy, since in that interview the defendant repeatedly denied involvement in Woodward’s disappearance and made no inculpatory statements. Additionally, the trial’s outcome would not have been affected by filing such a motion. Therefore, the defendant suffered no prejudice from his attorney’s failure to file it.
Next, the Court found the defendant could not establish prejudice based on his counsel’s failure to seek radiocarbon testing. While the defendant’s expert might have excluded 2 bone fragments from the group of 25 untested bone fragments, his testing showed nothing about the majority of the bone fragments and would have done nothing to affect the remaining evidence of the defendant’s guilt.
The defendant’s claim that one of Woodward’s coworkers may not have seen the defendant was of little evidentiary value where it did not contradict the testimony of Bausily, who testified she did see the defendant. Nor did it call into question Bausily’s in-court identification of the defendant as the person she saw. The Court concluded there was no reasonable probability this evidence would have affected the outcome of the trial, and the claim therefore failed to set forth a substantial showing of a constitutional violation.
The Court found that the defendant’s counsel was not ineffective for failing to review all the test samples of DNA material retrieved by law enforcement where the State never introduced any DNA evidence at trial, and the jury was well aware there was no DNA evidence tying the defendant to Woodward’s disappearance.
The defendant’s assertion that his counsel was ineffective for failing to move for a change of venue was plainly shown to be a matter of trial strategy by both his own and his mother’s affidavits.
The Court was unable to conclude that calling an additional fingerprint expert would have altered the outcome of the trial where the defendant’s counsel extensively cross-examined the State’s fingerprint witness and argued in both opening and closing arguments about the unreliability of fingerprint evidence.
Finally, the Court found that defense counsel’s failure to follow up on a news article describing a suspect seen in a nursing home parking lot had similarly little effect on the case, and it was unlikely to change the result of the trial.
The Court concluded that each of the defendant’s seven postconviction claims failed to satisfy the standard for establishing ineffective assistance of counsel, and the circuit court did not err in dismissing the postconviction petition. The Court further held that the defendant’s postconviction counsel did not render an unreasonable level of assistance since counsel shaped the seven postconviction claims and properly framed them for the circuit court’s consideration.
People v. Collins, 2026 IL 131300
By Benjamin Lawson, Third District Appellate Court
Majority written by Chief Justice Neville, joined by Justices Overstreet, Holder White, Cunningham, Rochford, O’Brien, and Tailor.
Summary
Holds that the State is precluded from re-trying the defendant for unlawful use of a weapon after he was acquitted under the same facts of unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon following a severed trial.
Terry Collins, the defendant, was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon (AUUW), possession of a firearm without a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card, and unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon (UPWF). The AUUW charge (Count I) alleged the defendant “knowingly carried” a firearm at a time when he had not been issued a valid FOID card. The UPWF charge alleged the defendant “knowingly possessed” a firearm after having been convicted of a felony.
The defendant made a motion to sever the fourth count (UPWF), and the circuit court allowed the motion. The State then dismissed one of the counts of AUUW and elected to proceed to trial on the UPWF charge.
At trial, Luke Weston, a sheriff’s detective, testified he pulled over a vehicle for following another car too closely and changing lanes without signaling. When he approached the car, the defendant, seated in the back seat, rolled down his window and Weston smelled burnt and raw cannabis. Weston searched the car and found a loaded firearm in a bag in the car’s trunk.
Weston testified that at first the defendant said he did not know there was a firearm in the car but later told Weston he owned the gun in the interest of ending the stop quickly so the driver could get to see his grandmother in the hospital. Weston confirmed with another source that the driver’s grandmother was hospitalized.
The parties stipulated that the defendant had a prior felony conviction. The defendant did not testify.
The jury returned a not guilty verdict.
The defendant filed a motion seeking to bar the State from proceeding on the other severed counts because both counts required the State to prove that the defendant knowingly possessed a firearm. The court granted the defendant’s motion with respect to the FOID count but denied it with respect to the AUUW count. The State and the defendant each moved to reconsider. The State argued the court should not have granted the motion as to either count, and the defendant argued the court should have granted the motion as to both counts. When the court denied both motions to reconsider, both sides appealed.
The appellate court affirmed the court’s dismissal of the FOID card charge, holding that the doctrine of issue preclusion barred prosecution of that charge. In a separate opinion, it also reversed the circuit court’s denial of the defendant’s motion to dismiss the AUUW charge, finding that the doctrine of issue preclusion barred prosecution of that count.
The State appealed, arguing before the Supreme Court that the issue-preclusion component of the federal and state constitutions’ double jeopardy clauses did not apply when a defendant requests or consents to separate trials on related charges. The State relied on Currier v. Virginia, 585 U.S. 493 (2018), a case interpreting the federal double jeopardy clause. In Currier, a grand jury indicted the defendant on charges of burglary and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. The two charges were severed, and prosecutors proceeded to trial on the burglary charge. The jury acquitted Currier, and he filed a motion to dismiss the unlawful possession charge, which was denied. Currier appealed, and a 5-4 majority of the United States Supreme Court held that a defendant cannot claim issue preclusion to block a second trial if the parties explicitly agreed to split the charges into separate trials.
Nonetheless, the Court in Currier observed that states are free to provide greater protections to defendants via state common law, state constitutions, or state statutes.
The Illinois Supreme Court traced the roots of issue preclusion through Illinois common law, citing Hanna v. Read, 102 Ill. 596, 602-03 (1882), and finding it had been applied for more than 140 years in Illinois. The Court also pointed to section 3-4(b)(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which states that “[a] prosecution is barred if the defendant was formerly prosecuted for a different offense, or for the same offense based upon different facts, if that former prosecution: *** (2) was terminated by a final order or judgment *** that required a determination inconsistent with any fact necessary to a conviction in the subsequent prosecution[.]”
The Court also noted that Currier commented on the propriety of states adopting laws or rules experimenting with issue or claim preclusion in criminal cases. The majority in Currier observed that “[o]n these matters, the Constitution dictates no answers but entrusts them to a self-governing people to resolve.”
Finding that Illinois recognizes the doctrine of issue preclusion as a matter of common law and as a matter of statute, the Court turned to the facts of the defendant’s case. It found that the jury had returned a general verdict in favor of the defendant, and the only issue for the jury to resolve in that case was whether the defendant knowingly possessed a gun. The jury therefore found that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant possessed a firearm.
The AUUW count required the State to prove that the defendant knowingly carried a firearm in the vehicle. To establish that he knowingly carried a firearm in the vehicle, the State had to show he both knowingly possessed and transported the gun. Because the defendant’s acquittal in the UPWF case was based on the jury finding that he did not knowingly possess a gun, the doctrine of issue preclusion barred the State from trying to prove that the defendant committed AUUW.
The Supreme Court observed that section 3-4(b)(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure does not mention severance. The statute includes two explicit exceptions, one if the former prosecution took place before a court that lacked jurisdiction over the defendant or the offense, and a second if the prior prosecution “was procured by the defendant without the knowledge of the proper prosecuting officer” or if subsequent proceedings invalidated, set aside, reversed or vacated the conviction. The statute’s silence on the issue of severance suggests the legislature did not intend to include severance as an exception to the doctrine of issue preclusion.
The Court also rejected the State’s claim that the defendant waived his right to assert issue preclusion. Waiver must be voluntary, knowing, and intelligent, and the Court held that the record did not support a finding that the defendant was aware that moving to sever would result in the loss of his right to invoke the doctrine of issue preclusion. Nor did the defendant “invite error,” since the defendant never contended the court erred. The Court found that, rather than offending “all notions of fair play” as the State claimed, allowing the defendant to claim issue preclusion simply prevented the State from obtaining a second opportunity to prove what it failed to prove in a previous trial. The Court therefore affirmed the appellate court’s decision reversing the circuit court’s order and barring the State from prosecuting the defendant for AUUW.
Bright v. Yenchko, 2026 IL 132015
By Amanda J. Hamilton, Akerman LLP
In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Cunningham, the Illinois Supreme Court vacated the Randolph County Circuit Court’s judgment holding section 8(n) of the FOID Card Act facially unconstitutional and remanded with directions to dismiss the case as moot. The Court held that the trial court erred in applying the public-interest exception to the mootness doctrine.
Bright was charged in Cook County with felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon on February 25, 2023. On March 24, 2023, the Illinois State Police suspended his FOID card pursuant to sections 8.3 and 8(n) of the FOID Card Act, which authorizes suspension or revocation when a person is prohibited by state or federal law from acquiring or possessing firearms.
After the felony charge was dismissed on April 20, 2023, Bright filed an administrative appeal seeking reinstatement of his FOID card. While that appeal was pending, he filed a section 1983 action in Randolph County against Yenchko, in his official capacity as Chief of the Firearms Services Bureau of the Illinois State Police, alleging that the suspension violated his civil rights. On May 31, 2023, the Illinois State Police reinstated Bright’s FOID card.
In his Randolph County complaint, Bright sought reinstatement of his card and an injunction barring future suspension. Yenchko argued that reinstatement rendered the case moot. The trial court nevertheless held section 8(n) facially unconstitutional and enjoined the Illinois State Police from enforcing it to revoke, suspend, or otherwise impair the ability of an Illinois citizen to possess firearms while under indictment for a felony offense.
On direct appeal, the Illinois Supreme Court emphasized the distinction between facial and as-applied constitutional challenges. The Court explained that Bright’s complaint pleaded only an as-applied challenge because it sought relief based on his own circumstances and requested the return of his FOID card, not invalidation of the statute in all applications. The Court held that is was improper for the trial court to go beyond the bounds of the complaint to grant relief to nonparties and to invalidate a statute and, in doing so, the trial court ignored its obligation to avoid reaching constitutional issues unless necessary to decide a case. Because Bright’s complaint was an as-applied constitutional challenge, the Court held that his case was moot once his FOID card was returned, and the trial court should have dismissed his case at that point.
Likewise, because Bright’s challenge was specific to the facts and circumstances of his case, the Court further held that the public interest exception to the mootness doctrine did not apply because it did not present “an issue of a public nature.”