Criminal Law

Defendant was found guilty of being an armed habitual criminal, unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, and two counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and was sentenced to 10 years in prison on all four counts, to be served concurrently. On appeal, defendant argued that his convictions for unlawful use of a weapon by a felon and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon violated the one-act, one-crime doctrine, that his sole remaining conviction for being an armed habitual criminal was based on an unconstitutional statute and that his sentence was excessive and the trial court relied on an improper factor in aggravation during sentencing. The appellate court vacated defendant’s convictions for unlawful use of a weapon by a felon and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, but affirmed his conviction and sentence for being an armed habitual criminal. (MIKVA and ODEN JOHNSON, concurring)

The Illinois Supreme Court considered the evidentiary question of whether the State may introduce evidence of other misconduct to prove intent in a case where the defendant denied the commission of a charged crime and did not present any evidence or argument that his acts were accidental, incidental, or merely inadvertent. In the underlying case, the State introduced evidence of prior uncharged acts of misconduct to prove intent even though defendant denied that he made contact with the victim and did not present any evidence to contest intent. The supreme court found that defendant’s decision not to contest intent, under the facts of this case, had no effect on the admissibility of evidence because the defendant was charged with a specific-intent crime and intent was at issue regardless of the evidence or argument presented by the defendant. However, the court further concluded that because the evidence presented depended on a propensity inference in order to be relevant, the trial court erred when it permitted the State to present evidence of defendant’s prior acts of misconduct because the evidence did not meet the statutory criteria for admissibility of propensity evidence but that this was a harmless evidentiary error. (THEIS, OVERSTREET, HOLDER WHITE, and ROCHFORD, concurring and O’BRIEN and CUNNINGHAM, dissenting)

Defendant, who was 20 years old at the time of the offenses, was found guilty of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and home invasion and was sentenced to an aggregate of 100 years in prison. Defendant argued on appeal that his sentence violated the proportionate penalties clause because it was a de facto life sentence. The appellate court affirmed, finding that his eligibility for parole precluded his sentence from being a de facto life sentence. The supreme court also affirmed, finding that the availability of parole meant defendant was not subject to a de facto life sentence but explaining that this did not foreclose defendant from raising an as-applied challenge to his sentence under the proportionate penalties clause in a post-conviction petition. (THEIS, OVERSTREET, HOLDER WHITE, CUNNINGHAM, ROCHFORD, and O’BRIEN, concurring)

Defendant was convicted of being an armed habitual criminal. On appeal, defendant argued that the trial court should have suppressed the firearm that was discovered during a traffic stop and that the State failed to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The appellate court reversed, finding that the trial court erred in denying defendant’s motion to suppress the firearm evidence recovered from the search of a bag in the backseat of the vehicle because the police lacked probable cause to search the bag and the firearm was the only evidence that supported defendant’s conviction. (LAMPKIN and MARTIN, concurring)

Defendant, who was charged with first degree murder, appealed from a trial court order revoking his pretrial release due to a violation of his pretrial release conditions because he was potentially a named offender in a sexual assault case even though he had not been arrested or charged. The appellate court reversed and remanded, finding that in order to revoke defendant’s pretrial release the trial court effectively added its own language to the statute but that the plain language of the statute did not permit revocation of pretrial release merely because a person was under investigation for having committed an offense. (HOWSE and ELLIS, concurring)