Criminal Law

Court sentenced Defendant to concurrent 7-year terms for convictions of burglary and aggravated robbery, with credit for time served. Court erred in failing to determine whether Defendant was eligible for sentence credit and, if so, how much. Calculation of credit should have been done at sentencing and included in sentencing order. Court was required to give Defendant credit for his successful completion of anger management program, at rate specified in Section 3-6-3 of Unified Code of Corrections. Anger management program was full-time, for purposes of Section 3-6-3(a)(4) of Unified Code of Corrections, as it required 24 hours of participation, which exceeded required minimum of 15 hours of participation for a program to be considered full-time under Section 107.520(d)(4) of Illinois Administrative Code. Defendant is entitled to a half-day's credit for each day he actually attended anger management program sessions.(BURKE and BIRKETT, concurring.)

Defendant was convicted, after jury trial, of 1 count of armed violence and 1 count of aggravated battery with a firearm. Aggravated battery can serve as predicate felony for armed violence. Aggravated battery with a firearm is not an enhanced or aggravated version of aggravated battery, but is one more aggravated or enhanced version of battery.Defendant failed to establish ineffective assistance of counsel. Appointed counsel's failure to introduce evidence or testimony in support of Defendant's pro se ineffective assistance claims do not rise to level of filing to subject prosecution's case to meaningful adversarial testing. Defendant is required to satisfy prejudice prong under Strickland, by affidavits, records, or other evidence not contained in the record, as Post-Conviction Hearing Act requires if no such evidence is found in record.(GARMAN, FREEMAN, KILBRIDE, KARMEIER, BURKE, and THEIS, concurring.)

Defendant's right to confrontation under 6th amendment was not violated when circuit court admitted into evidence a video deposition given by complaining witness prior to trial. Video deposition was testimonial, as depositions are core, testimonial statements. State showed that complaining witness was unavailable to testify at trial, as witness's attending physician testified, at hearing on admissibility of deposition, that witness was living in nursing home, had severe dementia, had no awareness of his environment, and was unable to communicate in any meaningful way. Defendant was on notice that he could attend deposition if he chose to do so, but did not; and 2 public defenders attended and conducted full cross-examination. Court's error in no obtaining written Rule 414(e) waiver did not render deposition inadmissible and did not affect fairness of trial. (GARMAN, FREEMAN, THOMAS, KILBRIDE, KARMEIER, and THEIS, concurring.)

Defendant pled guilty to burglary and was sentenced to 3 years probation. At time of plea, Defendant was a citizen of Dominican Republic, and a resident alien of U.S. based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen. During plea hearing, judge advised him that a burglary conviction may have consequences of deportation, exclusion from admission to U.S., or denial of naturalization under laws of U.S. Defendant later filed motion to withdraw his guilty plea, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel and involuntariness. The immigration consequences of conviction were not "succinct, clear, and explicit", so as to require a warning by counsel that deportation was presumptively mandatory. Thus, counsel was required to give Defendant only a general warning of possibility of immigration consequences. Defendant sufficiently alleged that his counsel's performance was constitutionally deficient, as counsel gave him no advice about immigrations consequences before entering his guilty plea. Court's admonishments cured any prejudice, and thus court properly denied Defendant's motion to withdraw guilty plea.(GARMAN, FREEMAN, THOMAS, KILBRIDE, KARMEIER, and THEIS, concurring.)

Defendant, age 16 at time of shootings, was prosecuted as an adult, with indictment alleging that Defendant personally discharged a firearm in direction of vehicle occupied by 3 persons, and that his actions caused death of 1 person and serious injury to another person in vehicle. Court imposed mandatory minimum sentence of 45 years for 1st degree murder conviction; and 26 years for each of 2 attempted murder convictions, all to run consecutively for total 97 years. Defendant would be required to serve 89 years before eligible for release. Rationale of U.S. Supreme Court's 2012 decision in Miller v. Alabama applies to a mandatory term of years that "indisputably amounts" to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for a single offense or for offenses committed in a single course of conduct. Defendant's term-of-years sentence is a mandatory, de facto life-without-parole sentence, and is thus vacated as unconstitutional under Miller v. Alabama.  Defendant is entitled, on remand, to be resentenced under sentencing scheme in Section 5-4.5-105, so that mandatory minimum agregate sentence is 32 years. (PER CURIAM.)

(Modified upon denial of rehearing 9/23/16.) Defendant was convicted of murdering her six-year-old daughter. Defendant appealed arguing that the court improperly: excluded expert testimony, permitted testimony regarding communications between Defendant and her husband, and permitted another witness to testify about incriminating statements made by Defendant's mother.State presented such a strong case that it is virtually impossible that outcome at trial would have been different had expert been permitted to testify. Even though incriminating statements should have been excluded, this error was also harmless beyond a reasonable doubt given amount of incriminating evidence presented. Court properly denied Defendant’s spousal privilege argument as conversation at issue directly involved their child’s interests. A child’s interest may still be directly involved in a case in which a parent is being prosecuted for their child’s murder. (ROCHFORD and HOFFMAN, concurring.)