In a victory for prosecutors, the Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the sentences of two defendants who received extra prison time because judges found their crimes–an attempted murder and a slashing attack with a box cutter–to be “exceptionally brutal or heinous.”
The court ruled, by a 5-2 vote in each case, that because the defendants pleaded guilty, they could not take advantage of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that found a similar extended sentence in New Jersey to be unconstitutional.
The two defendants are among more than 1,000 Illinois convicts seeking to reduce their sentences based on the landmark 2000 high court ruling.
The two decisions were among four high-profile cases decided Thursday. Others upheld most, but not all, of a 1999 criminal sentencing law and struck down a law ensuring visitation rights to grandparents.
The rulings on extended sentences pleased officials in Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan’s office, which handled both cases. They involved Eugene Hill, convicted of attempted murder and other charges in 1982 in St. Clair County, and Kizzy Jackson, convicted of aggravated battery with a box cutter in 1997 in Downstate Morgan County.
“A good number of convictions are based on guilty pleas,” said Mary Beth Burns, an assistant attorney general who supervises criminal appeals. “It’s one group of defendants who are not going to make the claim anymore. So that obviously helps.”
Justice Charles Freeman, who wrote the majority opinions in both cases, said that when they pleaded guilty, the defendants waived their right to challenge the extended sentences–those that go beyond the normal maximum term.
In a strongly worded dissent in the Jackson case, Chief Justice Moses Harrison called the decision “inexplicable,” arguing that the defendants couldn’t have known that the sentencing procedures were unconstitutional.
David Bergschneider, legal director of the state appellate defender’s office, said there was a good chance his office would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the cases.
Illinois appears to be the first state in the nation in which the issue of guilty pleas under Apprendi vs. New Jersey has reached the highest court, Stephanos Bibas, a law professor at the University of Iowa, said.
In the Apprendi case, the nation’s high court ruled in 2000 that a defendant cannot be forced to serve extra time merely because a judge finds that certain aggravating factors were present. The defendant in the Apprendi case received two extra years because the judge determined the crime was motivated by racial hatred.
The court ruled that factors extending a sentence beyond the maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
In another case Thursday, the court struck down part of the 1999 criminal sentencing law championed by Gov. George Ryan that stiffened terms for felonies committed with a gun.
The majority of the “15-20-life” act will remain intact, with provisions that add 15 years of prison time for a felon convicted of committing a crime such as home invasion or carjacking while in possession of a gun.
The law also adds 20 years to the sentence of anyone who intentionally fires a gun during a crime, and 25 to life if using a gun injures or kills.
But the court struck the part that adds 15 years to the sentence of someone who commits armed robbery, because it mandates a greater penalty than the law requires for aggravated armed robbery, a nearly identical crime with a slightly different legal definition.
The court said that makes the penalty unconstitutionally disproportionate.
The original sponsor of the bill said he will work to fix the loophole during this spring’s legislative session. “The bill was a behemoth bill, with many different underlying crimes involved,” Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-Hinsdale) said. “I think we can fix this one minor provision.”
That is only right, said the appellate defender representing the accused armed robber in the case. “What we’re seeing are first-time offenders getting 20 years,” said Susan Wilham, who represented defendant David Walden. “The common theme with judges is, `I have no discretion. There’s nothing I can do but give you the minimum.'”
Walden is accused of committing an armed robbery with a firearm at a fast-food restaurant in Springfield in August 2000.
The court also struck down a state law guaranteeing visitation rights to grandparents, saying it interferes with the fundamental rights of parents.
Writing for the court, Justice Thomas Fitzgerald wrote: “Parents have the constitutionally protected latitude to raise their children as they decide. … Parents, not judges, should be the ones to decide with whom their children will and will not associate.”
