ECILCRIME.COM | Brought to you by Coles County criminal-defense lawyer Jeremy J. Richey
Case Name: People v. Faint (.pdf)
Court: Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District
Date Decision Filed: 12/18/09
In this case, the trial court found the defendant guilty of DUI, but failed to give the defendant an opportunity to present a defense or give a closing statement! Unsurprisingly, the appellate court reversed the trial court’s finding of guilty and remanded the case for a new trial. It seems that the “DUI exception” to the Constitution does have its limits.
Case Name: People v. Eastin (.pdf)
Court: Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District
Date Decision Filed: 12/23/09
In this case, the appellate court discussed whether driving with a suspended license is a lesser-included offense of aggravated DUI when the reason for elevation of the DUI to aggravated DUI is that the DUI occurred while the defendant had a suspended license. The appellate court held that it is not a lesser-included offense. The crime is DUI; the aggravating factor (suspended license) is a sentencing matter and not an element of the crime.
Case Name: People v. Hires (.pdf)
Court: Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District
Date Decision Filed: 12/08/09
In this case, the State charged the defendant with Aggravated DUI because the defendant had eight prior DUI convictions. The defendant did not submit to chemical testing, so the evidence consisted of the arresting officer’s observations of the defendant prior to and after the officer stopped the defendant’s vehicle. The defendant challenged his conviction based on the sufficiency of the evidence and based on the unreliability of the field-sobriety tests administered to him. The Court rejected both arguments. The Court rejected the defendant’s sufficiency of the evidence challenge because “a rational jury could reasonably have inferred that [the] defendant’s erratic driving, slurred speech, and poor coordination stemmed from intoxication.” The Court rejected the defendant’s field-sobriety argument because the jury, on its own, was able to evaluate the field-sobriety evidence without the assistance of an expert. It also should be noted that the defendant received a 24-year sentence in prison for this DUI conviction (again, this was his ninth DUI conviction).
I was arrested for DUI and I received two tickets. Is that bad?
It is bad that you were arrested for DUI, however, you should not be concerned about receiving two citations. Whenever a person is arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and blows .08 or over, the police issue two citations. One citation will allege a violation of the .08 law (625 ILCS 5/11‑501(a)(1)) and the other will allege a DUI violation without regard to the BAC of the driver (625 ILCS 5/11‑501(a)(2)). The circuit clerk will file both of these citations under a single DUI case number and each citation will be a separate count of DUI under that DUI case number. So, if you blew .08 or over and received two citations, the police officer wasn’t punishing you by writing two citations; the officer was simply proceeding in the manner that officers usually proceed in this type of case.
Case Name: People v. Tomczak (.pdf)
Court: Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District
Date Decision Filed: 11/19/09
In this rescission case, a police officer arrested the defendant for driving under the influence of alcohol. The defendant argued that the government should rescind the statutory summary suspension of his driver’s license because he was not warned by the police about the suspension consequences that would occur if chemical testing revealed methamphetamine in his blood or urine. He did receive the alcohol-related warning. The Illinois Compiled Statutes require that a motorist be warned about the suspension consequences of a positive chemical test for methamphetamine (among other warnings). Here, there wasn’t any evidence to suggest the involvement of methamphetamine; the evidence only suggested that this was a DUI case involving alcohol. The appellate court acknowledged that the defendant received a defective warning, however, since the defendant was not a member of the class that would be affected by the defective warning, rescission was not available to him (“there was no evidence that [the] defendant’s suspension was based on the presence of methamphetamine or that a test would have revealed that [the] defendant had methamphetamine in his system”).
Case Name: People v. McDonough (.pdf)
Court: Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District
Date Decision Filed: 10/20/09
In this case, the defendant’s car was parked on the slim shoulder of a dark and busy road. A state trooper saw the car and approached it in order to see if the defendant needed help. The trooper turned on his overhead emergency lights when he pulled up behind the car. Ultimately, at the end of the encounter between the trooper and the defendant, the defendant was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. The defendant filed a motion to suppress and the trial court granted it because the trooper detained the defendant without any legitimate basis — this happened when the trooper turned on his emergency lights. Two out of three appellate-court justices overruled the trial court because there was no police misconduct, and where there is no police misconduct, the exclusionary rule does not apply. According to these justices, the trooper’s use of his emergency lights “was entirely prudent and appropriate … [and] his failure to do so could very well be viewed as dangerous.” The third justice agreed in the result of the first two, however, this justice wrote a special concurrence in order to emphasize that no fourth-amendment violation occurred at all because the trooper’s seizure of the defendant “was proper under the community-caretaking doctrine.”
UPDATE (11/3/09): John Wesley Hall, Jr. comments on this case here.
Answer: Contrary to the popular belief of many minors, there is no such thing. There is a zero tolerance driver’s license suspension (an action taken by the Illinois Secretary of State) and then there is the criminal offense of driving under the influence. These are separate and distinct things.
Case Name: People v. Miklos (.pdf)
Court: Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District
Date Decision Filed: 7/17/09
In this case, the defendant successfully challenged his statutory summary suspension on due process grounds. Ordinarily, once a defendant files a petition challenging his summary suspension, the hearing must be held within thirty days or on the defendant’s first court appearance on his citation. Here, the trial court held the defendant’s hearing on his first court appearance, however, the appellate court ruled that this was a due process violation under the circumstances of this case:
In this case, defendant filed a petition to rescind his summary suspension [. . .] 18 days after he was arrested for driving under the influence and 28 days before his summary suspension was to become effective. The State scheduled defendant’s summary suspension hearing for 22 days after defendant filed his petition to rescind. On the date of the scheduled hearing, the prosecutor announced that she was ready to proceed but then changed her mind because the officer was not present. The State then chose to reschedule the hearing for 15 days later, a date that was 36 days after defendant filed his petition and 8 days after the effective date of his summary suspension.
Based on these facts, we find that the State violated defendant’s due process rights. The State required defendant to appear in court for a hearing on a date that the State chose and then informed defendant that the hearing would not proceed because the officer was not available. However, the officer’s presence at the hearing was not required because the State could have presented its case through the officer’s official reports. [ . . .] The State then chose not to hold a hearing prior to defendant’s summary suspension but, rather, received the court’s permission to reschedule defendant’s hearing for over two weeks later and eight days after defendant’s summary suspension began. By refusing to proceed with the summary suspension hearing on the date it was originally scheduled and rescheduling defendant’s hearing for a date well over 30 days after defendant filed his petition and over a week after the effective date of his summary suspension without any justification, the State denied defendant of his “protectible property interest” in his driver’s license and deprived him of his right to a prompt hearing.
In a previous post, I discussed how DUI cases cannot be expunged in Illinois. That post assumed that the inquiring person either plead guilty to a DUI charge or was found guilty of a DUI charge. A DUI case and arrest may be expunged if a person is found not guilty after a trial or if the DUI charge is dismissed. But, if a person pleads guilty to a DUI charge or is found guilty of a DUI charge, then the person cannot expunge his DUI case. This is true even if the person receives a sentence of judicial supervision.
Case Name: People v. Riffice (.pdf)
Court: Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District
Date Decision Filed: 7/8/09
In this case, the defendant, on September 30, 2008, filed a petition to rescind her statutory summary suspension. The trial court held a hearing on the petition on October 30, 2008. Depending on whether the filing date is counted, the hearing date was on either the 30th or 31st day after the defendant filed her rescission petition. By statute, a rescission hearing must be held “[w]ithin 30 days after receipt of the written request [. . .].” The appellate court relied on an earlier appellate-court decision (Second District) and ruled that the time period’s first day (the day of filing) does not count; the calculation of the 30-day period begins with the day following the filing date. Accordingly, the trial court conducted a timely hearing in this case since the date of filing did not count towards the 30-day limit. The trial court held the hearing on the 30th day.
