People v. Bennett
| Decision Date | 07 June 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 58776,58776 |
| Citation | 20 Ill.App.3d 828,314 N.E.2d 320 |
| Parties | PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Clinton BENNETT, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
James J. Doherty, Public Defender, Cook County (J. Powers McGuire, Chicago, of counsel), for defendant-appellant.
Bernard Carey, State's Atty., County of Cook (Kenneth L. Gillis, Mariann Twist, Nicholas P. Iavarone, Asst. State's Attys., of counsel), for plaintiff-appellee.
The defendant appeals from an order sustaining the motion of the State to dismiss the defendant's Pro se post-conviction petition without an evidentiary hearing. The Public Defender was appointed to represent the petitioner.
After prior pleas of not guilty to charges of murder and illegal possession of narcotics, the defendant on October 28, 1968 changed his pleas to guilty and was sentenced to 14 years to 20 years on the murder charge and to five to ten years on the narcotics charge, the sentences to run concurrently.
In his Pro se post-conviction petition filed September 28, 1971, the defendant sought to have his convictions reversed on the ground that his change of pleas from not guilty to guilty were not understandably made and, as such, not voluntary and on the additional ground that his privately retained counsel was incompetent for various alleged reasons. In support of his contention of involuntariness, the defendant alleges in his petition that before his change of pleas his counsel represented to him that he had no chance of being set free for various reasons and that the prosecutor, the judge and his counsel had reached an agreement that on guilty pleas he would be sentenced to a term of five to ten years for manslaughter. As a part of his petition, the defendant filed an affidavit by one, Clinton Barnes, a defendant in another case, who states in the affidavit that he heard the defendant's counsel tell the defendant in the bullpen adjacent to the courtroom that 'five to ten years was the best he could do.' The affidavit is silent as to which of the two charges the five to ten years may have referred to and a sentence of five to ten years was, in fact, imposed on the narcotics charge. It is worthy of note that on oral argument counsel for the defendant conceded that the affidavit was of slight, if any, probative value. On the hearing of the State's motion to dismiss the post-conviction petition, the State offered and the court received in evidence the report of proceedings of the hearing, resulting in the change of pleas. That report of proceedings makes it abundantly clear that before accepting the defendant's guilty pleas the court thoroughly advised the defendant that he was charged with unlawful possession of narcotics and with murder and that on the murder charge the defendant could be sentenced to a term of not less than 14 years or might, indeed, suffer capital punishment and that on the narcotics charge the minimum sentence was five years and the maximum a term of life in the penitentiary. Not only was the court abundantly clear in its explanation of the possible punishment, but then inquired of the defendant whether, with the understanding of possible punishment, he still decided to enter pleas of guilty and the defendant responded in the affirmative. The court further put into the record that defendant, after having been advised of the consequences of his pleas of guilty, persists in such pleas.
While it is true that when a post-conviction petition raises a claim of substantial constitutional denial based on assertions beyond the record, evidence may be taken to determine the validity of the claim (People v. Williams, 47 Ill.2d 1, 264 N.E.2d 697), it is equally true that the petitioner's allegations in the post-conviction petition are to be considered in the light of...
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People v. Edmonds
...sufficiency of the allegations, the trial court is to consider the petition in the light of the entire record. (People v. Bennett (1974), 20 Ill.App.3d 828, 314 N.E.2d 320.) If the allegations and supporting documents were true and would establish a constitutional violation, the trial court......