People v. Hartfield

• Decision Date: 30 June 1992
• Docket Number: No. 1-91-1261,1-91-1261
• Citation: 232 Ill.App.3d 198,596 N.E.2d 703
• Parties: , 173 Ill.Dec. 79 The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John HARTFIELD, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 703

596 N.E.2d 703

232 Ill.App.3d 198, 173 Ill.Dec. 79

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John HARTFIELD, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 1-91-1261.

Appellate Court of Illinois,

First District, Second Division.

June 30, 1992.

Jack O'Malley, State's Atty., Chicago (Renee Goldfarb, Michael P. Lats and Jeffery Wawrzyniak, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellee.

Randolph N. Stone, Public Defender, Chicago (Stephen L. Richards, of counsel), for defendant-appellant.

Justice DiVITO delivered the opinion of the court:

In 1984, defendant John Hartfield was convicted of rape and aggravated battery; he was adjudged a habitual criminal and was sentenced to life imprisonment. After an unsuccessful appeal, defendant filed a post-conviction petition, alleging constitutional error due to the State's use of peremptory challenges to exclude blacks from the jury and his trial counsel's refusal to comply with his requests to object to this conduct. The circuit court dismissed the petition without an evidentiary hearing. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

During the court's voir dire of the potential jurors, one of the prosecutors asked to approach the bench for an unspecified reason. The court then remarked:

"It's been brought to my attention I forgot two questions.

The first one is--as you can see, Mr. Hartfield is a black man. Some of you are white, but some of you are Oriental. Some of you are black.

The fact that Mr. Hartfield's race, would that, in anyway [sic ], affect any of your ability to be fair and impartial? There's no--nobody who has given an affirmative response."

Jury selection took place in the judge's chambers. There is no record of the process, but the judge commented a short time later that the State exercised seven peremptory challenges.

After defendant's conviction in February 1984, he appealed on grounds not relevant here. The appellate court affirmed the judgment in October 1985. (People v. Hartfield (1985), 137 Ill.App.3d 679, 92 Ill.Dec. 281, 484 N.E.2d 1136.) Defendant then filed a petition for leave to appeal, which the Illinois Supreme Court denied on February 5, 1986. The record contains no indication that defendant filed a petition for rehearing nor that he petitioned the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari.

On April 30, 1986, less than 3 months after the Illinois Supreme Court issued its ruling on defendant's appeal, the United States Supreme Court rendered its decision in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69. In Batson, the Supreme Court held that a defendant may challenge, on equal protection grounds, a single instance of the State's use of peremptory challenges to reject venire members of the same race. In doing so, the Court overruled Swain v. Alabama (1965), 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759, which had required a defendant to establish case-by-case discrimination in order to prevail on an equal protection claim.

Defendant filed a pro se post-conviction petition in 1988. In this petition, he alleged that he was denied effective assistance of counsel in violation of the sixth amendment by his trial counsel's refusal to comply with his request that she object to the State's use of peremptory challenges to exclude blacks from the jury, and that he was denied a fair trial and equal protection by the State's use of its peremptory challenges to exclude black potential jurors. ¹ In defendant's affidavit submitted with his petition, he claims that he "experienced the prosecutor exercise peremptory challenges to exclude black persons from [his] petit jury," such that "to [his] best recollection, the prosecutor so excluded nearly all the black [potential] jurors present and only one (1) black [potential] juror was allowed to participate in [his] jury trial as an alternate juror." Defendant also states as follows:

"I became outraged by the prosecutor's conduct of excluding nearly all the black jurors after my attorney informed me of the same. I then indicated to my attorney that it was apparent that the prosecutor wanted no black people to determine my fate. My attorney informed me that this type of conduct was a practice of the State's Attorney's Office of Cook County, Illinois. I stated to my attorney that this was obvious racism, and I asked her to object to the conduct. My attorney said that the law allowed the prosecutor to use his peremptory challenges any way he saw fit, and that there was nothing the defense could do about it."

Defendant's petition asked the court to vacate the judgment and to grant him a new trial.

On defendant's motion, the court appointed a public defender to represent him. The State moved for dismissal of the petition. The motion itself is not in the record, but according to the transcript of the hearing, the State argued that the Batson ruling was inapplicable given the dates of defendant's conviction and unsuccessful appeals. No argument was had on the sixth amendment claim. At the outset of the hearing on the State's motion, the court denied defense counsel's motion for leave to withdraw on the ground of conflict of interest. Without an evidentiary hearing, the court granted the motion to dismiss; it did not articulate its reasons.

I.

Section 122-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963 (Ill.Rev.Stat.1989, ch. 38, par. 122-1 et seq.) states as follows:

"Any person imprisoned in the penitentiary who asserts that in the proceedings which resulted in his conviction there was a substantial denial of his rights under the Constitution of the United States or of the State of Illinois or both may institute a proceeding under this Article." (Ill.Rev.Stat.1989, ch. 38, par. 122-1.)

The purpose of a post-conviction proceeding is "to delve into constitutional phases of the original conviction which have not previously been determined." People v. Owens (1989), 129 Ill.2d 303, 308, 135 Ill.Dec. 780, 781, 544 N.E.2d 276, 277, cert. denied sub nom. Owens v. Illinois (1990), 497 U.S. 1032, 110 S.Ct. 3294, 111 L.Ed.2d 802.

The standard of review for such proceedings is well settled:

"A Post-Conviction Hearing Act proceeding is not an appeal per se, but a collateral attack on a judgment. [Citation.] In order to prevail under the Act, the defendant must establish a substantial deprivation of his rights under the United States Constitution or the Constitution of Illinois. [Citation.] The defendant is not entitled to an evidentiary hearing unless the allegations of his petition, supported where appropriate by the trial record or by accompanying affidavits, make a substantial showing that the defendant's rights have been so violated. [Citation.] For the purpose of determining whether to grant an evidentiary hearing, all well-pleaded facts in the petition and in any accompanying affidavits are to be taken as true. [Citation.]" (People v. Caballero (1989), 126 Ill.2d 248, 258-59, 128 Ill.Dec. 1, 3, 533 N.E.2d 1089, 1091.)

The decision to dismiss a petition without an evidentiary hearing is within the court's discretion (Ill.Rev.Stat.1989, ch. 38, par. 122-6), and it will be reversed only on an abuse of that discretion. People v. Mendez (1991), 221 Ill.App.3d 868, 871, 164 Ill.Dec. 321, 324, 582 N.E.2d 1265, 1268, appeal denied (1992), 143 Ill.2d 644, 167 Ill.Dec. 406, 587 N.E.2d 1021.

II.

The State argues that the voir dire record's silence as to the race of the jurors and the venire precludes defendant from raising his equal protection claim. Illinois courts, however, have held that such gaps are not fatal in cases tried prior to Batson when deciding whether a defendant can make a prima facie showing of discrimination; instead, the voir dire record may be supplemented with information from other sources such as the trial judge, the attorneys, or the venire members themselves. People v. Mitchell (1991), 221 Ill.App.3d 979, 992-93, 164 Ill.Dec. 249, 257, 582 N.E.2d 1193, 1201, citing People v. Andrews (1989), 132 Ill.2d 451, 139 Ill.Dec. 469, 548 N.E.2d 1025 and People v. Lann (1990), 194 Ill.App.3d 623, 141 Ill.Dec. 283, 551 N.E.2d 276, appeal denied (1990), 132 Ill.2d 550, 144 Ill.Dec. 262, 555 N.E.2d 381. Therefore, we find that this flaw is not dispositive.

The State also contends that defendant waived his claims by not raising them on direct appeal. Although conceding that courts relax the waiver rule for factual questions not apparent from the record during direct appeal, the State contends that defendant had ample opportunity to raise these claims earlier because the court asked the members of the venire whether the defendant's race would affect their impartiality. It also chastises him for not explaining the delay. In addition, maintains the State, it would be mere speculation to hold that not objecting to the State's conduct worked to defendant's disadvantage at trial. Therefore, the State concludes, defendant has not shown either "cause" or "prejudice" such as would take this case out of the embrace of the waiver rule.

Here, as noted above, the jury selection process apparently was not transcribed, so the the State's use of its peremptory challenges, and defendant's objections, if any, could not have been in the record on direct appeal. Similarly, defense counsel's alleged refusal to object occurred in an off-the-record conversation between defendant and his attorney. For this very reason, the issues before the circuit court on defendant's petition could not have been raised on direct appeal, which may review only those claims that are grounded in the trial record. In addition, the circuit court's query to the venire prior to selection asked only whether they thought that defendant's race would affect their impartiality; it did not address the State's and defense counsel's subsequent conduct. Therefore, we hold that the waiver doctrine is no bar to defendant's claims. People v. Lee (1989), 185 Ill.App.3d 420, 427, 133 Ill.Dec. 536, 540, 541 N.E.2d 747, 751.

III.

Defe...