People v. Lansing
| Decision Date | 23 September 1966 |
| Docket Number | No. 39277,39277 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Richard LANSING, Appellant. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
William C. Ives, Chicago, appointed by the court, for appellant.
William G. Clark, Atty. Gen., Springfield, and Daniel P. Ward, State's Atty., Chicago (Fred G. Leach, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Elmer C. Kissane and Albert J. Armonda, Asst. State's Attys., of counsel), for appellee.
On April 22, 1959, the petitioner, Richard Lansing, pleaded guilty in the criminal court of Cook County to a charge of murder and was sentenced to the penitentiary for a term of life imprisonment. On October 15, 1964, a petition under the Post-Conviction Hearing Act was filed in the trial court. No hearing was held on the merits of the petition and it was dismissed on the State's motion on the ground that it was not filed within the time required by law. The petitioner has appealed from the order of dismissal.
At the time the petition was filed and at the time of the order dismissing the petition the relevant portion of the statute provided as follows (Ill.Rev.Stat.1963, chap. 38, par. 122--1): 'No proceedings under this Article shall be commenced more than 5 years after rendition of final judgment, unless the petitioner alleges facts showing that the delay was not due to his culpable negligence.' The petitioner's first argument is that he was not guilty of culpable negligence and that, therefore, the five-year limitation period is not applicable. We have examined the original petition and find that it contains no allegations attempting to explain the delay in filing the petition. At the hearing, which was held almost a month after the motion to dismiss was filed, counsel for the petitioner did not request leave to amend the petition so as to allege any such facts. The burden is on the petitioner to allege facts excusing the delay in filing and in the absence of any such allegations there was no question of lack of culpable negligence before the trial court and this question is not properly before us on review. The first allegations dealing with this question were made in a petition for a writ of error where it was claimed that petitioner was not guilty of culpable negligence because he had been raised in an orphanage and did not finish the sixth grade in school and was not familiar with the law. Even if these allegations could properly be considered we are of the opinion that they are insufficient to demonstrate a lack of culpable negligence.
The petitioner's second claim is that a 1965 amendment to the act, increasing the time for filing a petition to twenty years, should be applied retroactively. The act as amended provides as follows (Ill.Rev.Stat., 1965, chap. 38, par. 122--1): 'No proceedings under this Article shall be commenced more than 20 years after rendition of final judgment, unless the petitioner alleges facts showing that the delay was not due to his culpable negligence.' The question of whether an amendment to a limitations statute should be applied retroactively has frequently received consideration by us. In Orlicki v. McCarthy, 4 Ill.2d 342, 122 N.E.2d 513, we thoroughly reviewed the earlier cases and held that an amendment reducing the time for filing an action under the Dram Shop Act was retroactive and applied to a cause of action which had accrued prior to the time of the amendment. In that case the fatal accident occurred on July 10, 1949, and at that time an action could be brought within five years. The act was amended on August 10, 1949, to provide for a two-year limitation period. The action was filed September 27, 1951, within the five-year period but past the two-year period. We held that the language of the amendment indicated that the legislature intended that...
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People v. Caballero
...... Therefore, we find that defendant has sufficiently met his burden of showing that the delay in filing his second post-conviction petition asserting a sentence disparity claim was not due to his culpable negligence. 1 See People v. Lansing, 35 Ill.2d 247, 248, 220 N.E.2d 218 (1966); People v. Heirens, 271 Ill.App.3d 392, 401, 207 Ill.Dec. 804, 648 N.E.2d 260 (1995). . Defendant contends that his petition was sufficient to require a hearing and a ruling on the merits of his sentence disparity claim, but that the ......
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