People v. Lyles
| Decision Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 98357.,98357. |
| Citation | 840 N.E.2d 1187 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Enice LYLES, Jr., Appellant. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
Michael J. Pelletier, Deputy Defender, and Lisa E. Rousso, Assistant Appellate Defender, of the Office of the State Appellate Defender, Chicago, and Diana N. Cherry and Richard D. Frazier, of Metnick, Cherry, Frazier & Sabin, L.L.P., Springfield, for appellant.
Lisa Madigan, Attorney General, Springfield, and Richard A. Devine, State's Attorney, Chicago (Linda D. Woloshin, Assistant Attorney General, Chicago, and Renee G. Goldfarb, Alan J. Spellberg and James E. Fitzgerald, Assistant State's Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.
We granted leave to appeal in this case in order to consider petitioner's challenge to the appellate court's dismissal of his appeal for want of prosecution. Pursuant to our supervisory authority, we now reinstate the appeal and remand the cause to the appellate court.
In 1982 a Cook County jury convicted petitioner Enice Lyles, Jr., of one count of voluntary manslaughter and two counts of first degree murder for the deaths, respectively, of Mary Thigpen and her sons Robert and Roderick Nichols, aged four and five. After a separate hearing he was sentenced to death for the murders and 14 years' imprisonment for voluntary manslaughter. On appeal this court affirmed his convictions but vacated his death sentence and remanded for a new sentencing hearing because of prosecutorial misconduct during the sentencing hearing. People v. Lyles, 106 Ill.2d 373, 87 Ill.Dec. 934, 478 N.E.2d 291 (1985). On remand the circuit court sentenced petitioner to natural life imprisonment for the murders and the same 14-year term for the manslaughter conviction.
Petitioner filed a pro se postconviction petition in 1991, arguing ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel. The circuit court dismissed the petition and the appellate court affirmed that dismissal. People v. Lyles, No. 1-92-0464, 260 Ill.App.3d 1116, 221 Ill.Dec. 466, 675 N.E.2d 661 (1994) (unpublished order under Supreme Court Rule 23).
In 2001 petitioner brought the instant action by filing a second postconviction petition, this time alleging that his sentence violated Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000). On August 30, 2001, the circuit court dismissed the petition as untimely and without merit. Petitioner filed a notice of appeal, and on September 28 the office of the State Appellate Defender was appointed to represent him in his appeal.
After first obtaining an extension of time for filing the record on appeal, the Appellate Defender sought and was granted four extensions of time for filing petitioner's appellate brief between January and August 2002. The last such extension resulted in a due date of October 11, 2002.1 The Appellate Defender did not file an appellate brief or any other motion by October 11, however, and on April 18, 2003, the appellate court dismissed the appeal for want of prosecution.
On May 23, 2003, 35 days after the appellate court dismissed the appeal, the Appellate Defender filed a "Motion to Reinstate and to Allow a Brief to be Filed Instanter." The State did not respond to the motion. The appellate court granted the motion, reinstated the appeal and permitted petitioner to file his appellate brief instanter.
In the State's response brief in the appellate court, the State argued that the appellate court was without jurisdiction to reinstate the appeal. The State maintained that the appellate court lost jurisdiction in the case when the court's order of dismissal became final, which, according to Supreme Court Rule 367(a), was 21 days from the date of the order's entry.
The appellate court agreed with the State, vacated its order reinstating the appeal, and dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. 347 Ill.App.3d 100, 282 Ill.Dec. 875, 807 N.E.2d 499. After noting that Rule 367(a) gives a party only 21 days to file a petition for rehearing after a reviewing court's judgment is filed (155 Ill.2d R. 367(a)), the court then referred to two decisions of this court, Woodson v. Chicago Board of Education, 154 Ill.2d 391, 182 Ill.Dec. 15, 609 N.E.2d 318 (1993), and People v. Moore, 133 Ill.2d 331, 140 Ill.Dec. 385, 549 N.E.2d 1257 (1990). In Woodson, this court held that the appellate court lost jurisdiction of an appeal when no petition for rehearing was filed within 21 days after the court had dismissed the appeal for want of prosecution. In Moore, by contrast, this court held that a criminal defendant ought not to lose his right to a direct appeal as the result of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel and that reviewing courts should reinstate direct criminal appeals which had been dismissed for want of prosecution as the result of appellate counsel's misconduct or neglect. Moore, 133 Ill.2d 331, 140 Ill.Dec. 385, 549 N.E.2d 1257. The appellate court distinguished Moore from the present case on the ground that Moore involved a direct criminal appeal and that, in such circumstances, due process required the effective assistance of counsel. 347 Ill.App.3d 100, 282 Ill.Dec. 875, 807 N.E.2d 499. The court noted that petitioner's appeal here was not a direct appeal from a criminal conviction but, rather, an appeal from a collateral, postconviction challenge to a criminal conviction, a proceeding which does not guarantee the same constitutionally driven right to effective assistance of counsel found in the direct appeal situation. 347 Ill.App.3d 100, 282 Ill.Dec. 875, 807 N.E.2d 499. In light of this distinction, the appellate court concluded that the instant case was more akin to Woodson than Moore and, accordingly, dismissed the appeal.
Justice Hall dissented. She argued, first, that the appellate court retained jurisdiction because the court never issued its mandate after the April dismissal order, citing Whitcanock v. Nelson, 81 Ill.App.3d 186, 36 Ill.Dec. 418, 400 N.E.2d 998 (1980). The dissent suggested that Woodson may have erred in failing to recognize the jurisdictional significance of issuance of the mandate. Second, the dissent argued that due process considerations supported reinstatement of the appeal even if the court had lost jurisdiction due to passage of time after the decision was rendered.
This court granted petitioner leave to appeal. See 155 Ill.2d R. 315(a).
Petitioner urges this court to reverse the appellate court and reinstate his appeal. He maintains that he bears no fault in the dismissal of his appeal and that his right to appeal should not be lost solely on the basis of his appellate counsel's deficient performance. He argues that counsel's performance was so inadequate as to have effectively deprived him of the representation guaranteed him by this court's rules (petitioner acknowledges that he has "no constitutional right to counsel in post-conviction appeal"). The State counters that the appellate court had no choice but to dismiss the appeal, because the appellate court's jurisdiction is conditional on compliance with the time limits set out by this court's rules.
The two competing considerations in this case are immediately apparent. On the one hand, our rules unambiguously require that a petition for rehearing in the appellate court must be filed within 21 days after the judgment is filed, unless the time for filing is extended on motion. 155 Ill.2d R. 367(a). This rule applies to criminal and postconviction appeals as well as civil appeals. See 177 Ill.2d R. 612(p) (); 134 Ill.2d R. 651(d) (). On the other hand, because this is an appeal from the dismissal of a postconviction petition, it involves a claim of a deprivation of constitutional rights in a criminal proceeding, and possibly an erroneous deprivation of liberty. In such proceedings, petitioners are entitled to an appeal (134 Ill.2d R. 651(a)), and they are entitled to appellate counsel (134 Ill.2d R. 651(c)), who must provide at least "a reasonable level of assistance." People v. Johnson, 192 Ill.2d 202, 207, 248 Ill.Dec. 926, 735 N.E.2d 577 (2000).
However, these are not interests which the appellate court can balance. As this court has repeatedly stated, and as the appellate majority correctly held, the appellate and circuit courts of this state must enforce and abide by the rules of this court. The appellate court's power "attaches only upon compliance with the rules governing appeals." People v. Flowers, 208 Ill.2d 291, 308, 280 Ill.Dec. 653, 802 N.E.2d 1174 (2003). "[N]either the trial court nor the appellate court has the `authority to excuse compliance with the filing requirements of the supreme court rules governing appeals.'" Mitchell v. Fiat-Allis, Inc., 158 Ill.2d 143, 150, 198 Ill.Dec. 399, 632 N.E.2d 1010 (1994), quoting In re Smith, 80 Ill.App.3d 380, 382, 35 Ill.Dec. 635, 399 N.E.2d 701 (1980). "While the appellate court may exercise significant powers on review of a criminal case (see 134 Ill.2d R. 615(b)), it does not possess the same inherent supervisory authority conferred on our court by article VI, section 16, of the Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const.1970, art. VI, § 16)." Flowers, 208 Ill.2d at 308, 280 Ill.Dec. 653, 802 N.E.2d 1174, citing People v. Harvey, 196 Ill.2d 444, 453-54, 257 Ill.Dec. 98, 753 N.E.2d 293 (2001) (McMorrow, J., specially concurring, joined by Freeman, J.). Thus, as we held in Woodson, the appellate court loses jurisdiction of an appeal 21 days after it has been dismissed, unless within that time a litigant files a petition for rehearing or a motion to extend the time for filing the same. Woodson, 154 Ill.2d at 397, 182 Ill.Dec. 15, 609...
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