People v. DillardPeople v. Dillard
¶ 1 Held: Judgment affirmed; order assessing fines, fees, and costs corrected.
¶ 2 Following a bench trial, Herman Dillard, the defendant, was convicted of burglary (
¶ 3 Defendant was charged by information with one count of burglary. Defendant waived his right to a jury trial, and the case proceeded to a bench trial. The evidence at trial showed that, on August 18, 2013, a witness observed a man break into a car in the area of 1202 West Cabrini Street, take a large pink bag that was in the back seat, and ride away on a bicycle. Police in the area received a dispatch call about the break-in and apprehended defendant, who was riding a bicycle in the area while holding a large pink bag. The witness identified defendant as the man who had broken into the car in question. The owner of the car testified that he had not given defendant permission to enter his car.
¶ 4 The trial court found defendant guilty as charged. After a hearing, the court sentenced defendant to a mandatory Class-X term of six years’ imprisonment. The court also imposed $434 of fines, fees, and costs and credited defendant with 608 days of presentence custody.
¶ 5 Defendant appeals, arguing that trial court erroneously imposed two assessments, and that a number of other assessments should be offset by his presentence custody credit.
¶ 6 Initially, defendant concedes that he did not challenge these assessments in the trial court. Generally, a sentencing issue is forfeited unless the defendant both objects to the error at the sentencing hearing and raises the objection in a postsentencing motion. People v. Nowells, 2013 IL App (1st) 113209, ¶ 18. However, because the State does not argue forfeiture on appeal, it has forfeited the claim that the issues raised by defendant are forfeited. See People v. Reed, 2016 IL App (1st) 140498, ¶ 13 (“By failing to timely argue that a defendant has forfeited an issue, the
¶ 7 Defendant first contends, and the State agrees, that the trial court erroneously assessed the $5 Electronic Citation fee (
¶ 8 Similarly, the statute authorizing the $5 Court System fee states that the fee is “to be paid by the defendant on a judgment of guilty or a grant of supervision for violation of the Illinois Vehicle Code other than Section 11-501 or violations of similar provisions contained in county or municipal ordinances committed in the county.”
¶ 9 Defendant next contends that certain assessments imposed against him operate as “fines” and should therefore be offset by his presentence incarceration credit. A defendant incarcerated
¶ 10 Initially, the parties agree that the $10 Mental Health Court fine (
¶ 11 Defendant next contends, the State concedes, and we agree, that the $15 State Police Operations assessment (
¶ 12 Defendant next contends that the $2 Public Defender Records Automation assessment (
¶ 13 In sum, we vacate the $5 Electronic Citation fee and the $5 Court System fee assessed against defendant. We find that the $10 Mental Health Court fine, the $5 Youth Diversion/Peer Court fine, the $5 Drug Court fine, the $30 Children‘s Advocacy Center fine, the $15 State Police Operations assessment, the $50 Court System assessment, the $2 Public Defender Records Automation assessment, and the $2 State‘s Attorney Record Automation assessment are completely offset by defendant‘s presentence credit. Accordingly, we order the clerk of circuit court, pursuant to Illinois Supreme Court Rule 615(b)(1), to modify the fines, fees, and costs order to indicate that defendant has a total of $305 in outstanding assessments.
¶ 14 Affirmed as modified.
¶ 16 Dillard‘s notice of appeal was filed on April 17, 2015. In his opening brief filed two years later, he raises only issues relating to $129 out of a total of $434 in monetary assessments. The State agrees that of the $129 Dillard challenges, two $5 fees were improperly included and that the total should have been $119. The State further agrees that Dillard is entitled to the per diem credit against $115 of the $119 total. The only area of disagreement—after 26 pages of briefs—is two $2 assessments for, respectively, the State‘s Attorney Records Automation fee and the Public
¶ 17 This is a manifestly wasteful expenditure of scarce attorney and judicial time. Because our supreme court has determined that a defendant can seek the per diem credit at any time (People v. Caballero, 228 Ill. 2d 79, 88 (2008)), nothing has prevented Dillard from filing a petition in the trial court to ascertain his per diem credit. He does not need this court to perform that function for him. For that matter, nothing prevented the State‘s Attorney and the Public Defender from (i) reviewing the judgment order prior to its entry to determine whether the assessments were appropriate (how many times do we need to note that traffic citation fees do not apply in non-traffic offense cases?) and (ii) calculating the amount of credit against those assessments Dillard was entitled to. And certainly nothing has prevented the State‘s Attorney and State Appellate Defender from communicating with each other during the pendency of this appeal to ascertain the areas of their agreement; they do not need judicial imprimatur to accomplish this task by agreement.