THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GREGORY PERKINS, Defendant-Appellee.
Docket No. 1-15-0889
Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Third Division
August 31, 2016
2016 IL App (1st) 150889
Decision Under Review: Appeal from the
Anita M. Alvarez, State‘s Attorney, of Chicago (Alan J. Spellberg, John E. Nowak, and Sara McGann, Assistant State‘s Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.
Michael J. Pelletier, Patricia Mysza, and Michael Gomez, all of State Appellate Defender‘s Office, of Chicago, for appellee.
PRESIDING JUSTICE MASON delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. Justices Fitzgerald Smith and Pucinski concurred in the judgment and opinion.
OPINION
¶ 1 On October 17, 2010, defendant Gregory Perkins was arrested while in possession of a firearm. After a bench trial, Perkins was convicted of several offenses, including armed habitual criminal, unlawful possession of a weapon and firearm ammunition by a felon (UUWF), aggravated unlawful use of a weapon (AUUW), and failure to possess a valid firearm owner‘s identification (FOID) card. The trial court merged all of the counts and sentenced Perkins to seven years’ imprisonment on the armed habitual criminal count. The predicate convictions for these offenses included Perkins’ earlier convictions for UUWF and AUUW.
¶ 2 Perkins voluntarily dismissed his appeal and later failed to appeal the dismissal of a pro se petition seeking relief from judgment. On June 6, 2014, Perkins filed a petition seeking relief under the Post-Conviction Hearing Act.
¶ 3 After the State‘s motion to reconsider was denied, the State appealed pursuant
¶ 4 On June 16, 2016, our supreme court decided People v. McFadden, 2016 IL 117424, a direct appeal from a UUWF conviction predicated on defendant‘s possession of a firearm at a time when he had previously been convicted of AUUW. Like Perkins here, the defendant in McFadden argued that Aguilar prevented the State‘s use of a prior AUUW conviction to establish the predicate for the UUWF charge, notwithstanding that the prior conviction had not been vacated.
¶ 5 Reversing our decision in People v. McFadden, 2014 IL App (1st) 102939, which vacated defendant‘s UUWF conviction on this basis, the supreme court concluded that defendant‘s status as a felon was not affected by Aguilar and that unless and until the prior conviction was vacated, the prior felony conviction precluded defendant from possessing a firearm. McFadden, 2016 IL 117424, ¶ 31 (“Although Aguilar may provide a basis for vacating defendant‘s prior 2002 AUUW conviction, Aguilar did not automatically overturn that judgment of conviction. Thus, at the time defendant committed the UUW by a felon offense, defendant had a judgment of conviction that had not been vacated and that made it unlawful for him to possess firearms.“). We afforded the parties the opportunity to address McFadden‘s impact on this case.
¶ 6 Perkins first argues that McFadden‘s reasoning was limited to the offense of UUWF, which requires the State to prove only defendant‘s status as a convicted felon.
¶ 7 We find this to be a distinction without a difference. In order to sustain its burden to prove that a defendant is an armed habitual criminal, the State need only prove the fact of the prior convictions of enumerated offenses (id.; see People v. Tolentino, 409 Ill. App. 3d 598, 607 (2011) (sufficient for State to present certified copies of defendant‘s prior convictions for qualifying offenses)), just as the State need only prove the fact of a prior felony conviction to support a UUWF conviction.
¶ 8 Perkins next argues that we need not follow McFadden because the United States Supreme Court decisions in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. ___, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016), and Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371 (1879), which were not addressed in McFadden, constitute binding authority and mandate that his armed habitual criminal conviction be vacated. In Montgomery, the Supreme Court held that the prohibition against mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders articulated in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. ___, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012), was a substantive rule of constitutional law entitled to retroactive effect on collateral review. Montgomery, 577 U.S. at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 734. Perkins reasons that Aguilar is entitled to the same retroactive effect and that the State‘s reliance on his prior UUWF and AUUW convictions violates Montgomery‘s central premise: “There is no grandfather clause that permits States to enforce punishments the Constitution forbids. To conclude otherwise would undercut the Constitution‘s substantive guarantees.” Id. at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 731.
¶ 9 Perkins contends that our supreme court “ignored” the decision in Montgomery. But as the State points out, prior to oral argument in McFadden, counsel sought and was granted leave to cite Montgomery as additional authority. In that motion, counsel advanced the same arguments presented here. In response, the State argued, as it does here, that Montgomery posed no constitutional impediment to affirmance of defendant‘s UUWF conviction given that defendant was not seeking to vacate his prior conviction (relief that, if sought, the State would
not oppose), but instead was challenging his status as a convicted felon at the time of his trial. The State argued that in this context, Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55, 60-62 (1980), which held that a defendant‘s failure to vacate a prior felony conviction on grounds that it was unconstitutional was fatal to a challenge to a felon-in-possession conviction, controlled. We agree with the State.
¶ 10 At the time of Perkins’ armed habitual criminal conviction, he had prior UUWF and AUUW convictions. Because those convictions had not been vacated at the time Perkins possessed a firearm on October 17, 2010, they could properly serve as the predicates for his armed habitual criminal conviction. Consequently, we reverse the judgment of the circuit court of Cook County granting Perkins’ postconviction petition.
¶ 11 Reversed.