THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Aрpellant, v. MICHAEL A. YOUNG, Appellee.
No. 55452
Supreme Court of Illinois
June 18, 1982
236 Ill. 2d 236
Tyrone C. Fahner, Attorney General, of Springfield, and Jordan Gallagher, State‘s Attorney, of Sycamore (Phyllis J. Perko, of the State‘s Attorneys Appellate Service Commission, of Elgin, of counsel), for the People.
Steven Clark, Deputy Defender, and Richard E. Cunningham, Assistant Appellate Defender, of the Office of the State Appellate Defender, of Chicago, for appellee.
JUSTICE SIMON delivered the opinion of the court:
Defendant, Michael Young, was charged in the circuit court of De Kalb County with leaving the scene of an accident (
Section 11-401(a) of the Illinois Vehicle Code (
“(b) Any person who has failed to stop *** shall, within 48 hours after such accident *** report the place of accident, the date, the approximate time, his name, address, the registration number оf the vehicle driven, and the names of the occupants, if any, of such vehicle, at a police station or sheriff‘s office near the place where such accident occurred. No report made as required under this Subsection shall be used, directly or indirectly, as a basis for the prosecution of any violation of Subsection (a) of this Section.” (Emphasis added.)
Sections 11-401(c) and (d) (
The circuit court allowed Young‘s motion to suppress his statements on the ground he had reported the accident to the police within 48 hours and thus section 11-401(b) prohibited the use of his report against him. An appeal by the State from the suppression order was dismissed by the appellate court, which hеld it was not an appealable order. (People v. Young (1979), 76 Ill. App. 3d 210.) This court reversed the dismissal and remanded the appeal to the appellate court for ruling on the merits, concluding that the State should be allowed to appeal from a pretrial suppression order which substantially impaired its ability to prosecute the case. (People v. Young (1980), 82 Ill. 2d 234.) On remand, the appellate court, in a split decision, held that Young‘s statements could be used on the charge of driving too fast for conditions, but not in the prosecution for leaving the scene of an accident (98 Ill. App. 3d 585). The dissenting judge‘s view was that the State could use Young‘s statements in prosecuting both offenses. His reasoning was that because the statements were obtained as a result of the officer‘s investigation and call to Young requesting him to come to the station, they did not constitute a report within the meaning of seсtion 11-401(b) of the Illinois Vehicle Code and consequently were not entitled to the protection of that statute. The State advances essentially the same position in this appeal, contending that the statute is designed to encourage voluntary reporting as distinguished from poliсe efforts which result in locating a person involved who leaves the scene of an accident and fails to initiate his report before the
Section 11-401(b) requires all persons who leave an accident scene to report the occurrence within 48 hours. Its requirements are not limited to situations where the driver initiates the сontact with the police in contrast with those where the initial contact is brought about by police efforts, as happened in Young‘s case. A person contacted by the police and requested to come to a police station to report an acсident who fails to respond is as guilty of violating section 11-401(b) as a driver who is never contacted and never reports. The statute directs all drivers who have fled the scene of an accident to report the pertinent information at a police station within 48 hours, and nothing in the wording of the statute justifies treating those who appear at a police station before being contacted by the police differently from those who come to the station following a police request. The plain wording of the statute neither lends itself to such a distinction nor suggеsts that police responsibility for the driver‘s appearance at the station is a material factor in the application of the statute. All the statute commands is that a person who has failed to stop at the scene report the pertinent information at a police station within the required time.
Similarly, section 11-401(b) provides a period of grace of 48 hours during which a driver who has fled from the accident can avoid felony prosecution by reporting the accident. Under the State‘s interpretation, the police could reduce thе length of this grace period by initiating contact with a driver who has left the scene before he appears at the police station. But the statute on its face does not envision a race between police efforts to initiate contact with a missing driver and the driver‘s decision to escape felony prosecution by going to a police station and making a clean breast of his
In its reply brief the State concedes that Young‘s cooperation with the police may have immunized him from felony prosecution for violating section 11-401(b), but it nеvertheless contends that because of the police initiative which brought Young to the station, his statements should not be accorded the shield from prosecution use provided by the second sentence of that paragraph. We find nothing in section 11-401(b) which justifies such a distinction between the immunity provided by the first sentence and the privilege provided by the second.
The statute‘s purpose is to inform those who have been injured or damaged by a hit-and-run driver of the driver‘s identity. This is accomplished by encouraging such drivers to take advantage of a second chance to come forward and reveal their identity. Those who do come forward will not be prosecuted for a felony, and their statements will not be used against them if they are prosecuted for the misdemeanor of leaving an accident scene. It is useful and effective to оffer both of these inducements to those who cooperate after first receiving a nudge from the police as well as to those who come forward on their own initiative; no valid distinction can be drawn between them. Although the police in this case, for example, had a license number, they still needed Young‘s cooperation to confirm that the vehicle with that license number was involved in the accident and to find out who was driving. The statute should be construed to afford maximum encouragement to those contacted by the police to be forthright rather than to stonewall or attempt to elude the police. Permitting the State to use a driver‘s report in its prosecution for leaving the accident scene discourages the driver both from coming forward and cooperating with police officers who may contaсt him first. To give the statute full scope in accomplishing what we believe it was intended to do, it is necessary to construe it in a way which affords the benefits of the prohibition against use contained
The State urges that the provision prohibiting the State‘s use of reports is an exception to the statutory scheme and, relying on People v. Lofton (1977), 69 Ill. 2d 67, argues that because it is an exception it must be strictly construed. The Lofton court was dealing with a statute which еxempted a defined class of persons from the provisions of the unlawful use of weapons statute as long as the person claiming exemption was carrying documentation issued by the Department of Registration and Education. Unlike Lofton, the provision of the Illinois Vehicle Code аpplicable in this case is not an exemption statute, for it provides that a driver comes within the provisions of the statute and violates the law only upon his failure to comply with its provisions. It applies the statute to those who fail to comply; it does not extend an exemption to a statute of general application, as the statute in Lofton did. In any event, in arriving at the conclusion we do in this case we are following the Lofton directive of strict construction of the statute. We are construing it exactly as it reads, and we decline to add to it the conditions and exceptions the State advances, as they do not appear on the face of the statute and do not square with the statutory scheme.
The State finally argues that Young‘s statement included information beyond that required by the statute and that the extra information should not be suрpressed. The State failed to specify in the circuit court which portion of Young‘s statement went beyond the statutory requirement. Its only contention in the circuit court was that it was entitled to use the information Young gave in its entirety. Moreover, the two statements which the State insists in this court it hаs the right to use are so closely related to the reporting requirements of the statute that it would be impossible to isolate them from those requirements. Young admitted he hit the other car, but in doing so he was merely admitting his participation in the accident, a condition of compliаnce with the
Although the statute bars the use of Young‘s statement in the prosecution for leaving the scene of the accident, there is no statutory or other bar to its use in connection with the chargе of driving too fast for conditions. The circuit court erred in applying the suppression order to that charge.
Judgment affirmed.
JUSTICE WARD, dissenting:
The ancient inquiry as to who is to watch the watchmen is raised by the majority‘s opinion.
The doctrine of separation of powers of government is, of course, not an unrеasonably rigid one (City of Waukegan v. Pollution Control Board (1974), 57 Ill. 2d 170). This court, however, has been vigilant in restraining the other branches of government where there has been a wrongful intrusion upon the functions of another branch. I consider that the majority here disregards the legislative intention and improperly invades the legislative area and violates the doctrine.
The cardinal principle of statutory construction is to ascertain the legislative intendment and follow it. It is a cardinal offense for a court to fail to observe that intention.
I believe that the State‘s position accurately reflects the legislative intendment. The State contends, to quote the majority‘s language, “that the statute is designed to encourage voluntary reporting as distinguished from police efforts which result in locating a person involved who leaves the scene of an accident and fails to initiate his rеport before the police contact him.” Where witnesses have reported the license plate number of the fleeing car and the police officer
A former policy of the United States Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of Justice seems relevant to consider. The “voluntary disclosure” policy permitted an income tax violator to disclose his violation with the knowledge that a criminal prosecution would not result. The policy, however, required that the disclosure had to be complete and it had to be truly voluntary. That is, the disclosure had to be made before an investigation of the taxpayer‘s return had begun. I feel certain that the legislature had a similar requirement in mind when enacting the statute here.
CHIEF JUSTICE RYAN joins in this dissent.