finding that the State lacked authority to charge the defendant with willfully failing to pay child or spousal support because the State failed to comply with the statutory requirement that the charge could not be filed until after the person receiving child or spousal support filed a verified complaint with the trial court
How later courts described this case
- finding that the State lacked authority to charge the defendant with willfully failing to pay child or spousal support because the State failed to comply with the statutory requirement that the charge could not be filed until after the person receiving child or spousal support filed a verified complaint with the trial court
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
JUSTICE DONOVAN, specially concurring:
I concur in the majority’s decision to affirm the judgment of the circuit court of Clinton County. I agree that the issue involves the interpretation of statutory provisions of the Non-Support Punishment Act (Act) (750 ILCS 16/1 et seq. (West 2006)) and that review is de novo. Under the rules of statutory construction, as the majority has noted, all the provisions of a statutory enactment should be viewed as a whole, and words and clauses should be considered in light of other relevant statutory provisions, so that each is given a reasonable meaning and is not rendered superfluous. People v. Beachem, 229 Ill. 2d 237, 243 , 890 N.E.2d 515, 519 (2008); People v. Botruff, 212 Ill. 2d 166, 174 , 817 N.E.2d 463, 468 (2004). After reviewing section 5 and section 10 of the Act (750 ILCS 16/5, 10 (West 2006)) and considering the goals to be achieved and the evils to he avoided in the legislative enactment, I conclude that these provisions authorize a prosecutor, in his or her discretion, to file an information in the circuit court either subsequent to or in conjunction and simultaneously with the victim’s filing of a verified complaint in the circuit court alleging that a defendant has wilfully refused to pay support. This interpretation of the statutory procedure serves to preserve the prosecutor’s discretion regarding whether and how to prosecute criminal violations, and it serves to impress upon the complainant the seriousness of the proceedings. The record in this case clearly shows that the person entitled to receive the support did not file a verified complaint in the circuit court either prior to or in conjunction with the filing of the information by the prosecutor. The circuit court did not err in dismissing the information.