rejecting Establishment Clause challenge to sentencing *570 enhancement for drug offenses committed within 1,000 feet of a "church,” noting that the enhanced penalty provisions "are obviously intended to protect segments of our society which may well be considered particularly vulnerable and less able to deal with the incursions of drug trafficking and its related evils” and also that "[t]he secular purpose of the statute is to 'deter narcotics activity.' "
How later courts described this case
- rejecting Establishment Clause challenge to sentencing *570 enhancement for drug offenses committed within 1,000 feet of a "church,” noting that the enhanced penalty provisions "are obviously intended to protect segments of our society which may well be considered particularly vulnerable and less able to deal with the incursions of drug trafficking and its related evils” and also that "[t]he secular purpose of the statute is to 'deter narcotics activity.' "
- holding that a “statute must be reasonably designed to remedy the evils which the legislature has determined to be a threat to the public health, safety and general welfare”
- where the defendant posed hypotheticals about whether an abandoned barn was a “place of worship”
- challenging state statute enhancing sentences for drug offenses committed within 1000 feet of a place of worship
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
JUSTICE BILANDIC, dissenting:
This court has no jurisdiction to hear the State’s appeal. This appeal should therefore be dismissed, and the cause should be transferred to the appellate court.
In Rehg v. Illinois Department of Revenue, 152 Ill. 2d 504, 508-09 (1992), this court noted that a circuit court order holding only that a statute is unconstitutional “as applied” in a particular case is not directly appealable to this court under Supreme Court Rule 302(a)(1). In People v. Fuller, 187 Ill. 2d 1, 8-10 (1999), a majority of this court overruled Rehg and determined that this court has jurisdiction over all appeals from circuit court orders holding statutes unconstitutional, even if the circuit court declares the statute unconstitutional only as applied to that case. I dissented in Fuller, and I continue to adhere to the rationale set forth in that dissent. See Fuller, 187 Ill. 2d at 21-24 (Bilandic, J., dissenting). Here, the circuit court declared section 407(b)(1) to be “unconstitutionally vague with regard to the given facts, to wit: the triggering of the enhanced penalty do [sic] solely to police action in selecting the locus of the offense by a traffic stop.” Because the circuit court held only that the statute is unconstitutional as applied to defendants in this case, the circuit court’s order is not directly appeal-able to this court, and we therefore do not have jurisdiction over the State’s appeal. For this reason, I respectfully dissent.