# People v. Caballero

> Illinois Supreme Court · March 23, 1984 · 102 Ill. 2d 23

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9724872

## Case

- **Full name:** The PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Appellee, v. JUAN CABALLERO, Appellant
- **Court:** Illinois Supreme Court
- **Decided:** March 23, 1984
- **Citations:** 102 Ill. 2d 23; 79 Ill. Dec. 625; 464 N.E.2d 223; 1984 Ill. LEXIS 283
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Simon
- **Judges:** Ryan, Simon
- **Cited by:** 363 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9724872

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that a reviewing court must review all evidence presented both at hearing on motion to suppress and at trial to determine whether trial court properly admitted evidence, reaffirming People v. La Bostrie, 14 Ill. 2d 617 (1958)
- holding that the defendant failed to preserve issue for review where the trial court did not rule on objection and the defendant did not request a ruling or call the judge’s attention to the fact that no ruling had been made
- holding that “[t]he final judgment in a criminal case is the sentence” and that, “in the absence of the imposition of a sentence, an appeal cannot be -3- entertained”
- holding that reviewing court may consider trial evidence in reviewing denial of motion to suppress

## Opinion text

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting:
I dissent. I believe that our death penalty statute is unconstitutional for the reasons I stated in People v. Lewis (1981), 88 Ill. 2d 129, 179 (Simon, J., dissenting) and People v. Silagy (1984), 101 Ill. 2d 147, 184-85 (Simon, J., dissenting).
I also disagree with the majority’s suggestion in the instant case that counsel for the defendant in a capital case is under some obligation to file a post-trial motion in the trial court, thereby preserving only the most promising issues for review and relieving this court of some of its burden as a reviewing tribunal. (102 Ill. 2d at 31-32.) I do not believe the defendant should be forced to make a binding decision of this type in the trial court. Decisions as to which errors are the most serious are often best made only after a thorough review of the record, a review which may not be possible within the limited time the losing party has to file a post-trial motion, and which in some cases may be impossible because of delays in preparing the transcript of the trial. Procedures or rales of review which automatically limit a defendant who faces the death penalty to only those issues which his attorney remembers well enough at the end of trial to make the basis of a post-trial motion, regardless of whether or not he chooses to file such a motion, would reduce the chances that an erroneous decision will be reversed.
Especially in an appeal involving the death penalty, I believe we should refrain from insisting that it is the obligation of counsel to file a post-trial motion which places him in peril of waiving any issues he may neglect to include in such a motion. Besides, it is useless to urge counsel to file such motions in cases where the death sentence has been imposed when, in the event they are not filed, we are nevertheless commanded by our constitution, as the majority concedes, to review all errors raised on appeal. Moreover, a defendant who elects not to file a written motion for a new trial is not precluded from appealing errors which occurred during the trial. (People v. Pierce (1980), 80 Ill. App. 3d 514, 516 .) A defendant is free to choose between filing a written motion for a new trial, in which event he waives objections not included, and appealing without such a motion, in which event he waives nothing to which he has made a proper objection during the trial.
A mandatory limitation of the type the majority appears to suggest would be a sharp departure from our present system, which allows every losing party to frame his own post-trial strategy within the ordinary limitations of the waiver rule. A capital case, in which there is only one level of review at the State level and the consequence of losing is death, should not be the first in which such a novel departure is advanced.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9724872. Public record. Not legal advice.