explaining that an appeals court is bound by the precedents of the supreme court because "where the supreme court has declared the law on any point, it alone can overrule and modify its previous opinion"
How later courts described this case
- explaining that an appeals court is bound by the precedents of the supreme court because "where the supreme court has declared the law on any point, it alone can overrule and modify its previous opinion"
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
JUSTICE McCULLOUGH, specially concurring:
The exclusionary rule should not be applied to sentencing hearings. As pointed out in Dowery and Grubb, the fourth amendment’s exclusionary rule is not applicable to probation revocation proceedings or qualitatively comparable proceedings to revoke probation. More important, in the instant case, we are not dealing with a probation revocation proceeding, but only with a sentencing hearing.
In People v. La Pointe (1981), 88 Ill. 2d 482, 496 , 431 N.E.2d 344, 350 , it is stated:
“[T]he Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the ‘fundamental sentencing principle’ that ‘a judge may appropriately conduct an inquiry broad in scope, largely unlimited either as to the kind of information he may consider, or the source from which it may come.’ ”
Also in La Pointe, the supreme court, quoting from Williams v. New York (1949), 337 U.S. 241, 247 , 93 L. Ed. 1337, 1342 , 69 S. Ct. 1079, 1083 , stated:
“ ‘[MJodern concepts individualizing punishment have made it all the more necessary that a sentencing judge not be denied an opportunity to obtain pertinent information by a requirement of rigid adherence to restrictive rules of evidence properly applicable to the trial.’ ” (La Pointe, 88 Ill. 2d at 497 , 431 N.E.2d at 351 .)
The fourth amendment should protect the defendant’s rights only when the objective in obtaining the evidence by the police is to enhance the defendant’s sentence and, second, where the police engage in outragéous constitutional violations. Neither of these exceptions is applicable here.
The supreme court’s decision in Bowery, stating that the fourth amendment exclusionary rule does not apply in revocation proceedings, makes it clearly evident that it would not apply in a sentencing proceeding. The defendant’s rights were protected because he was given the opportunity to confront the witness presented against him.