People v. Deleon

              Supreme Court Summaries
Opinions filed January 25, 2008
No. 103777 People v. Deleon
Appellate citation: No. 1–04–2934 (unpublished order under Supreme Court Rule 23).
CHIEF JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.
Justices Freeman, Fitzgerald, Kilbride, Garman, Karmeier, and Burke concurred in the judgment and opinion.
In 1997, there was a multiple shooting at Mannheim Road and Schiller Street in Franklin Park. This defendant fired shots at the driver of a vehicle, wounding him in the chest with a bullet that exited the rear of the victim’s body. As the defendant kept firing, he also struck the driver of an ice cream truck as well as a three-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl who were nearby. The girl was killed, but the automobile driver who was fired upon survived to testify at the defendant’s Cook County bench trial. Deleon was not convicted concerning the injured boy and the ice cream truck driver, but was convicted of first degree murder in the death of the girl and for attempted first degree murder as to the shooting of the motorist. He was originally sentenced to a mandatory life term for the death and a consecutive 30-year term for his attempt to murder the motorist.
Later it was determined that the mandatory life term was not statutorily authorized and a new sentencing hearing was ordered. That resentencing hearing is the subject of this appeal. At it, Deleon received a 100-year extended-term sentence for murder and, again, a consecutive term of 30 years for attempted murder. The appellate court affirmed.
In this decision, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected the defendant’s claims that his attorney at resentencing had been ineffective. It also rejected the claim that the motorist the defendant attempted to murder had not received severe bodily injury for purposes of consecutive sentencing. The results below were affirmed.