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The Illinois Supreme Court reversed its long held legal precedent regarding sentence enhancement for serious crimes.  The Court announced Thursday 6 October 2005, that it will no longer determine sentences for serious crimes based on comparing punishments for drastically different offenses.  This change in law is likely to affect dozens of criminal cases every year, according to legal experts. 

Under the new law, a man convicted of murder with a gun will not automatically receive an enhanced penalty for using a gun, as opposed to another weapon to commit the same crime.  Under the old law, this man would have received a greater penalty than, say, a man who used a knife to commit murder.  This is exactly what happened to a Cook County man, Kenneth Sharpe, who was convicted of murder and received an enhanced penalty for using a gun.  This convicted criminal argued that it was wrong to imprison a person longer for murder committed with a gun than for murder with another weapon. 

The court has long held that when a gun is involved in the commission of a crime, the criminal should automatically receive an enhanced penalty.  While the goal was to crack down on gun-related crime and send a strong message about the severity of these offenses, it also led to “absurd and problematic” comparisons between drastically different crimes. 

Chief Justice Bob Thomas writes, “All that we have accomplished is to make the analysis more subjective and to put ourselves in a position in which we are improperly substituting our judgment for that of the Legislature.”  This change in criminal law will substantially narrow interpretation of the Illinois constitution, thereby giving more weight to its requirement that the severity of a punishment be proportionate to a crime’s severity. 

This change in state criminal law will allow some defendants, like Mr. Sharpe, to receive a new hearing.  Others will be allowed to challenge enhanced sentences on the basis of an overly harsh or degrading sentence or a harsher penalty than is typically ordered for crimes with the same elements.  It will, however, limit a defendant’s right to challenge a sentence by comparing it to sentences ordered for other crimes.  A spokesperson from the Illinois attorney general’s office states that the department is pleased with the ruling, as it will clear up the confusion about sentence enhancements.  

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