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26 June 2000

JUSTICE KUEHN delivered the opinion of the court:

There is an old adage that cautions restraint in what we seek. Its message draws uponthe irony that can sometimes mock a successful pursuit. This is a case in point. Thedefendant asked the trial judge to allow for jury deliberation on the question of guilt for theoffense of involuntary manslaughter. The trial judge honored that request. The jurydeliberated and resolved the question against the defendant. It found her guilty.

The defendant now challenges a guilty verdict of her own making. She asks us toundo the verdict because it makes no sense. With a rather remarkable turn in position, thedefendant argues that justice would have been better served had the jury attributed guilt forthe offense of first-degree murder. The facts of this case could at least support such averdict. They do not support attribution of guilt for involuntary manslaughter.

Thus, the defendant maintains that she has been held to account for involuntarymanslaughter-a crime that she could not possibly have committed. We are asked to correctthis iniquity by reversing her conviction.

On July 30, 1996, the defendant gave birth to a daughter, posthumously named JudyFeldmann Frerichs. Judy's stay on this earth was short-lived. Her life's journey consistedof a few breaths of fresh air followed by a headlong plunge into the uninviting waters of atoilet bowl. The varied pleasures that life had in store for Judy were forever lost when amother's hand flushed them away. Judy's lungs filled with toilet water and she drowned. A first-degree-murder prosecution ensued. There was no dispute over the fact thatJudy was born alive and well. The only uncertainty was whether Judy's lungs drew air forseveral minutes or only a matter of seconds before toilet water invaded them. The answerto life's duration depended upon where Judy's delivery occurred. The State and the defensepresented two divergent views on where her birth took place.

The prosecution's theory commended a finding of first-degree murder. According tothe State, Judy was born in the bedroom of the defendant's apartment. After Judy's birth, thedefendant carried Judy into the bathroom and deliberately deposited her into the toilet bowl. The defense theory called for acquittal. According to the defense, the defendant wasas innocent as the daughter she never knew. Unaware of her pregnant condition, thedefendant went to the bathroom in order to answer what she thought was a normal urge forits use. The defendant delivered Judy into the toilet bowl without knowing it. Judy'spresence went undiscovered. Mother and child alike were victims of a tragic accident.

After a two-week trial, a Montgomery County jury deliberated to a verdict. Itreturned a verdict of guilt, but not for the offense of murder. The jury found the defendantguilty of involuntary manslaughter. The trial judge imposed a four-year prison sentenceupon that finding of guilt.

This appeal seeks an outright reversal of the conviction, based upon the total absenceof evidence from which to conclude that the defendant performed any act with a recklessstate of mind. Under the State's theory of the case, the jury should have concluded that thedefendant deliberately placed her newborn baby into the toilet bowl, an act that could not bedone without knowledge of impending death or great bodily harm. Under the defense theoryof the case, the jury should have concluded that the defendant was oblivious to the situationand, hence, lacked a state of mind necessary to offend the law. Instead, the jury concludedthat the defendant's criminal recklessness caused Judy's death.

The defendant allows for one other possibility. The jury may have found it hard tobelieve that she could deliver a full-term baby without knowing it. The jury may haveconcluded that she was indeed ignorant of her pregnant condition, commenced an unwittingdelivery while on the toilet, but became aware of her circumstance during the deliveryprocess. If so, the jury would have had to conclude that the defendant took no action onJudy's behalf and allowed her to fend for herself in the toilet bowl. The defendant arguesthat this alternative to the contrasting theories offered at trial warranted a finding of murder, rather than involuntary manslaughter. If the jury believed that the defendant became awareof Judy's existence and, thereafter, delivered her into the toilet bowl and left her there, it hadto conclude that knowledge of impending death or great bodily harm accompanied thedefendant's omission.

In essence, the defendant's position is this. Although the State's evidence harboredthe potential for a first-degree-murder conviction on either of two bases, the jury did not findthe defendant guilty of murder. The jury rejected the State's theory of death's circumstance. The only other theory presented was one of innocence. To the extent that this theory couldhave been rejected as well and the jury could have believed that the defendant discoveredJudy during the delivery process, the jury could not conclude that the defendant actedrecklessly. If the defendant was aware of Judy's impending arrival, she had to be aware ofthe inevitable outcome that a failure to act would produce. Hence, the jury verdict bears noconnection to the evidence presented at trial. The jury engaged in a pure compromise inorder to reach its verdict.

Based upon the total absence of an evidentiary foundation to support the guiltyverdict, the defendant concludes that her conviction must be reversed. She maintains thatthe State cannot punish her for a crime not committed, a crime that the State did not, andcannot, prove.

We are not asked to address what we believe to be the controlling issue in this case. The State did not seek deliberation on the crime of involuntary manslaughter. The trial judgedid not allow for it by the exercise of his independent authority to instruct on a lesser-included offense. See People v. Garcia, 188 Ill. 2d 265, 276-77, 721 N.E.2d 574, 583(1999). There is only one reason that the jury pronounced guilt for involuntarymanslaughter, only one reason that the defendant stands convicted of that offense. Thedefendant pursued, and successfully secured, a ruling that empowered the jury to find thatthe defendant committed involuntary manslaughter.

The State joins the question raised and invites us to examine the evidence presentedin order to determine whether a rational jury could conclude that the defendant committedthe crime of involuntary manslaughter. Although the outcome of this case does not dependupon whether the evidence adduced at trial was legally sufficient to support an involuntarymanslaughter conviction, the arguments presented are instructive. We think it worthwhileto examine them.

The State's theory of the defendant's guilt is chilling. It speaks of a patient planexecuted by a powerfully motivated killer. It speaks of a cold-blooded murder. At trial, theState tried its best to convey that message. It pursued the following theory about whathappened. This is the State's view of how Judy died and what motivated her unnatural death.

The defendant disdained motherhood. She was single, was 19 years old, and had noroom in her life for a child. This was her second pregnancy at a young age. She deliberatelyterminated her first pregnancy after 7