Judicial Rulings

Illinois Supreme Court

State bonds for low-interest mortgages

THE constitutionality of the Illinois Housing Development Authority's power to sell bonds to generate mortages for low-income home buyers was upheld October 10 by the Illinois Supreme Court.

The case, The Illinois Housing Development Authority v. A.D. Van Meter, Jr., the authority's chairman, centers on the additional bonding power the legislature granted the authority in 1979 in an attempt to generate additional mortgages for low-to-middle income Illinois citizens who had never owned a home. The bonding power allows the authority to sell as much as $50 million in additional revenue bonds to lending institutions which would in turn make additional mortages available to first-time, low-to-middle income Illinois home buyers.

The Sangamon County Circuit Court had ruled the bonding power constitutional and issued a writ of mandamus, ordering Van Meter to issue the bonds. When he refused, the Illinois Housing Development Authority appealed directly to the high court.

Van Meter had contended that because the mortgages were limited to first-time home buyers, the bonding power was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated equal protection clauses under the state and federal constitutions and constituted special legislation in violation of the state Constitution.

In delivering the high court's opinion, Justice Thomas J. Moran said that the law's classification of those eligible according to wealth does not constitute a per se violation of equal protection and that housing itself is not a fundamental right. The test of constitutionality, Moran said, depended on whether the law bore a rational relationship to legislative intent, a relationship presumed valid unless Van Meter could prove otherwise. "Yet, [Van Meter] neither presents any factual basis nor any legal authority to support this statement," Moran said. "The [Illinois Housing Development Authority], on the other hand, presents two studies that indicate non-first-time purchasers of homes are in a better position to afford a home than first-time home buyers.

"We recognize that the legislative classification established by the [1979 bonding power] may exclude certain non-first-time purchasers who are in greater financial need than some first-time buyers," he said. "However, even though the statute could have been drawn to include such repeat purchasers there is no requirement that a statutory classification be accurate, scientific or harmonious so long as it is not arbitrary and will accomplish the legislative design."

Perceived perjury as evidence

THE ILLINOIS Supreme Court ruled September 15 that when sentencing a defendant, a trial judge may properly consider apparent perjury committed by the defendant.

In the case, People v. Judy Meeks, a 23-year-old Chicago woman was sentenced in Marion County Circuit Court to three concurrent two-year prison terms for her 1978 conviction on three counts of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance (phencyclidine or "PCP"). Rejecting probation, the trial judge sentenced Meeks to a prison term on the basis that the evidence showed she was not the "occasional petty distributor" for whom the law allows probation. He noted that the jury did not accept her alibi, which was refuted by other witnesses and by evidence. The trial judge did sentence her to the minimum prison term, however, on the basis of mitigating factors: the defendent was young, the mother of a three-year-old son, and was four-and-a-half months pregnant.

Meeks appealed, mainly on the grounds that the law does not allow a trial judge to consider what he believes to be perjury when sentencing a defendant. Her appeal was upheld by the Fifth District Appellate Court, which remanded the case to the circuit court for resentencing. But the high court overturned the appellate court. "We do not find in the present case that the trial judge's perception of perjury was unwarranted, nor that he improperly applied this factor to his sentencing decision," wrote Thomas E. Kluczynski in the decision.

28/December 1980/Illinois Issues