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189 Ill. 2d 521

727 N.E.2d 348

People v. Moore

Illinois Supreme Court

Decided April 3, 2000

Illinois Supreme Court · decided 2000-04-03

Relies on 183 Ill. 2d 366 - People v. Coleman · 171 Ill. 2d 475 - People v. Washington · 185 Ill. 2d 179 - People v. Bull

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2000-04-03

How this case has been cited

Cited by 81 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably 194 Ill. 2d 361 - People v. Enis (2000), 236 Ill. 2d 175 - People v. Brown (2010)

4 federal appellate · 74 state decisions

380200020102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

CHIEF JUSTICE HARRISON,

¶1dissenting:

¶2Moore’s assertion that his conviction was based on the false testimony of prison informants bears directly on his claim that he did not, in fact, break into Judy Zeman’s home and then rape and kill her. Newly discovered evidence of actual innocence presents a constitutional question appropriate for post-conviction relief. People v. Hobley, 182 Ill. 3d 404, 443-44 (1998); People v. Washington, 171 Ill. 2d 475, 489 (1996). The allegations of fact concerning the prisoners’ false testimony, when construed liberally in Moore’s favor and considered in light of the original trial record and supporting affidavits, are sufficient to make the “substantial showing” required to hold an evidentiary hearing. Dismissal of the post-conviction petition without such a hearing was therefore improper. People v. Coleman, 183 Ill. 2d 366, 382 (1998).

¶3Even if I agreed that Moore was not entitled to an evidentiary hearing, I would still hold that his death sentence cannot be allowed to stand. As Moore correctly argues and as I set out in my dissent in People v. Bull, 185 Ill. 2d 179 (1998), the Illinois death penalty law violates the eighth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution (U.S. Const., amends. VIII, XIV) and article I, section 2, of the Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const. 1970, art. I, § 2). At a minimum, we should therefore vacate Moore’s sentence of death, and he should be sentenced to a term of imprisonment. Ill. Rev. Stat. 1991, ch. 38, par. 9 — l(j).

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