People v. Sims

Illinois Supreme Court

Decided June 15, 2000

Illinois Supreme Court · decided 2000-06-15

Relies on 185 Ill. 2d 179 - People v. Bull

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2000-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 186 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably 215 Ill. 2d 167 - People v. Herron (2005), 205 Ill. 2d 52 - People v. Caffey (2001)

183 state decisions

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.

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CHIEF JUSTICE HARRISON,

¶1concurring in part and dissenting in part:

¶2I agree that Sims’ convictions should not be disturbed. In my view, however, his sentence of death cannot be allowed to stand. For the reasons set forth 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 (111. Const. 1970, art. I, § 2). Sims’ sentence of death should therefore be vacated, and the cause should be remanded for imposition of a sentence of imprisonment. 720 ILCS 5/9 — l(j) (West 1994).