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375 Ill. App. 3d 398

873 N.E.2d 584

313 Ill.Dec. 960

People v. Harris

Appellate Court of Illinois

Decided August 15, 2007

Appellate Court of Illinois · decided 2007-08-15

Relies on Harris v. New York · 159 Ill. App. 3d 494 - People v. Bunch

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2007-08-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably 379 Ill. App. 3d 441 - People v. Spicer (2008), 231 Ill. 2d 582 - People v. Harris (2008)

25 state decisions

100200720102020decided

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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JUSTICE HOLDRIDGE,

¶1specially concurring:

¶2I concur with the result reached in Justice Carter’s opinion. In the spirit of Ockham’s razor, however, I write separately to articulate a simpler analysis. Under People v. Bunch, 159 Ill. App. 3d 494 (1987), a prosecutor may cross-examine a witness regarding prior juvenile convictions where the witness has opened the proverbial door by giving testimony about some aspect of his criminal record. That is what happened here. Although the policy underlying Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 28 L. Ed. 2d 1, 91 S. Ct. 643 (1971), is instructive by way of comparison, I do not agree with establishing a new Harris-based rule governing impeachment with prior juvenile convictions. In my view, any error that could rightly be remedied under such a rule would also be remediable through Bunch. There is consequently no reason to go beyond the existing law and apply Harris out of its factual context. I would simply affirm the judge’s evidentiary ruling under Bunch.

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