Background
David W. Buck Jr. was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder and other offenses arising from the shooting death of Rachel Warren. During jury selection, a prospective juror disclosed that he knew of a family involved in the case and that one anticipated witness had attended school with his children. Buck’s attorney declined to challenge the juror for cause or exercise a peremptory challenge during a sidebar that Buck did not attend, and the juror was seated.
After his convictions were affirmed on direct appeal, Buck filed a pro se postconviction petition alleging several instances of ineffective assistance. In a section addressing jury selection, he alleged that his family did not get along with the juror and that the juror’s wife had grown up with two trial witnesses. The circuit court summarily dismissed the petition at the first stage without addressing Buck’s absence from the sidebar or counsel’s acceptance of the juror.
The Court’s Holding
The Fourth District reversed and remanded for second-stage postconviction proceedings. Liberally construing the pro se petition, the court held that Buck sufficiently raised a claim that counsel was ineffective for allowing jurors to be accepted or struck outside his presence. The claim was not forfeited because it depended on alleged facts outside the trial record, regardless of whether Buck personally knew those facts before his direct appeal.
The court also rejected the State’s argument that People v. Brown conclusively established that defendants have no constitutional right to attend the acceptance and striking of jurors. Only two of the five participating Illinois Supreme Court justices in Brown endorsed that bright-line rule, so the proposition lacked the concurrence of four justices and was not binding. Because Buck’s ineffective-assistance claim was not based on an indisputably meritless legal theory and the circuit court had not addressed it, summary dismissal was improper.
Key Takeaways
- A first-stage pro se postconviction petition need only allege the gist of a constitutional claim and must be construed liberally.
- A postconviction claim relying on facts outside the appellate record is not forfeited merely because the defendant may have known those facts during the direct appeal.
- The fractured decision in People v. Brown did not create binding precedent that a defendant lacks a constitutional right to be present when jurors are accepted or struck.
Why It Matters
The decision preserves postconviction review for claims that a defendant’s absence from jury-selection decisions deprived counsel of information relevant to challenging a potentially biased juror. At the first stage, courts may not treat such a claim as legally foreclosed by a fractured decision that failed to command the required majority.
The Rule 23 order is nonprecedential except in the limited circumstances permitted by Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23(e)(1), but it underscores the low threshold governing summary dismissal and the need to address all constitutional claims fairly raised in a pro se petition.