{
  "id": 3524995,
  "name": "THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. EDWARD M. STEVENS, JR., Defendant-Appellant",
  "name_abbreviation": "People v. Stevens",
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  "casebody": {
    "judges": [],
    "parties": [
      "THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. EDWARD M. STEVENS, JR., Defendant-Appellant."
    ],
    "opinions": [
      {
        "text": "JUSTICE MILLER\ndelivered the opinion of the court:\nThe defendant, Edward M. Stevens, Jr., was tried by a jury, convicted of two counts of forgery, and sentenced to concurrent terms of five years\u2019 imprisonment. On appeal he argues that his convictions must be reversed because of a fatal variance between the allegations in the charging instruments and the evidence adduced at trial. We affirm.\nThe defendant was charged first by information and then by indictment with the offenses here. Both counts of the indictment alleged that the defendant committed forgery \u201cin that he knowingly with intent to defraud possessed with intent to issue a check ***.\u201d The checks in question were for $75 each and were refunds of security deposits that a landlord had mailed on June 3, 1983, to two former tenants, Carl Jessen and Frank Luto. Neither Jessen nor Luto ever received his refund check. On June 8 the defendant gave Jessen\u2019s check, bearing a blank endorsement in Jessen\u2019s name, to a friend, Robin Powell, explaining that Jessen owed him money. At the defendant\u2019s request, Powell endorsed the check and cashed it at her bank; she deposited $10, which the defendant owed her, and gave him the remaining money. A few days later the defendant gave Luto\u2019s check, bearing a blank endorsement in Luto\u2019s name, to a friend, Jerald Lott. At the defendant\u2019s request, Lott endorsed the check and cashed it at his bank, giving the defendant the full amount. The defendant\u2019s name did not appear on either check.\nSection 17 \u2014 3(a) of the Criminal Code of 1961 provides:\n\u201cA person commits forgery when, with intent to defraud, he knowingly:\n(1) Makes or alters any document apparently capable of defrauding another in such manner that it purports to have been made by another or at another time, or with different provisions, or by authority of one who did not give such authority; or\n(2) Issues or delivers such document knowing it to have been thus made or altered; or\n(3) Possesses, with intent to issue or deliver, any such document knowing it to have been thus made or altered.\u201d (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 38, par. 17 \u2014 3(a).)\nThe charges here alleged the defendant\u2019s possession of the checks with the intent to issue them.\nOn appeal the defendant argues that delivering a check is sometimes different from issuing one, and that the evidence adduced at trial showed his intent to deliver the checks rather than his intent to issue them. In making this argument the defendant relies on the definition of \u201cissue\u201d found in the Uniform Commercial Code, which said, \u201c \u2018Issue\u2019 means the first delivery of an instrument to a holder or a remitter.\u201d (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 26, par. 3\u2014 102(l)(a).) \u201cDelivery\u201d is a \u201cvoluntary transfer of possession.\u201d (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 26, par. 1 \u2014 201(14).) The defendant argues that, in giving these checks to friends, he was not making first deliveries and therefore he could not have issued them or had the intent to issue them. The defendant made the same argument in the trial court in his motions for directed verdicts. The trial judge denied the motions; he believed that the defendant\u2019s endorsing the checks with the payees\u2019 names would be acts of issuance. The court seemed to believe that issuance was different from delivery, however, for he refused the State\u2019s issues instructions, taken verbatim from the applicable parts of Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions (IPI), Criminal, No. 13.26 (2d ed. 1981), and gave instead ones proposed by the defendant. The defendant\u2019s instructions differed from IPI Criminal No. 13.26 only in omitting the words \u201cor deliver\u201d from the statement, \u201cThat the defendant knowingly possessed, with intent to issue or deliver ***.\u201d\nWe do not believe that the word \u201cissue,\u201d as it appears in combination with \u201cdeliver\u201d in section 17 \u2014 3, is limited to a first delivery, and therefore we decline to apply here the definition of \u201cissue\u201d contained in the Uniform Commercial Code. \u201cIssue\u201d is used in the Uniform Commercial Code as a term of art and carries with it a carefully circumscribed meaning. Under those provisions, \u201cissue\u201d is a first delivery of a negotiable instrument to a holder or remitter. Applying the commercial definition to the word \u201cissue\u201d as it appears in the forgery statute, however, would correspondingly limit prosecutions based on that act to first deliveries of negotiable instruments to holders or remitters. This would be inconsistent with the broad language of the forgery statute, which speaks of \u201cany document\u201d \u2014 not just a negotiable instrument \u2014 \u201capparently capable of defrauding another\u201d \u2014 not just a holder or remitter. Cf. Shirk v. People (1887), 121 Ill. 61, 11 N.E. 888 (indictment quashed and defendant discharged because allegedly forged contract was outside the class of instruments enumerated in the statute forming the basis for the indictment).\nPrecedent exists for our decision here not to apply to the forgery statute a definition taken from commercial law. In People v. Epping (1959), 17 Ill. 2d 557, 162 N.E.2d 366, the court considered the argument that typing the payee\u2019s name on the back of a warrant could not constitute a forged endorsement, for the commercial law at that time required that endorsements be handwritten. The court said:\n\u201cThe definition of \u2018forgery\u2019 as contained in our statute does not limit the crime of forgery to an act of endorsing, by forgery, a signature on an instrument in compliance with the Negotiable Instruments Act. [Citations.] The test of an endorsement in a forgery trial is not its legal sufficiency to constitute a valid endorsement under the Negotiable Instruments Act but, rather, the inquiry is to ascertain whether the endorsement renders the instrument capable of defrauding and is made for that purpose.\u201d (17 Ill. 2d 557, 568-69, 162 N.E.2d 366, 373.)\nIn Epping, then, the court did not limit \u201cendorsement\u201d to its commercial meaning. See People v. Connell (1980), 91 Ill. App. 3d 326, 414 N.E.2d 796, and People v. Addison (1966), 75 Ill. App. 2d 358, 220 N.E.2d 511 (the term \u201cmake,\u201d as used in the forgery statute, includes endorsement).\nSince Epping was decided, the various statutes dealing with forgery have been codified by section 17 \u2014 3 of the Criminal Code of 1961; the drafters did not intend to change the law, however. (Ill. Ann. Stat., ch. 38, par. 17 \u2014 3, Committee Comments, at 280-81 (Smith-Hurd 1977).) Thus, section 17 \u2014 3 uses two pairs of general terms \u2014 \u201cmakes or alters\u201d and \u201cissues or delivers\u201d \u2014 in place of the virtual thesaurus formerly spread over six separate statutes. (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1961, ch. 38, pars. 151 (\u201cissues or passes\u201d currency), 277 (to \u201cmake, alter, forge or counterfeit\u201d or \u201cutter, publish, pass or attempt to pass\u201d records or writings), 278 (\u201cmakes, alters, forges or counterfeits\u201d or \u201cutters or passes, or tenders in payment\u201d public securities or bank bills), 279 (to \u201cmake, pass, utter or publish\u201d fictitious bills or notes), 280 (\u201cconnects together\u201d parts of several bills), 401 (to \u201csteal, embezzle, alter, corrupt, withdraw, falsify or avoid,\u201d \u201ctake off, discharge or conceal,\u201d \u201cforge, deface or falsify,\u201d or \u201calter, deface or falsify\u201d public records).) In the context of section 17 \u2014 3, we see no intended distinction between issuing a document and delivering one. \u201cIssue\u201d and \u201cdeliver\u201d have replaced words such as \u201cutter,\u201d but without producing a change in essential meaning; \u201c[t]he words \u2018uttering\u2019 or \u2018to utter\u2019 have a clear definition in law; they mean substantially \u2018to offer\u2019 (People v. Katz (1934), 356 Ill. 440, 445)\u201d (People v. Henderson (1978), 71 Ill. 2d 53, 57, 373 N.E.2d 1338. 1340).\nThus, unlike the language in the prostitution statute, \u201cperforms, offers or agrees to perform,\u201d which the supreme court has construed as enumerating three distinct ways of committing the offense (People v. Johnson (1976), 65 Ill. 2d 332, 357 N.E.2d 1166; Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 38, par. 11 \u2014 14(a)), the conjunction \u201cor\u201d connects broadly overlapping terms here. To be sure, to the extent that \u201cissue\u201d or \u201cdeliver\u201d are synonymous, one of them becomes redundant. The defendant\u2019s suggestion that \u201cissue\u201d be defined as a first delivery is subject to the same objection, however, for under that meaning \u201cissue\u201d is totally subsumed by \u201cdeliver.\u201d\nTherefore, we conclude that the evidence adduced at trial did not vary from the allegations in the indictment. The defendant was proved guilty of the offenses beyond a reasonable doubt.\nAffirmed.\nMILLS, P.J., and WEBBER, J., concur.",
        "type": "majority",
        "author": "JUSTICE MILLER"
      }
    ],
    "attorneys": [
      "Daniel D. Yuhas and Diana N. Cherry, both of State Appellate Defender\u2019s Office, of Springfield, for appellant.",
      "Ronald C. Dozier, State\u2019s Attorney, of Bloomington (Robert J. Biderman and Linda Welge, both of State\u2019s Attorneys Appellate Service Commission, of counsel), for the People."
    ],
    "corrections": "",
    "head_matter": "THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. EDWARD M. STEVENS, JR., Defendant-Appellant.\nFourth District\nNo. 4\u201484\u20140061\nOpinion filed November 13, 1984.\nDaniel D. Yuhas and Diana N. Cherry, both of State Appellate Defender\u2019s Office, of Springfield, for appellant.\nRonald C. Dozier, State\u2019s Attorney, of Bloomington (Robert J. Biderman and Linda Welge, both of State\u2019s Attorneys Appellate Service Commission, of counsel), for the People."
  },
  "file_name": "0823-01",
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  "last_page_order": 849
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