NOTICE 2024 IL App (4th) 230413-U
This Order was filed under
FILED
NO. 4-23-0413 April 3, 2024
Supreme Court Rule 23 and is
Carla Bender
not precedent except in the
IN THE APPELLATE COURT 4th District Appellate
limited circumstances allowed
Court, IL
under Rule 23(e)(1).
OF ILLINOIS
FOURTH DISTRICT
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, ) Appeal from the
Plaintiff-Appellee, ) Circuit Court of
v. ) Winnebago County
SHAWN M. LEONARD, ) No. 20CF563
Defendant-Appellant. )
) Honorable
) Debra D. Schafer,
) Judge Presiding.
PRESIDING JUSTICE CAVANAGH delivered the judgment of the court.
Justices Harris and Knecht concurred in the judgment.
ORDER
¶1 Held: By incurring a felony conviction, even a nonviolent felony conviction, a citizen
forever loses the constitutional right to have a firearm for the defense of his person
and his house.
¶2 In a stipulated bench trial, the circuit court of Winnebago County found defendant,
Shawn M. Leonard, guilty of count V of an indictment, a count that charged him with being an
armed habitual criminal. 720 ILCS 5/24-1.7 (West 2020). The court sentenced him to
imprisonment. He appeals, contending that, under the second amendment (U.S. Const., amend. II),
the armed habitual criminal statute is unconstitutional on its face and as applied to him. In our
de novo review, we adhere to our previous decisions that the statute does not violate the second
amendment. Therefore, we affirm the court’s judgment.
¶3 I. BACKGROUND
¶4 In counts I and II of the indictment, defendant was charged with aggravated battery
of a child under 13. Specifically, count I alleged the infliction of great bodily harm upon a child,
H.S.L. (720 ILCS 5/12-3.05(b)(1) (West 2020)), whereas count II alleged the infliction of bodily
harm upon her, not great bodily harm (id. § 12-3.05(b)(2)). Count III charged defendant with
unlawful use of weapons by a felon (id. § 24-1.1(a)). Count IV charged him with domestic battery
of S.L. (id. § 12-3.2(a)).
¶5 The State elected to try counts I, II, and IV first. Defendant waived a jury trial. The
circuit court found him guilty of counts II and IV but not guilty of count I.
¶6 Immediately before the bench trial on count III, which had been severed, a grand
jury returned a fifth count against defendant. Count V charged him with being an armed habitual
criminal (id. § 24-1.7). On March 16, 2020, according to count V, he possessed a 9-millimeter
pistol after having been convicted of burglary in Winnebago County case No. 09-CF-738 and
unlawful use of a weapon by a felon in Winnebago County case No. 11-CF-2657.
¶7 The parties agreed to a stipulated bench trial on count V and to the dismissal of
count III. The stipulation on count V was essentially as follows. In response to a report of suspected
child abuse, police officers went to a residence to perform a welfare check. The occupants of the
residence were defendant, H.S.L., and S.L. H.S.L. was taken into protective custody, and the police
interviewed S.L. and defendant. S.L. would testify that as the police interviewed her, she gave
them permission to search the residence. In the ensuing search, the police found a loaded
9-millimeter pistol on the backrest of a couch. S.L. would further testify that the pistol belonged
to defendant, he had possessed the pistol for a month, and he was accustomed to keeping the pistol
where the police had found it, on the backrest of the couch. According to laboratory testing,
defendant could not be excluded as one of the contributors of DNA that was found on the pistol.
-2-
He previously was convicted of burglary in case No. 09-CF-738 and unlawful use of a weapon by
a felon in case No. 11-CF-2657.
¶8 In response to the stipulation, the circuit court found defendant guilty of count V.
The court imposed the following agreed-upon sentences: 10 years’ imprisonment for count II, 6
years’ imprisonment for count IV, and 10 years’ imprisonment for count V. The court ordered that
these sentences would run concurrently.
¶9 II. ANALYSIS
¶ 10 A. The Armed Habitual Criminal Statute
¶ 11 Section 24-1.7(a)(1) and (2) of the Criminal Code of 2012 (Code) (id.
§ 24-1.7(a)(1), (2)) provides as follows:
“(a) A person commits the offense of being an armed habitual criminal if he
*** possesses *** any firearm after having been convicted a total of 2 or more
times of any combination of the following offenses:
(1) a forcible felony as defined in Section 2-8 of this Code [(id.
§ 2-8)]; [or]
(2) unlawful use of a weapon by a felon ***.”
Section 2-8 in turn defines a “ ‘[f]orcible felony’ ” as including “burglary.” Id. § 2-8.
¶ 12 According to the stipulation, which the prosecutor, defense counsel, and defendant
signed, defendant had two prior qualifying convictions when, on March 16, 2020, the police found
the pistol on the backrest of the couch. The prior convictions were (to quote the stipulation)
“Burglary in 09-CF-738 (a forcible felony) and Unlawful Use of a Weapon by a Felon in 11-CF-
2657.” Given those prior convictions, defendant’s subsequent possession of the pistol on the couch
was an offense of “being an armed habitual criminal” (id. § 24-1.7(a)(1), (2))—a Class X felony
-3-
(id. § 24-1.7(b)), punishable by imprisonment for not less than 6 years and not more than 30 years
(see 730 ILCS 5/5-4.5-25(a) (West 2020)).
¶ 13 B. Defendant’s Constitutional Challenge to the Armed Habitual Criminal Statute
¶ 14 Defendant contends that, facially and as applied to him, the armed habitual criminal
statute violates the second amendment (U.S. Const., amend. II) (applicable to the states through
the fourteenth amendment (U.S. Const., amend. XIV) (see McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S.
742, 750 (2010)) because “there is no founding-era evidence of permanent status-based revocation
of the right to keep and bear arms.” In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1,
17, 24 (2022), the Supreme Court held that “[w]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an
individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct” and the government
“must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that [the regulation] is consistent with the
Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” The government must make this demonstration
by identifying a historical analogue to the challenged gun regulation: “historical precedent from
before, during, and even after the founding [that] evinces a comparable tradition of regulation.”
(Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. at 27. Defendant maintains that (1) the second amendment’s
plain language protected his right to possess a firearm and (2) the State is unable to identify a
historical analogue to the armed habitual criminal statute. Therefore, on the authority of Bruen,
597 U.S. at 71, he concludes that the armed habitual criminal statute “violates the Fourteenth
Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from
exercising their right to keep and bear arms” (to quote his brief).
¶ 15 However, under our decisions in People v. Boyce, 2023 IL App (4th) 221113-U,
¶ 14, and People v. Langston, 2023 IL App (4th) 230162-U, ¶ 19, defendant’s previous felony
convictions make him not a law-abiding citizen and, therefore, not protected by the second
-4-
amendment. By incurring a felony conviction, even a nonviolent felony conviction, a citizen
forever loses the constitutional right to have a firearm for the defense of his person and his house.
¶ 16 III. CONCLUSION
¶ 17 For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the circuit court’s judgment.
¶ 18 Affirmed.
-5-