## Facts

- William Crews, an inmate at Menard Correctional Center serving a 20-to-60-year sentence for a prior murder, attacked two correctional officers on November 30, 1984.
- Crews fatally stabbed Officer Cecil Harbison with a homemade weapon and wounded Officer Lamont Gilbert, then was captured shortly thereafter.
- Crews was charged with murder and attempted murder in the circuit court.
- Crews changed his plea to guilty but mentally ill (GBMI); the court ordered a psychological evaluation and conducted a hearing on his mental condition.
- Defense psychiatrists testified to mental illness during treatment periods but did not uniformly establish that Crews met the statutory GBMI criteria at the time of the offense; the State’s evidence suggested malingering.
- The trial court accepted the GBMI plea, held a separate capital sentencing hearing, found statutory aggravation (including a significant violent history and extensive prison disciplinary record), found no statutory mitigation of “extreme mental or emotional disturbance,” and sentenced Crews to death for murder and 30 years for attempted murder.
- Crews sought direct review, challenging the availability and constitutionality of the death penalty for GBMI offenders and alleging sentencing errors.

## Issues

1. Whether Illinois law permits imposition of the death penalty on a defendant adjudicated guilty but mentally ill.
2. Whether the GBMI sentencing provision limits available punishments such that death is excluded absent explicit authorization.
3. Whether imposing death on a GBMI offender is cruel and unusual punishment or disproportionate under the Eighth Amendment and the Illinois Constitution.
4. Whether alleged procedural and evidentiary errors at the capital sentencing hearing required reversal.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed the convictions and sentences, including the death sentence.
- The court held that a GBMI verdict does not bar the death penalty when statutory capital-eligibility requirements are otherwise satisfied.
- The court rejected the claim that the GBMI statute implicitly removes death from the range of permissible sentences.
- The court held that executing a mentally ill but not legally insane defendant is not per se unconstitutional; mental illness must be considered in mitigation but is not automatically dispositive.
- The court found no reversible sentencing error, including regarding the absence of a presentence investigation report, the consideration of victim-related material, and the trial court’s treatment of mental illness in mitigation.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant found guilty but mentally ill may receive any sentence available for the offense, including capital punishment, if the separate statutory conditions for that sentence are met.
- GBMI statutes primarily address treatment alongside punishment and do not, without clear legislative direction, create categorical exemptions from otherwise authorized penalties.
- Mental illness short of legal insanity does not categorically preclude the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment; it is a mitigating consideration to be weighed by the sentencer.
- A GBMI finding does not compel a finding of the statutory mitigating circumstance that the offense was committed under an “extreme mental or emotional disturbance.”
- In capital sentencing, the absence of a presentence investigation report is not reversible error where governing capital procedures and the sentencing record otherwise provide sufficient information for reasoned sentencing.

## Conclusion

The Illinois Supreme Court upheld a death sentence imposed on a GBMI defendant, ruling that GBMI status neither excludes capital punishment under Illinois statutes nor makes the death penalty unconstitutional as applied to mentally ill offenders who are not legally insane, and that the challenged sentencing procedures did not warrant reversal.


People v. Crews, 122 Ill. 2d 266, 522 N.E.2d 1167 (Ill. 1988)