Motions for a New Trial in Illinois

A guilty verdict from a jury, or a finding of guilty from a judge after a bench trial, is not the end of the case in the trial court. Illinois law allows the defense to ask the judge who presided for a new trial, by a written motion that states its grounds and is filed, generally, within 30 days of the verdict or finding. The motion is heard by the trial judge, usually before sentencing.

An error that is not raised in the motion is, as a general rule, treated as given up on appeal, so the motion largely decides which issues the reviewing courts will hear. That makes the weeks after a verdict a deadline for the whole case, not a pause before sentencing.

Bedi & Singer litigates post-trial motions at the Leighton Criminal Court Building at 26th and California, in Cook County’s suburban courthouses, in the collar counties, and in courts across Illinois, in cases it tried and in cases that come to it after the verdict.

The statute leaves the grounds to the defense. In practice the motion argues that the evidence did not prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; that the court admitted evidence it should have excluded, or kept out evidence the defense was entitled to present; that the jury was wrongly instructed or heard what it should not have; that the State withheld evidence favorable to the defense; that the trial lawyer’s performance fell below what the Constitution requires; or that evidence found since the trial would likely change the result.

Building the motion means reading the whole record, transcripts, exhibits, sidebar rulings, the instructions conference and the pretrial motions, against what the law required at each step. Where Bedi & Singer tried the case, that record was built with the motion and the appeal in view. Where it did not, the review starts with ordering the transcripts, inside the 30 days.

Two other motions sit beside it. A motion in arrest of judgment, on the same 30-day clock, argues that the charge did not state an offense or that the court lacked jurisdiction. A motion for forensic testing asks the court that entered the judgment to order DNA, fingerprint or ballistics testing on evidence from the case that was not given that testing at the time, or that a method not available then could test more conclusively, where identity was the issue and the evidence has been kept in a proper chain of custody. After a trial, the result must be able to produce new evidence materially relevant to innocence; after a guilty plea, evidence that would make an acquittal at trial reasonably probable. The motion has no 30-day limit and can be brought years later.

If the motion is denied, sentencing follows, and the sentence can itself be challenged by a motion to reconsider within 30 days; the Sentencing Hearings page describes that hearing. The notice of appeal is then due, under the Illinois Supreme Court’s rules, within 30 days of the sentence or, if a timely motion to reconsider the sentence is filed, of the ruling on it, and the appeal is argued on the record the post-trial motions preserved. Claims that rest on evidence outside the record usually belong in a post-conviction petition; the Post-Convictions page describes that proceeding.

If a new trial is granted, the charge is pending again, the client’s release while it is may be decided again, and the record of the first trial, with the testimony each witness has already given, becomes part of the defense of the second. A ruling that the evidence was legally insufficient is different: it is an acquittal, and the State cannot try the case again.

Jonathan Bedi and Dena Singer handle Bedi & Singer’s post-trial motions together. In a case Bedi & Singer did not try, the first conversation is about the verdict date and the transcripts, because the clock has started.