People v. De La Paz

Petitioner, Paul De La Paz, is currently serving an extended-term sentence for an armed robbery conviction. He has exhausted his direct appeals and is now before this court on appeal from the dismissal of his petition for postconviction relief. He argues that he received ineffective assistance of counsel in the postconviction proceedings and also argues that his extended-term sentence should be reversed because the procedures followed by the circuit court did not comply with the Supreme Court’s mandate in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 147 L. Ed. 2d 435, 120 S. Ct. 2348 (2000). We…