People v. Skeoch
| Decision Date | 18 January 1951 |
| Docket Number | No. 31824,31824 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. SKEOCH. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
Ferlic & Gannon, of Chicago, for plaintiff in error.
Ivan A. Elliott, Atty. Gen., and John S. Boyle, State's Atty., of Chicago (John T. Gallagher, Rudolph L. Janega, Arthur F. Manning and Edmund Grant, all of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.
Plaintiff in error, Dorothy Skeoch, hereinafter referred to as defendant, was convicted of the crime of murder after a trial by jury in the criminal court of Cook County, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for a term of fourteen years. Her defense was that of insanity.
The evidence discloses that on August 18, 1949, at about 9:40 P. M., defendant came to a neighbor's door, which adjoined her two-room apartment. She was crying and sobbing, and appeared to be hysterical. She asked her neighbor for help, saying there was something wrong with her baby. The neighbor accompanied her back to the apartment and saw the baby lying on the bed with a plastic diaper tied very tightly around its neck and covering its mouth. Defendant fell to the floor, crying and complaining about a colored man who had demanded money and had taken her watch. Another neighbor was summoned, who removed the diaper and attempted to revive the baby. After the fire department and a doctor arrived, the child was found to have died from asphyxiation or strangulation. Police officers, who arrived about 10:45 P. M. were told by defendant that some colored man had threatened her if she didn't give him some money he would take her baby, that she then fainted, and that when she regained consciousness her wrist watch had been removed and the baby was lying with the diaper around its neck. While she was being questioned a police officer discovered the watch in a suitcase, and defendant, upon being shown the watch, admitted that she tied the diaper around the baby's neck and that he story about the colored man was untrue.
Defendant thereafter signed a statement relating that when she went in to feed the baby it was fussing and crying, that she tied the diaper around its neck and pulled it tight, and that after realizing what she had done conceived the story which she had first told the police. A second confession was made the next day, when she confessed to killing the baby because of serious financial situation of her husband and herself, strained relations between herself and her parents, who disapproved of her marriage, and her husband's inability to keep a job. The baby had been born only six days prior to its death.
In view of the nature of the defense some reference must be made to other facts disclosed by the evidence. The defendant, a young woman twenty-two years of age, had been married little more than a year. She was an only child, and prior to her marriage had resided with her parents in a large home at Astoria, Oregon. A high school graduate, she had spent some time in college, had been an excellent student, and possessed a very good reputation as a truthful and law-abiding citizen. During the war she was employed as a hostess at a servicemen's center in Oregon, where she met her husband, a member of the armed forces. She married him over objections by her parents. Her mother, upon learning of the marriage, became extremely angry, to the extent of actually making a physical assault on the daughter and her husband. The mother thereafter refused to speak to defendant, although she later sent some money to her from time to time in response to appeals by defendant.
Soon after the marriage defendant and her husband moved to Chicago, where they lived for part of the time with the husband's parents and the rest of the period in a two-room apartment. Defendant secured employment for about 2 1/2 months. Her husband failed to keep any steady employment, holding some six successive positions during the year since they moved to Chicago. In each case he either resigned the job or was discharged, usually remaining idle for two or three weeks thereafter. During one of his periods of employment, while working as a substitute mail carrier, he was convicted of a Federal offense and placed on probation. About a month before her pregnancy defendant was attacked by a colored man on the street, incurring bruises and lacerations. Prior to the birth of her child defendant wrote a letter to her parents in which she indicated she was despondent over their financial condition, and in which she declared 'Sometimes I feel like turning on the gas and forgetting everything.' On August 18, 1949, when defendant left the hospital where the baby was born, her husband had been without employment for about six weeks. She was discharged from the hospital about 12:30 P. M. Her husband and mother-in-law were with her...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
People v. Carlson
...the State thereafter satisfied its burden of proving sanity at the time of the offenses beyond a reasonable doubt (People v. Skeoch (1951), 408 Ill. 276, 96 N.E.2d 473). Although the defendant's evidence was convincing, our review of the record discloses ample lay and expert testimony in su......
-
People v. Hightower, 5-86-0594
...sanity of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt, as a necessary element of the crime charged." (Emphasis added.) (People v. Skeoch (1951), 408 Ill. 276, 280, 96 N.E.2d 473, 475.) "[O]nce [defendant] introduced some evidence on the issue of his sanity at the time of the commission of the off......
-
People v. Redmond
...also People v. Gold, 38 Ill.2d 510, 514, 232 N.E.2d 702, cert. denied, 392 U.S. 940, 88 S.Ct. 2317, 20 L.Ed.2d 1400; People v. Skeoch, 408 Ill. 276, 280, 96 N.E.2d 473. Defendant's argument pertaining to the amount of proof necessary to establish the possibility of an affirmative defense is......
-
People v. Noble
...of insanity is offered (People v. Myers, 35 Ill.2d 311, 220 N.E.2d 297; People v. Le May, 35 Ill.2d 208, 220 N.E.2d 184; People v. Skeoch, 408 Ill. 276, 96 N.E.2d 473); likewise, it is clear that clinical psychologists have also testified in such cases (Myers, People v. Miller, 33 Ill.2d 43......
-
Gender, crime, and the criminal law defenses.
...of blood clotting caused by a skull fracture, was found not guilty of voluntary manslaughter by reason of insanity); People v. Skeoch, 96 N.E.2d 473 (Ill. 1951) (conviction for murder of a woman who asphyxiated her infant son was reversed due to the prosecution's failure to rebut the presum......