Adams v. People of State

• Decision Date: 26 March 1884
• Citation: Adams v. People of State , 109 Ill. 444, 1884 WL 9809, 50 Am.Rep. 617 (Ill. 1884)
• Parties: FRANK ADAMS et al.v.THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
• Writing for the Court: SHELDON
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

109 Ill. 444

1884 WL 9809 (Ill.)

50 Am.Rep. 617

FRANK ADAMS et al.

v.THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Filed at Springfield Mar. 26, 1884.

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

WRIT OF ERROR to the Circuit Court of Greene county; the Hon. GEORGE W. HERDMAN, Judge, presiding.

Messrs. DOOLITTLE & ENGLISH, for the plaintiffs in error.

Mr. JAMES MCCARTNEY, Attorney General, for the People.

Mr. CHIEF JUSTICE SHELDON delivered the opinion of the Court:

Frank Adams and Benjamin F. Pritchard, at the September term, A. D. 1883, of the Greene county circuit court, were indicted for the crime of murder, and found guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for the terms of twenty and fourteen years, respectively. They bring this writ of error to reverse the judgment.

The refusal of a continuance is assigned for error. The defendants were indicted on the 6th of September, 1883, and on the 17th of September, 1883, made their motion and affidavit for a continuance, on the ground of the absence of two witnesses, who resided in Indianapolis, in the State of Indiana, by whom they expected to prove that said witnesses saw the defendants at the town of Godfrey, in the county of Madison, in this State, on the evening of the 9th of July, 1883, the day before the night on which the offence charged in the indictment was alleged to have been committed; that said place was a distance of twenty-five or thirty miles from the place where the offence was said to have been committed, and in a different direction from which the train upon which the offence alleged to have been committed, came. The crime was charged in the indictment to have been committed on the 10th day of July, 1883, by forcing the deceased, one Patrick Knight, to jump from a freight car on a certain railroad while the car was in motion. The affidavit, so far as we can see, does not show any incompatibility between the fact alleged as expected to be proved by the witnesses, and the commission by the defendants of the crime charged, and we think the motion for a continuance was properly overruled on the ground of the materiality of the absent testimony not sufficiently appearing.

Objection is taken to the admission of the testimony of the witnesses Curtis and Thompson. The testimony of these witnesses was upon the point of having seen the defendants, and Hogan and Ryan, with whom they were indicted, together on the railroad track on the 8th of July, and that one of them had a revolver. There could be no objection to this; but in the examination of Curtis, the State's attorney produced a watch chain, and the witness said it was his chain,--that he had it on when he met these men, on the evening of the 8th of July. This evidence as to the watch chain might properly enough have been excluded as irrelevant, but we do not see that it was sufficiently harmful to the defendants to make its admission material error. It is said the implication would be that the witness was robbed by these four men. We think that would be a strained inference from the evidence, and one not justified.

Thompson, in answer to the inquiry whether there was anything unusual to cause him to remember the time of seeing Ryan on Sunday morning, July 8, said a man was found dead that morning,--a stock man had fallen from the train. It is said that was calculated to produce the impression that this man, too, had been thrown from the train by these men; but the concluding portion of the statement, that a stock man had fallen from the train, repels such an idea.

It is contended that the evidence does not support the verdict. The witness, Patrick Coughlin, testified that he left Chicago with Patrick Knight, going to St. Louis; that on the way they, at Greenfield, on the line of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad, got into a box car on a freight train on that railroad, in which were Adams, one of the defendants, and Ryan, and as the train started, Pritchard, the other defendant, and Hogan, jumped into the car, and the doors were shut; that some time afterwards, while the train was running, the four other men “covered” witness and Knight with four revolvers, two of them also having razors in their left hands; that they ordered witness and Knight to hold up their hands, and searched them; that they got nothing from witness, for he had nothing, but they took about three dollars from Knight. After that they opened the door of the car and told witness and Knight to jump; that witness jumped first, and some one kicked him; that witness was not hurt; that he walked along a little way and came to the body of Knight; he was dead; the body was lying at right angles with the track, the feet out, and the head between...