Addison v. People

• Decision Date: 18 December 1901
• Citation: 62 N.E. 235,193 Ill. 405
• Parties: ADDISON v. PEOPLE.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

193 Ill. 405

62 N.E. 235

ADDISON

v.PEOPLE.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Dec. 18, 1901.

Error to Mercer county court; W. H. Gest, Judge.

Robert Addison was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape, and he brings error. Reversed.

McArthur & Cooke, for plaintiff in error.

Howland J. Hamlin, Atty. Gen., and William J. Graham, State's Atty., for the State.

PER CURIAM.

Plaintiff in error was convicted in the circuit court of Mercer county of an assault upon Minnie Glancey, a girl 13 years of age, with intent to commit rape, and was sentenced to the penitentiary. The evidence for the people tended to prove an assault upon said Minnie Glancey, without her consent and against her will, with the intent charged, at the office of the defendant, who was a veterinary surgeon in Aledo, at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of August 31, 1900. The people, as a part of their case in chief, were permitted, against the objection of defendant, to introduce evidence that he had been drinking intoxicating liquors on that day; that while at dinner he was intoxicated, and that about an hour before the alleged assault he was drinking beer out of a bottle at his office; and that he called a boy 16 years old across the street, and treated him to beer. Defendant denied the assault, and testified that he was not drunk; but on cross-examination he was compelled by the court to answer as to how much beer he had in a sack which he took to his office, and how much he drank, and whether he invited the boy to drink, and whether he had whisky in his possession, and had been drinking and was drunk on the day succeeding the assault. Voluntary intoxication furnishes no excuse for crime. Cr. Code, div. 2, § 19. The law holds men responsible for the natural consequences of their acts, and, if all the elements of a crime are present, it is no defense that the accused was voluntarily drunk. But if a crime is of such a nature that a particular intent is a necessary ingredient, and no crime is committed unless an act is done with that intent, a defendant may meet the charge of a crime by showing that he was intoxicated to such a degree as to be incapable of forming or entertaining that intent, and neither then nor afterward yielded it the sanction of his will. Bish. Cr. Law, § 413; Bartholomew v. People, 104 Ill. 601, 44 Am. Rep. 97. Such proof is to show that an indispensable element of the crime was wanting. In this case the crime alleged consists of an assault with intent to commit the crime of rape. There must be an attempt joined with that specific intent, and the intent is a necessary ingredient of the crime. The defendant made no claim that he was incapable of forming any intent that his acts may have manifested, and made no defense on the ground of drunkenness. The people were called upon to prove the assault and the intent as matters of fact, and it was in making their proof that they were permitted to introduce the evidence that defendant had been drinking, was intoxicated, and treated the boy. These facts had no tendency to prove either the assault, or the intent with which it was made. If the drinking was to excess, it might prove an intent to become intoxicated; but there is no ground for saying that the fact the defendant had formed an intent to get drunk, if such was the fact, would tend to prove that he had also formed an intent to commit the crime of rape. As a general rule, where a party is on trial upon a criminal charge, proof of his misconduct not connected with the charge upon which he is being tried should not be admitted, as such evidence is likely to prejudice the jury against the defendant, and cause them to lose sight of the issues which they have been sworn to try. Gifford v. People, 87 Ill. 210;Hayward v. People, 96 Ill. 492;Baker v. People, 105 Ill. 452;Farris v. People, 129 Ill. 521, 21 N. E. 821,4 L. R. A. 582, 16 Am. St. Rep. 283. In Gifford v. People, supra, on page 214, it is said: ‘On the cross-examination of Prosper Washburn, a witness introduced by the defendant to prove former good character, he was asked, ‘Have you not heard people say that he [alluding to the defendant] was a gambler or gambled?’ This was objected to, but the objection was overruled by the court, and the witness answered that he had heard some say that he gambled. Again, when the defendant gave evidence in his own behalf, he was compelled, over his counsel's objection, to state that he had visited houses of ill fame in Cleveland and Chicago, and the number of times, and of having had connection with their inmates, and also that he had played cards for money. We have no doubt this evidence seriously prejudiced the defendant with the jury. Evidence of prior misconduct is never admissible in a criminal trial, unless it be to prove prior malice towards an individual, or guilty knowledge, neither of which can have pertinency in cases like the present. 1 Whart. Cr. Law (7th Ed.) § 639; Rosc. Cr. Ev. [5th Am. Ed.] p. 97; 1 Phil. Ev. (Cowen, Hill & Edwards' Notes) p. 765. And particular acts of misconduct are never admissible in rebuttal of proof of defendant's good character. McCarty v. People, 51 Ill. 231, 99 Am. Dec. 542. Nor can it be said this evidence was admissible for the purpose of impeaching the defendant's reputation as a witness, only, although not for the purpose of proving the offense charged. The reputation of a witness cannot be impeached by proof of particular acts. It must be by proving his general reputation for truth and veracity to be bad. Frye v. Bank, 11 Ill. 367;Eason v. Chapman, 21 Ill. 33; Crabtree v. Kile, Id. 180; Hansell v. Erickson, 28 Ill. 257;Dimick v. Downs, 82 Ill. 570.' In Hayward v. People, supra, on page 502, the court say: ‘On cross-examination of the accused when on the stand as a witness, the court compelled him, against objections interposed, to testify that he had frequented other saloons in Chicago, and drank and played cards and billiards on divers times at other saloons in Chicago. This, we think, was error, and may have prejudiced some of the jurors against the accused. We cannot perceive that these circumstances have any legitimate bearing upon the issue in the case, or that they were competent as bearing upon the credibility of the accused.’ In Baker v. People, supra, on page 459, we say: ‘Assuming the evidence of the prosecutrix to be true, it established two distinct offenses,-one committed by Baker alone, and the other by him and Mrs. Graves jointly; and, if the prosecution elected to proceed for the latter offense, all evidence of the former should have been excluded from the jury, as it is well settled that, upon the trial of a party for one offense growing out of a specific transaction, you cannot prove a similar substantive offense founded upon another and separate transaction, but in such case the prosecution will be put to its election. An exception to this rule is found in prosecutions for passing counterfeit money, and the like, where previous attempts to pass counterfeit money may be proved for the purpose of showing guilty knowledge; but the principle involved in this class of cases has no application to the case in hand.’ In Farris v. People, on page 528, 129 Ill., page 822, 21 N. E., page 583, 4 L. R. A., and page 285, 16 Am. St. Rep., we hold: ‘The general rule that evidence of a distinct, substantive offense cannot be admitted in support of another offense is laid down by all the authorities. It is in fact but the reiteration of the still more general rule that in all cases, civil or criminal, the evidence must be confined to the point in issue; it being said, however, by authors on the criminal law, that in criminal cases the necessity is even stronger than in civil cases of strictly enforcing the rule, for where a prisoner is charged with an offense it is of the utmost importance to him that the facts laid before the jury should consist exclusively of the transaction which forms the subject of the indictment and matters relating thereto, which alone he can be expected to come prepared to answer. 3 Russ. Crimes (5th Ed.) 368; 1 Rosc. Cr. Ev. (8th Ed.) 92. ‘No fact which, on principles of sound logic, does not sustain or impeach a pertinent hypothesis, is relevant; and no such fact, therefore, unless otherwise provided by some positive prescription of law, should be admitted as evidence on a trial. The reason of this rule is obvious. To admit evidence of such collateral facts would be to oppress the party implicated, by trying him on a case for preparing which he has no notice, and sometimes by prejudicing the jury against him. * * * To sustain the introduction of such facts, they must be in some way capable, as will presently be seen more fully, of being brought into a common system with that under trial.’ Whart. Cr. Ev. § 29. ‘In criminal cases there are peculiar reasons why the test before us should be applied to proof of collateral crimes.’ Id. § 30. ‘This rule,’ says Greenleaf,-volume 1, § 52,-(not confining it to criminal cases), ‘excludes all evidence of collateral facts, or those which are incapable of affording any reasonable presumption or inference as to the principal fact or matter in dispute; and the reason is that such evidence tends to draw away the minds of the jurors from the point in issue, and to excite prejudice and mislead them; and, moreover, the adverse party, having had no notice of such a course of evidence, is not prepared to rebutit.’ In Sutton v. Johnson, 62 Ill. 209, which was a civil suit for an assault and battery and assault with intent to commit a rape, a witness on behalf of the plaintiff was allowed to testify that the defendant has told him ‘that he and his wife had not been getting along well together, and he had to be too intimate with the hired woman, or was forced to be to intimate with the hired woman,’ not stating who the woman was; and for that error alone a judgment in favor of the plaintiff was reversed, Mr. Justice...