Barrett v. People
| Decision Date | 05 April 1906 |
| Citation | 220 Ill. 304,77 N.E. 224 |
| Parties | BARRETT et al. v. PEOPLE. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Criminal Court, Cook County; R. S. Tuthill, Judge.
Charles Barrett and another were convicted of rape, and they bring error. Affirmed.A. J. Hanlon, for plaintiffs in error.
W. H. Stead, Atty. Gen., and John J. Healy, for the People.
The plaintiffs in error, Charles Barrett and Arthur McMurray, were indicted in the criminal court of Cook county, with Nicholas Busch, for rape of Nora Sherrill on February[220 Ill. 305]8, 1905, between 7 and 8 o'clock in the evening in the saloon of said Busch at 214 Wells street, in Chicago. Plaintiffs in error were tried, Busch not being present or tried, and they were found guilty and sentenced to penitentiary.
The question whether the evidence justified the verdict and sentence depends wholly upon the credibility of the witnesses. Their testimony cannot be reconciled upon any theory, and that which was given for one side or the other was willfully and corruptly false. The jury and the trial judge, who were charged with the duty of deciding upon which side lay the truth and upon which side the falsehood and perjury, and who had the best means of deciding the question, concluded that the truth was on the side of the people. The question for us is whether the record shows their conclusion to have been wrong, and that there is a reasonable and well-founded doubt of the guilt of the defendants. If it appears that there is such a doubt, the judgment should be reversed; but, if we cannot say that the doubt exists, the judgment must be affirmed, unless there are material errors of law in the record.
Nora Sherrill was a young girl, 15 years of age. Nicholas Busch was a saloon keeper, and the defendant Barrett was his bartender. The defendant McMurray was a friend of Busch and Barrett and a frequenter of the saloon. Nora Sherrill testified that she went to the saloon in the evening of Wednesday, February 8, 1905, between 7 and 8 o'clock, at the solicitation of Annie Munson, who the evidence shows was a disreputable girl 18 years of age, who wanted to see Barrett; that the girls sat down at a table with Busch and McMurray, and they each had a small glass of beer; that Barrett called Nora Sherrill to one side and asked her to go to a room with him, and she refused, and said to Annie Munson, ‘Come, let's go home;’ that Annie Munson told her to sit down, and pulled her down on a chair; that Barrett soon called to her, and she went where he stood between swinging doors separating the front and back rooms of the saloon; that Barrett seized her and kissed her, and he and Busch pushed her into a dark closet under the stairway, where there was a cot; that Barrett went out, and Busch held his hand over her mouth, tore her clothing, and had sexual intercourse with her, forcibly and against her will; that Busch then called to Barrett, who came in, and Busch went out; that Barrett committed the same act, and then called McMurray; that Barrett was slow in going out, and she got to the door, when McMurray caught her by the feet and threw her back on the cot and forcibly ravished her; that she then came out and found Annie Munson gone; that one Steve Cassidy then caught her by the arm and tried to get her to go back in the closet with him, but she jerked away and left the saloon; that her hair was down, her face dirty, and her clothes torn; and that she went to a dance hall to straighten up and wash, and then went to her home.
The theory of the defense was that this whole story was a pure invention, and the evidence for the defense was that Nora Sherrill was not in the saloon at all. The defendants testified that she was not there, and that they had two other girls visiting them in the saloon that evening, who sat there from 6 o'clock until 1 o'clock in the morning, when the saloon closed. The two girls referred to, testified that they were sitting in the saloon all that time, about seven hours, talking with Barrett and McMurray. Annie Munson also testified that she did not go to the saloon with Nora Sherrill, but the record shows that she told different stories at different times. The next day after the alleged rape she went with Nora Sherrill to a police station, where Nora made the complaint in the case, and she was a witness for the prosecution there. The girls were detained at the police station and annex thereto for some days and were quite restive under the restraint, and finally Busch had a separate hearing before a justice of the peace, when Nora said she wanted to dismissthe case and...
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Johnson v. State
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Watson v. State
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