Devine v. People of State

• Decision Date: 30 September 1881
• Citation: 1881 WL 10618,100 Ill. 290
• Parties: PATSY DEVINEv.THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

100 Ill. 290

1881 WL 10618 (Ill.)

PATSY DEVINE

v.THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Filed at Springfield Sept. 30, 1881.

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

WRIT OF ERROR to the Circuit Court of DeWitt county; the Hon. ALBERT G. BURR, Judge, presiding.

Mr. W. C. P. REMINE, and Mr. JOSEPH W. JONES, for the plaintiff in error, made the following among various other points:

Evidence of a distinct substantive offence shall not be admitted as proof of the commission of the offence for which the defendant is on trial; a fortiori evidence of an intention to commit a different offence should not be received. 1 Phillips on Ev. (6th Am. ed.) 477; 1 Wharton's Crim. Law (7th ed.) secs. 639-640, and note n; Kribs v. People, 82 Ill. 425; Gifford v. People, 87 Id. 211.

The court erred in admitting the testimony of officer J. P. Butler, which was as follows: “That night I saw Mike McHugh and learned what he knew about Devine and Williams, and we of the police formed the theory that they were the men that had done the shooting” The natural and inevitable result of such testimony must have been to convince the jury that the police officers, who are supposed to be skilled in the detection of criminals, possessed facts which the forms of law excluded, showing defendant to be guilty.

The writing filed, which purports to be an amendment of the original bill of exceptions, should be stricken from the files or disregarded, because the amendment was not made in open court, but in vacation, and is therefore void. The act of the judge was extra-judicial.

The bill of exceptions being a record when signed, sealed and filed, can be amended only in the manner that any other part of the record of the case could be,--that is, in open court in term time, and upon notice. Wallahan v. People, 40 Ill. 102; Goodrich v. City of Minonk, 62 Id. 121; Newman v. Ravenscroft, 67 Id. 469.

Mr. WILLIAM H. BOOTH, State's Attorney of DeWitt county, and Messrs. FIFER & PHILLIPS, for the People.

Mr. JUSTICE MULKEY delivered the opinion of the Court:

Thomas Coyne, alias Patsy Devine, and Henry Williams, were indicted in the McLean circuit court, at its April term, A. D. 1880, for the murder of Aaron Goodfellow. Devine alone was taken, and plead to the indictment at the same term of court. Upon his application, at the following September term the venue was changed to DeWitt county, where, at the December term, 1880, of the DeWitt circuit court, he was tried before the court and a jury, and found guilty in manner and form as charged in the indictment, and duly sentenced to be hung on the 14th of January, 1881. To reverse this conviction the present writ of error is prosecuted.

The evidence shows that the deceased, Aaron Goodfellow, on Monday night of the 4th of August, 1879, about fifteen minutes past nine o'clock, was assaulted in the streets of Bloomington by two strangers, and in course of the struggle received two gunshot wounds, from which, on the following morning, he died. No one saw the transaction but the deceased and his assailants, and the evidence relied on to connect the accused with the offence is entirely circumstantial. In view of this fact, and the further consideration that the life of the accused was involved in the issue, it became highly important to him, as well as essential to the due administration of justice in the prosecution of the case, that the State should be held to at least a substantial if not a strict observance of the well established rules governing the production of testimony, in its efforts to establish the charge against him. The trial should have been conducted with the utmost fairness, and no matter or thing should have been admitted in evidence, against the objections of the accused, which did not prove or tend to prove the issue, more especially if the evidence, when admitted, would have had an improper influence upon the minds of the jury or place the accused at a disadvantage before them. Without expressing any opinion whatever upon the sufficiency of the testimony to sustain the conviction, we do not think the rule here indicated was sufficiently observed.

J. P. Butler, captain of the night police of the city of Bloomington, and a witness on behalf of the People, testified, among other things, against the objection of the accused, that “that night (the night of the homicide) I saw Michael McHugh, and learned what he knew about Devine and Williams, and we of the police formed the theory that they were the men that had done the shooting.”

The admission of this testimony was unjust to the accused, and clearly erroneous. Indeed, this is not seriously questioned, but it is claimed, as a matter of fact,...