Farris v. People

• Decision Date: 15 June 1889
• Parties: FARRIS v. PEOPLE.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

129 Ill. 521

21 N.E. 821

FARRIS

v.PEOPLE.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 15, 1889.

Error to circuit court, Peoria county; T. M. SHOW, Judge.

SHOPE, C. J., and MAGRUDER, J., dissenting.

A. W. Masters, M. C. Quinn, and Arthur Keithly, for plaintiff in error.

George Hunt, Atty. Gen., J. M. Niehaus, Peoria Co. Att., and Kinsey Thomas, Fulton Co. Atty., for the People.

WILKIN, J.

At the August term, 1888, of the Fulton circuit court, plaintiff in error was indicted for the murder of one Stephen McGehee. On his petition, the venue was changed to Peoria county; and at the December term, 1888, of the circuit court of that county, he was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to be executed. He sues out this writ of error, and urges a reversal of the judgment below, principally on the ground that the trial court erred in admitting improper evidence, on behalf of the people, to his prejudice. Mrs. Debbie McGehee, wife of the deceased, was the principal witness, in the case. She had been married to the defendant, Farris, but obtained a divorce from him, and February 28, 1888, married the deceased. She had not lived with the defendant since May 9, 1884. She testifies that about noon, on the 18th of April, 1888, while she, her husband, and the children were eating dinner, defendant came to the east door of the room in which they were sitting, with a revolver in his right hand. Her husband spoke to him saying, ‘How do you do?’ He replied, ‘How are you?’ and immediatelysaid, ‘You d___d son of a bitch, I have come to kill you, and I am going to do it;’ that McGehee started to get up, when the defendant fired upon him, and was about firing the second shot, when deceased, still being in the act of rising, exclaimed, ‘Oh, don't!’ The second shot was fired, and McGehee fell. There is no dispute as to the fact that, by one or both of these shots, McGehee was instantly killed. Immediately, the defendant threatened to kill Mrs. McGehee, but she and her little boy succeeded in forcing him out of the house, and overcame him. He then begged them to let him up, and, upon his promising that he would not kill her, they did so. Thereupon, he proposed to go in the house and get some coffee, but she told him that none had been prepared for dinner; and, as he and the children went in the house, she ran in the direction of one of the neighbors. She had gone but a short distance when she discovered that he was pursuing her, and calling upon her to stop. He came up to where she was, and again threatened to shoot her. She sat down on the ground, and he and the children also sat down near her; and, she says, they there had some conversation, in which he inquired why she married McGehee, and said that her mother told him to kill McGehee. They remained there a short time, when she asked him to hitch up the team for her, so that she might go to her parents, and he promised to do so. They went to the barn, he going in, but she remaining, at first, outside. He commanded her to come on in. At this point an objection was made by counsel for defendant as to any evidence of what took place there, upon the ground ‘that it was no part of the res gestoe,’ and in ruling upon that objection the court held and stated that the prosecution ‘might prove that the defendant committed the crime of rape upon Mrs. McGehee within a reasonable time after the killing, upon the theory that such evidence tended to prove the motive or intent with which the homicide was committed.’ She then proceeded to testify that she went in the barn, upon his demanding that she should, and sat down, and that they there had some further conversation, but not about McGehee. He finally refused to hitch up the team, and they left the barn, and ‘started to town.’ He made some inquiry as to what was kept in an old house near by, and proposed to go in and see. He went in, and told her to come in, but she refused until he again told her to do so, when, through fear, she obeyed. Before they went in, he gave the revolver to the little boy, and sent the children to the barn. He then made an indecent proposal to her, which she refused. Thereupon he struck her, and pushed her against the side of the house, she resisting, and attempting to push him away. Counsel for the people then asked her: ‘What did he do? Answer. He mistreated me. Q. What then occurred? You need not have any hesitancy about telling what was done there. The jury want to know all the facts;’ and counsel proceeded, by direct questions, to prove by her that the defendant then and there committed a rape upon her. This occurred, as she testifies, about a half hour after the shooting. As to the circumstances connected with the shooting she is fully corroborated by Eddie Farris, a son of defendant and herself, about 11 years old. The evidence shows that defendant was intoxicated to some extent, and had been drinking for several days; but Mrs. McGehee swears that he knew what he was doing, and there is no reason to doubt her evidence as to that fact. After the evidence of Mrs. McGehee, it was also shown by the state that defendant recently, prior to the killing, made threats against deceased.

The only attempt at justification was that the shooting was done in self-defense; and it is not now claimed that there was any substantial proof in the case upon which to base it. The foregoing statement will be found sufficiently full for a satisfactory consideration of the question whether or not it was competent for the prosecution to prove the crime of rape, as allowed by the court below, that being the only question which we deem it important to notice.

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. Crim. 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 reasons for this rule are 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 had 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. Crim. 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 rebut it.’ 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 had 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 too 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; Justice SHELDON saying in the opinion rendered: ‘This evidence did not tend to prove the assault, * * * and did tend to prejudice the jury against the defendant. There should not have been brought into the trial of the simple issue in this case anything which might be regarded as slanderous matter, or other improper conduct of the defendant, to make against him, and by its consideration be likely to influence the verdict of the jury.’ It is conceded that the mere fact that testimony may...