Gunning v. People
| Decision Date | 20 February 1901 |
| Citation | 59 N.E. 494,189 Ill. 165 |
| Parties | GUNNING v. PEOPLE. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
Error to appellate court, First district.
Richard C. Gunning was convicted of offering to receive a bribe to influence his official action as assessor of the town of South Chicago. From a judgment of the appellate court (86 Ill. App. 676) affirming the conviction, he brings error. Reversed.
Edward E. Morris, for plaintiff in error.
E. C. Akin, Atty. Gen., Charles S. Deneen, State's Atty., and W. M. McEwen, Asst. State's Atty., for the People.
Richard C. Gunning, the plaintiff in error, was indicted and convicted of corruptly proposing to receive a bribe to influence his official action as assessor of the town of South Chicago by reducing the assessment which had been made for purposes of taxation on a certain lot in Chicago, and was adjudged to pay a fine of $3,500, under sections 31 and 32 of the Criminal Code. The appellate court having affirmed the judgment, Gunning sued out this writ of error to bring the record before this court for review.
The indictment consisted of 30 counts, all charging the same offense, varying in manner of stating particular facts; but none of them alleged that the real estate upon which the assessment was sought to be reduced was situated in the town of South Chicago, of which town Gunning was assessor. The court overruled the motion of the defendant below to quash the indictment; and, although it was proved on the trial that the lot in question was in the town of South Chicago, such proof would not, of course, cure such a defect in the indictment, if defect it was, for proofs without allegations are as ineffectual as allegations without proofs. The evidence upon the issue of guilt or innocence was conflicting and irreconcilable, but the most serious question presented to us is upon the assignment of error that the court erred in refusing to quash the indictment. A case involving such an offense is of grave importance to the public, and demands careful consideration, and such a consideration we have endeavored to give it.
The charge in each of the counts was, in substance, that said Richard C. Gunning was the duly elected and qualified assessor of said town of South Chicago, and, while acting as such officer, on, to wit, etc., unlawfully and corruptly did propose to receive a bribe to influence his official action as such assessor, in this: that he, said Gunning, then and there proposed to one Charles Fellows that upon the payment then and there by him, said Fellows, to him, said Gunning, of the sum of $1,000, he, the said Gunning, would reduce the assessed valuation, to wit, $100,000, for the taxes of the year 1897, upon the following described real estate, to wit, lot 1 of the assessor's resubdivision of sublots 1 to 5, in block 58, of the original town of Chicago, together with the building thereon, commonly known as the ‘Reliance Building,’ and the improvements thereon, all in said county of Cook, in the state of Illinois, to the assessed valuation, to wit, $91,970, which had been made on said property for the taxes of the year 1896. It needs hardly to be stated that Gunning had, as assessor of the town of South Chicago, no power or official authority to reduce the assessment on real estate situated outside of said town. Unless, therefore, the lot in question was situated in said town, he was wholly without official authority to make the reductio he is charged with having offered to make for the alleged bribe. It follows, of course, that it must appear from the indictment, before it can be sustained, that said lot was official authority to make the reduction of property therein Gunning's official duty was confined. Thus, in Van Dusen v. People, 78 Ill. 645, it was held that an assessor, not being authorized to assess property outside of his township, cannot lawfully administer outside of such township an oath to a person concerning his rights and credits liable to assessment; and a conviction of perjury was reversed because the evidence failed to show that the affidavit was sworn to in the township before the assessor where he had the power to administer the oath. We need not, however, dwell on this branch of the question, for there is no controversy, and could be none, between counsel respecting it.
But it is contended for the people that from what is alleged the court will take judicial notice that the said property is situated in the town of South Chicago. If this contention be correct, then no further allegation on that subject was necessary, for matters of which the court must take notice need be neither alleged nor proved. The question is, can the courts of the jurisdiction take judicial notice that the property, as above described, is situated in the town of South Chicago? A mere statement of the question would seem to imply a negative answer, if established rules of law governing the subject are to be regarded. But counsel say, and the court will take notice, that the original town of Chicago was incorporated by an act of the legislature in 1835, and that it included ‘all that district of country in sections 9 and 16 north, and south fractional section 10 and fractional section 15, in township 39 north, range 14 east of the third principal meridian’ (Laws 1835, p. 204), and that the town of South Chicago now includes in its limits a part of the original town of Chicago. But, even if the courts could notice which of the sections of land, or parts thereof, were included in these several towns, how could the court say, from its judicial knowledge, which of them includes the subdivision which contains the lot in question? From the description given, the lot may as well be supposed, by all except those having special information on the subject, to be in the west or the north town as in the south town. Courts will take judicial cognizance, without allegation or proof, of the political division of the state into counties, towns, and cities, that a county is under township organization, and that a particular township is in a certain county, and of the relative location of such towns with respect to each other. See 1 Greenl. Ev. § 6. And the author also says: ‘In fine, a court will generally take notice of whatever ought to be generally known within the limits of its jurisdiction.’ See, also, 1 Phil. Ev. p. 625; 12 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, 151; an exhaustive note to Lanfear v. Mestier, 89 Am. Dec. 679;Dickenson v....
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