People v. Braverman
| Decision Date | 25 October 1930 |
| Docket Number | No. 19950.,19950. |
| Citation | 173 N.E. 55,340 Ill. 525 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. BRAVERMAN. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Criminal Court, Cook County; Marcus Kavanagh, Judge.
Louis Braverman was convicted of robbery while armed with a dangerous weapon, and he brings error.
Affirmed.
Louis Greenberg, of Chicago, for plaintiff in error.
Oscar E. Carlstrom, Atty. Gen., John A. Swanson, State's Atty., of Chicago, and Joel C. Fitch, of Albion (Edward E. Wilson, John Holman, and Harold M. Keele, all of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.
Louis Braverman, Philip Schlein, and Meyer Gordon were indicted in the criminal court of Cook county for the crime of robbery committed while armed with a dangerous weapon. Braverman was granted a separate trial. A jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to the penitentiary. He prosecutes this writ of error for a review of the record.
On November 15, 1927, at about 8:15 a. m., three men entered the drug store of the Walgreen Company at the northwest corner of Roosevelt road and St. Louis avenue, in the city of Chicago. Ida Ghingold, the cashier, was in her cage at the front of the store engaged in making out a report when her attention was attracted to a man who stood in front of the cage facing her. She asked him what he wished, and he answered, ‘This is a stick-up.’ Not knowing what he meant she made a second inquiry, and he answered as before and pointed a revolver through the bars of the cage. Upon his command she raised her hands. The porter stood on the opposite side of the room and his hands, too, were raised. Another of the three men came from the rear of the room and commanded Miss Ghingold to lower her hands because he said he did not want persons outside the store to discover that a robbery was being committed. He asked her to open the safe, but she told him she did not know the combination. He then directed her to step to the rear of the room where the third of the three men, also armed with a revolver, guarded the porter, a milkman, and a customer. The receipts of the store were put in small brown bags marked with the letters ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘D,’ and ‘E,’ according to the clerk or employee who made the sale, and these bags were kept in the safe. The manager of the store, Michael Glickman, was forced to open the safe, and the robbers then locked all the persons present, including the manager, in a small room. After the robbers left, the attention of a man outside the store was attracted and the persons in the room were released. They found the contents of the safe as well as bottles and boxes strewn about the floor and $371 in money had been taken.
On the morning of November 15, 1927, John Cunningham, a driver for the Checker Taxicab Company, received a call to go to the Rosette Hotel at 2845 Washington boulevard. He drove to the hotel and in a few minutes two men, whom he later identified as the plaintiff in error and Gordon, came out of the hotel, entered his cab, and asked to be driven to Roosevelt road and St. Louis avenue. As the car approached this destination, it was stopped alongside another Checker taxicab, and Cunningham's passengers entered the second car in which a man and a woman were seated. These four persons then transferred to the first cab and Cunningham was directed to drive down various streets until he reached a point on St. Louis avenue a short distance north of Roosevelt road when he was asked to stop. The three men left the cab, one of them stating that they would return shortly, and they walked toward the Walgreen Company's drug store. In a short time they returned in great haste and as they entered the cab, one of the men closed the door so forcibly that the glass in the door was broken. Cunningham was urged repeatedly to drive at a high rate of speed because he was told his passengers desired to board a railway train. Under the direction of one of the men, a circuitous route was followed until a point just south of Washington boulevard on Francisco avenue was reached. Here the passengers left the taxicab and the plaintiff in error gave Cunningham $5 and inquired whether that sum was satisfactory. Cunningham answered that it was about sufficient to pay the fares and defray the cost of the broken glass. The three men proceeded north and thence east and Cunningham saw them enter the Rosette Hotel. He then notified the police department. A police squad responded and Cunningham directed them to the hotel.
Garrett Fleming, a sergeant of police, arrived at the drug store shortly after the robbery had been committed. Accompanied by another police officer he proceeded to the Rosette Hotel. After talking with the clerk he caused a search to be made of the hotel. The plaintiff in error emerged from room 208, and in answer to questions by the officers, said he had called to meet a friend and was on his way to the criminal court building to attend a trial. The officers knocked on the door of that room, but received no response. Sergeant Fleming obtained the key, opened the door, and found Meyer Gordon sitting on the bed. Gordon and the plaintiff in error were taken to the lobby of the hotel, and Floyd Carr, who was employed in the drug store that had been robbed, was asked whether any person present had been in the store that morning. Upon the information he gave the officers, the plaintiff in error and Gordon were taken back to room 208 and searches of their persons and of the room were made. In one of the pockets of the plaintiff in error, paper money amounting to $286 was discovered and a dresser drawer disclosed a cap containing 189 pennies as well as a brown cloth bag with the letter ‘E’ upon it. A revolver loaded with five shells was found in a black valise on the floor. Although the plaintiff in error denied guilt, he and Gordon, the money, and the revolver were taken to the Fillmore street police station. Other police officers brought Schlein and his wife to the same station. Later on the same day, these four persons were confronted by Miss Ghingold, the cashier, and Cunningham, the taxicab driver. Miss Ghingold identified the plaintiff in error and Schlein as two of the men who participated in the robbery, and believed that Gordon was the third man. Cunningham identified the plaintiff in error, Gordon, Schlein, and Schlein's wife as the occupants of his taxicab on the morning of the robbery.
The defense rests upon the testimony of the plaintiff in error, his mother, and his sister. The sister testified that when she left for work at 7:15 o'clock on the morning in question, the plaintiff in error was at home eating breakfast. The mother said that, on the same morning, he left home at about 7:30 o'clock with $300 which she had given him to pay her deceased husband's funeral bill. The testimony of the plaintiff in error is that he left home at the time stated by his mother with $11 in addition to the money she had given him; that his mother directed him to take the $300 to his uncle to reimburse the latter for money he had advanced to pay the funeral expenses of the witness' father who had died on August 26 of the same year; that it was a Jewish custom to utter a prayer each morning and evening for a year after the death of a member of the family; that he went to the synagogue at Fifteenth street and Clifton Park avenue for that purpose and remained there until about 8:45 a. m.; that he then proceeded to the Rosette Hotel where he expected to meet Sam Simon, a friend, and go with him to the criminal court to attend the trial of a case; that upon reaching the hotel he went to room 208, knocked on the door, and when it was opened, asked for Sam Simon; that the occupant answered that Simon was not there, whereupon the witness asked to be admitted, but the request was denied because the occupant said he was sick and did not want to be disturbed; that, as the witness was leaving, he was stopped by two police officers who asked his name, address, and destination and then searched his pockets; that the money on his person was not discovered at the time but was found later, and that the police officers put a cap on him, twisted his arm, and beat and kicked him. The plaintiff in error denied participating in the robbery, riding in any taxicab, or giving Cunningham, the taxicab driver, $5.
The charges of physical cruelty made by the plaintiff in error were specifically denied by the police officers. At the time of the trial, Glickman and Carr were no longer in the service of the Walgreen Company, and neither they, nor the milkman who was present when the robbery was committed, could be found.
Several contentions for the reversal of the judgment are made by the plaintiff in error. The first is that the indictment charges that one Michael Glickman was...
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People v. Gaines
...contention also misreads section 18-1. The property taken must have been taken from the victim of the robbery (People v. Braverman (1930), 340 Ill. 525, 531, 173 N.E. 55; People v. Smith (1980), 78 Ill.2d 298, 302-05, 35 Ill.Dec. 761, 399 N.E.2d 1289). There was no evidence whatever that th......
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...Long ago and even at the common law, robbery referred only to a "taking from the person of another." See, e.g., People v. Braverman, 340 Ill. 525, 530–31, 173 N.E. 55 (1930) (interpreting the phrase "taking from the person of another" in robbery statute). The current theft statute refers to......
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