People v. Erickson

• Decision Date: 30 September 1980
• Docket Number: No. 79-186,79-186
• Citation: People v. Erickson, 411 N.E.2d 44, 89 Ill.App.3d 56, 44 Ill.Dec. 138 (Ill. App. 1980)
• Parties: , 44 Ill.Dec. 138 The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Duane ERICKSON, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 44

411 N.E.2d 44

89 Ill.App.3d 56, 44 Ill.Dec. 138

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Duane ERICKSON, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 79-186.

Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District.

Sept. 30, 1980.

Mary Robinson, Deputy State Appellate Defender, Elgin, Paul J. Glaser, Asst. State Appellate Defender, for defendant-appellant.

Dallas C. Ingemunson, State's Atty., Yorkville, Phyllis J. Perko, Martin P. Moltz, State's Attys.' Appellate Service Commission, Elgin, for plaintiff-appellee.

UNVERZAGT, Justice:

This appeal arises out of a conviction than for murder for which the defendant was sentenced to not less than 25 nor more than forty years imprisonment.

The defendant claims he found his wife shortly after 6 p. m. on November 11, 1977, lying dead in a pool of blood on the floor of the laundry room of the apartment complex where they lived. He testified that his wife, Linda, had babysat for the next door neighbors, the Rosenbauers, until 6 o'clock, when Rick Rosenbauer came home. She then left and came back to the Erickson apartment and got some clothes together to be laundered. She took them to the laundry room and the defendant went with her and after she started the washing machine he returned to the apartment. He dozed for a short time and upon awakening and finding Linda still not back, he returned to the laundry room where he found her lying dead. He claims he attempted to lift her up and felt for a heart beat, thus getting blood on his hands and clothing. Apparently, from the condition of her head, someone had battered her head against the laundry room floor but the actual cause of death was found by the pathologist to be strangulation.

The defendant went to his next door neighbor upon finding his wife dead and asked him to accompany him back to the laundry room which the neighbor, Rick Rosenbauer, did. After viewing the body, Rosenbauer called the police. The police came and after some questioning of the defendant he was charged with murder.

At the trial, the defendant offered no reasonable explanation of his wife's death but contended that she must have been killed by an unknown intruder and that the circumstantial evidence against him was not sufficient to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt. It was established by the State's expert witnesses that the blood found on the defendant's coat as well as on his socks and the bottom of his trousers, and also a small speck of blood on his eyeglasses, was Type A blood-his wife's type-and not the defendant's blood-which was Type O. An expert on "impact splatter" of blood testified that the dispersion of the victim's blood on the defendant's clothing was in a pattern suggesting the murderer had beaten the victim's head against the floor and that certain spots of blood had gotten on the defendant's clothing in the process or course of doing so. These spots were distinct from the blood stains which might have gotten on the defendant's clothing from lifting the victim's head or body off the floor. He also testified to the presence of a small partial hand print apparently made by a bloody hand on the sleeve of the defendant's jacket. Another expert, a forensic scientist for the State of Illinois, also testified as to the hand print made apparently by blood of the left hand of the victim which appeared on the right coat sleeve of the defendant, indicating that Linda was alive at the time it was made, since she had apparently grabbed the defendant's coat sleeve before she died. The print, while not identifiable as a finger or hand print of the victim, was the same small size as her hand and much smaller than the hand of the defendant.

The defense cites a number of cases following the general principle that where the evidence is purely circumstantial it must be of a conclusive nature and must produce a reasonable and moral certainty that the accused and no one else committed the crime. (People v. Widmayer (1948), 402 Ill. 143, 83 N.E.2d 285.) The cases cited by the defendant, however, are not similar in their facts to the case at bar. Neither People v. Holtz (1920), 294 Ill. 143, 128 N.E. 341 nor People v. Wilson (1948), 400 Ill. 461, 81 N.E.2d 211 were similar in their circumstances-the circumstances in Holtz were somewhat similar to the case at bar in that the defendants ascribed the murder to intruders but there was evidence to substantiate such a theory in that case, which is entirely lacking here. Wilson involved a fire and there was no proof that a murder was committed. The case of People v. Howard (1979), 74 Ill.App.3d 870, 30 Ill.Dec. 737, 393 N.E.2d 1084, contains some points of similarity but there was also evidence to substantiate the defendant's contention that the murder of her child was the work of a personal enemy of the accused who was harassing her. In the case before us there is no such evidence of either an intruder or an enemy. Moreover, there is positive evidence tending to indicate that the defendant was in close proximity to the victim after she was...