People v. Geary
| Decision Date | 09 June 1921 |
| Docket Number | No. 13790.,13790. |
| Citation | 131 N.E. 97,297 Ill. 608 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. GEARY. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Criminal Court, Cook County; Joseph Sabath, Judge.
Eugene Geary was convicted of murder, and he brings error.
Judgment affirmed.Thomas D. Nash and Michael J. Ahern, both of Chicago (Thomas E. Swanson, of Chicago, of counsel), for plaintiff in error.
Edward J. Brundage, Atty. Gen., and Robert E. Crowe, State's Atty., and Edward C. Fitch, both of Chicago (Edward E. Wilson, of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.
About 10 o'clock at night on Thursday, May 27, 1920, the plaintiff in error, Eugene Geary, shot and killed Harry Reckas in the Horn Palace saloon, in Chicago. He was tried in the criminal court of Cook county upon an indictment charging him with murder, and the jury found him guilty, and fixed his punishment at death. The court, after overruling motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment, pronounced sentence on the verdict, and a writ of error and supersedeas were allowed by this court to permit a considerationof the alleged errors assigned on the record.
At the trial the homicide was admitted, and the defense interposed was insanity of the defendant, and there was no dispute or controversy concerning any evidentiary fact relating to either of those questions. Evidence was offered of the appearance, manner, declarations, and conduct of the defendant for a few days before the homicide, which evidence was not controverted or questioned in any way, and the issue submitted to the jury was whether the defendant, from long-continued use of alcohol, had become incapable of distinguishing right from wrong with respect to the act he committed, or through his mental condition was impelled to the commission of the act by an impulse which he was incapable of resisting. That issue was found against the defendant by the jury, and the finding was approved by the court.
At the time of the homicide Harry Reckas and Timothy J. Fell went into the Horn Palace saloon. Those present in the saloon at the time, beside Reckas and Fell, were David Ruse, bartender, Walter Brown, Merrick Shattuck (known as ‘Lunch’ Shattuck), and Edward J. Davis, a policeman. Reckas asked the bartender if Mr. O'Brien was in, and the bartender replied that he was not, but would be in shortly. Some one asked what Reckas wanted to see O'Brien for, and Fell said that Reckas had purchased water when he thought he was getting whisky, and Fell had learned that O'Brien had been victimized in the same way. Fell had two glasses of ginger ale and Reckas two glasses of nearbeer and cigars, and as Fell and Reckas were leaving the saloon the defendant came in. When five or six feet from the door the defendant met Reckas and asked him, ‘Who are you looking for?‘ and Reckas said, ‘Nobody; we are going home.’ The defendant took hold of the lapel of Reckas' coat and the bartender came from behind the bar and said to the defendant, ‘Gene, these men are friends of Mr. O'Brien; you are not looking for them.’ The defendant let go of the coat lapel, and Reckas started out of the saloon, and the defendant shot him in the left side and killed him. Reckas was unarmed, and did not make any demonstration or say anything, except that he was going home. The defendant then turned to Fell and leveled his gun at Fell's stomach. Fell said:
‘Surely you don't want to shoot me; I don't even know you; I never saw you before; we have had no trouble here to-night; you are in trouble enough already; I am a friend of Mr. O'Brien, and came in here to get a drink.’
The defendant dropped his hand and put his gun in his pocket, and Davis, the policeman, who was acquainted with the defendant, went up to him and said, ‘Hello, Gene,’ and the defendant replied, ‘Hello, Davis.’ The defendant left the saloon by the rear door and disappeared from his usual residence and haunts. He had lived at the Stock Yards Inn-a hotel across the street from the saloon-and the police officers searched for him until he was found on June 3, 1920, in the daytime, in bed in a darkened room at 436 West Forty-Second place. He was arrested, and the officers made a search and found two 38-caliber loaded revolvers and some shells in an unused stove just outside the door in an adjoining room, and the defendant had stove black on his hands and a smear of the same on the left side of his face. He had been drunk in the afternoon of the homicide and was drunk when it occurred.
On the part of the defendant it was proved that he had syphilis of 19 years' standing, and spinal fluid extracted from his spine, and other tests, showed that the disease was in an advanced stage. It was also proved that he had a long-continued habit of drinking intoxicants and was a confirmed alcoholic, and 13 witnesses testified to his demeanor, conduct, appearance, and statements-one of them six days before the homicide and the others for four days previous to the homicide. He came to the house of one of the witnesses Friday evening May 21, 1920, intoxicated, and said he was going to die in a few days, and took some of his shirts out of a drawer, in which there was an empty gun. The witness told him the gun was empty, and took it and put it in the drawer and told him to go to bed. The witness gave him a drink of whisky, and he slept well until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, and was then heard walking up and down the floor, and said he was nervous and could not sleep. He stayed at that place two nights and acted in the same way, would not eat and was vomiting, and complained that there was a light in front of the house, and said some one was throwing lights at him. On Sunday evening, May 23, he went to his mother's house and from that time was sober until the afternoon before the homicide. He stayed at his mother's and other places, and during that time ate little or nothing, did not sleep, but walked around most of the night, and said they were throwing lights at him; that the yellow-cab fellows threw electric lights one the window and moving pictures on the wall, and when they went along the street would toot their horns, and say they would get him. He would not permit the electric light to be turned off, and said they were flashing lights on him. Once he got out of bed, and said there was a fellow whistling in the next room, and in the morning said there was a yellow cab down there, and they were down there now trying to get at him. Once he asked another man to go to his room with him, as he was nervous and afraid; that those yellow fellows were after him; and he looked around the room and under the bed and said they never could tell who was liable to be there-you might find those yellow fellows any place. On Monday night, at his mother's home, he went to bed, and was found the next morning lying on a lounge, and said he could not sleep because the baby, seven years old, brought sand flies in the house and in the bed, and sand flies and bugs were crawling on the food. He was in the cigar business, and on Monday or Tuesday preceding the homicide, when a cigar dealer delivered him 1,000 cigars, and he gave an order for more, he said he had to be careful; they were after him. In the afternoon of the day of the homicide he went into a saloon and said two or three fellows chased him up the street. He was given a drink of whisky and drank until the whisky was all gone. He seemed to get quiet after he began drinking, and when the whisky was gone he told the man who gave him the whisky to stay there until he came back, and he came back in a few minutes with a pint bottle of whisky. He gave the man $100 to give to his mother, and when the man reported that he had delivered the money to defendant's mother he said that was all right, and asked how she was. Several of these witnesses, after detailing their observation of the defendant, gave opinions that he was insane when they observed him.
Objection is made to a ruling of the court permitting the cross-examination of the witness at whose house defendant stayed the first two nights, by which it was shown that the witness had been in the Bridewell and had just got out, and cross-examination of another witness to show that, while he drank three or four drinks of whisky per day, he was a sort of hangeron or loafer around saloons, and paid nothing for the whisky. The objection is that the cross-examination only tended to degrade the witnesses, but, whether the rulings were right or wrong, no harm was done to the defendant, because there was no controversy about the facts to which the witnesses testified, and the same facts were proved by several other witnesses.
A witness who testified to the conduct of the defendant and gave an opinion that he was insane volunteered the statement, ‘He looks all right now,’ and was asked as to his opinion whether he was then insane. The court overruled an objection, and said that if the witness did not have an opinion he need not give any, and the answer was, ‘I don't know.’ As the witness gave no opinion, but said that he did not know, the error, if any, was harmless.
It is also objected that the court permitted a doctor, who was not an expert on mental diseases, but who had known the defendant 25 or 30 years, and had treated him at different times for alcoholism, and who saw him on June 3 when arrested, and then examined and talked with him, and found him recovering from a prolonged alcoholic debauch, to give an opinion whether he was sane or insane at that time. Witnesses for the defendant who had stated to the jury the facts upon which their opinion was based had given opinions that the defendant was insane. The doctor in like manner testified to facts and the conduct of the defendant, with his manner of answering questions at the examination on June 3 and also the next day, and it was not error to permit him to give his opinion,...
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