People v. Grayson

• Decision Date: 17 September 1974
• Docket Number: No. 46155,46155
• Citation: 319 N.E.2d 43,58 Ill.2d 260
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Larry GRAYSON, Appellant.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 43

319 N.E.2d 43

58 Ill.2d 260

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Larry GRAYSON, Appellant.

No. 46155.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Sept. 17, 1974.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 26, 1974.

James J. Doherty, Public Defender, Chicago (Ronald P. Alwin and Nunzio D. Tisci, Asst. Public Defenders, of counsel, and Robert B. Thompson, Senior Law Student), for appellant.

William J. Scott, Atty. Gen., Springfield, and Bernard Carey, State's Atty., Chicago (James B. Zagel, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Patrick T. Driscoll, Jr., and James S. Veldman, Asst. State's Attys., of counsel), for the People.

UNDERWOOD, Chief Justice.

Larry Grayson, the appellant here, and Donald Hall pleaded guilty on February 21, 1969, to armed robbery and were sentenced to 5 years' probation. Subsequently both were indicted for the April 9, 1970, armed robbery of Thaddeus Lukas. On July 20, the defendants were acquitted on that armed robbery charge in a bench trial. The evidence against them at that trial consisted of the testimony of the victim and the victim's brother, which the trial judge expressly found insufficient to support a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. On July 28 a petition to revoke defendants' probation was filed alleging as the only grounds therefor the commission of the Lukas robbery. The same witnesses who had testified at the earlier trial testified at the revocation hearing. A different trial judge found this evidence sufficient to hold defendants had voilated their probation, their probation was revoked, and defendants were sentenced to terms of 3 to 8 years on the original armed robbery conviction. The First District Appellate Court affirmed (13 Ill.App.3d 1049, 301 N.E.2d 33), and we granted defendant Grayson leave to appeal.

While we do not have before us the transcript of the testimony at the bench trial which resulted in the acquittal of defendants, it is not suggested that the evidence heard at the probation revocation hearing was any different from that heard at trial. We shall therefore, as did the appellate court, assume the evidence was substantially the same. The only issue apparently in dispute in both the armed robbery trial and the revocation hearing was the identity of the robbers.

We have not heretofore considered whether acquittal at a criminal trial precludes a subsequent revocation of probation predicated upon the same evidence which resulted in the earlier acquittal. Defendant urges that the judgment of acquittal in the armed robbery trial precluded the State, under the doctrines of collateral estoppel and double jeopardy, from relitigating the controlling facts of the identity of the robbers in a probation revocation hearing, while the State contends the lesser degree of proof (a preponderance of the evidence) required in the revocation hearing permits a different result.

Defendant relies on Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469. In Ashe, the defendant was charged with the separate armed robberies of six participants in a poker game. Defendant went to trial before a jury on the charge of robbing one of the participants and was found not guilty. There was no question that an armed robbery had occurred and that personal property had been taken from each of the participants. The State's evidence that defendant had been one of the armed robbers, however, was weak, and the jury verdict amounted to a finding that defendant was not one of the robbers. Subsequently defendant was tried for the robbery of another participant in the poker game and was convicted. The same witnesses who had testified at the first trial against testified but gave substantially stronger testimony on the issue of defendant's identity. The Supreme Court stated, 'The single rationally conceivable issue in dispute before the jury was whether the petitioner had been one of the robbers. And the jury by its verdict (in the first trial) found that he had not. The federal rule of law, therefore, would make a second prosecution * * * wholly impermissible.' 397 U.S. 436, 445, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 1195, 25 L.Ed.2d 469, 476. The Supreme Court reversed defendant's conviction and went on to hold that the principle of collateral estoppel was embodied in the Fifth Amendment guarantee against double jeopardy, and was thus applicable to the States under Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707.

Collateral estoppel '* * * stands for an extremely important principle in our adversary system of justice. It means simply that when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit.' (Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 443, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 1194, 25 L.Ed.2d 469, 475; People v. Haran, 27 Ill.2d 229, 188 N.E.2d 707.) Defendant contends this principle was offended when he was forced to 'run the gauntlet' (Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 190, 78 S.Ct. 221, 225, 2 L.Ed.2d 199, 206) twice on the same charge, and the same issue of ultimate fact was relitigated. Defendant contends the acquittal on the charge of armed robbery amounted...