People v. Hester
| Citation | 237 N.E.2d 466,39 Ill.2d 489 |
| Decision Date | 28 March 1968 |
| Docket Number | No. 39588,39588 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Defendant in Error, v. Lee Arthur HESTER, Plaintiff in Error. |
| Court | Supreme Court of Illinois |
Kaplan & Kaplan, Chicago (Marshall Kaplan, Jerome Feldman, and Edward Kaplan, Chicago, of counsel) appointed by the court, for plaintiff in error.
William G. Clark, Atty. Gen., Springfield, and John J. Stamos, State's Atty., Chicago (Elmer C. Kissane and James B. Zagel, Asst. State's Attys., of counsel), for defendant in error.
The defendant, Lee Arthur Hester, age 14, was found guilty of murder by a jury in the circuit court of Cook County and sentenced to a term of 55 years imprisonment. In this direct appeal the defendant claims 18 instances of reversible error occurred in these proceedings.
About 4:00 P.M., on April 20, 1961, the body of Josephine Keane, a teacher at the Lewis-Champlin Elementary School of Chicago, was discovered in the first floor bookroom of the school. Mrs. Keane had been stabbed repeatedly in the side and chest. Her body was found lying face up with her skirt pushed up over the hips. The crotch of her panties and girdle had been cut as well as the loops that held the garter supports attached to her girdle. The coroner found that spermatazoa were present in the victim's vagina, and the autopsy report fixed the cause of death as hemorrhaging due to multiple stab wounds with death occurring between 8:00 A.M. and noon that day.
On April 21, Detectives Sheldon Teller and Anton Prunkle were assigned to investigate the murder, and arrived at the school before daybreak to conduct a search of the premises. About 7:45 A.M. Hester's gym teacher, Miss Virginia Fritsch, talked with them stating that she had seen Hester alone in the hall on Thursday morning, and that she believed Mrs. Keane was handling a disciplinary case which involved him. Miss Fritsch directed the officers to Mrs. Rita Considine, a clerk in the principal's office, as a possible source of more information. Mrs. Considine informed the policemen that Mrs. Keane had mentioned that a parent had complained about the defendant wanting her son to commit an unnatural act. The detectives then proceeded to the third floor classroom where they met Jean Webster, Hester's fifth grade teacher.
At 8:00 A.M. the defendant arrived in his classroom and Miss Webster directed him to the officers who were waiting outside. The defendant was in the custody of Officers Teller and Prunkle from shortly after 8:00 A.M. until approximately 8:45 A.M. when they turned him over to Sergeant Frank Follis of the youth division. As they were interviewing the defendant outside of his third-floor classroom the detectives noticed what appeared to be bloodstains on Hester's pants and shirt. Detective Teller testified that when the defendant was asked how he acquired the stains on his clothing he gave several answers: that they were due to a fight with another boy; that he had had a nosebleed; that he had cut himself while chopping wood with an ax; and that he cut himself with a saw while sawing wood. Hester testified that as he was being interviewed outside of the classroom Officer Prunkle kicked him in the left shin. This charge was denied by Officers Teller and Prunkle, and their testimony was given support by three school teachers who were present during various portions of the conversation and never saw Hester struck. The defendant did not complain to anyone that morning about being kicked, including a doctor he saw when he was admitted to the Audy Home, a juvenile detention facility.
After questioning Hester on the third floor for approximately fifteen minutes, the detectives took him to the school auditorium where they could use the bright natural sunlight to examine more closely the stains and spots on his clothes. Hester admitted that he knew Mrs. Keane for three semesters or more, but he denied any involvement in the murder. The defendant was then taken to the principal's office and turned over to Sergeant Follis. Hester sat outside the office until 9:00 A.M. when Officers Harold Thomas and Robert Perkins picked him up and transported him by car to the Audy Home. Upon arrival there, the defendant's clothes were turned over to the officers for removal to the crime laboratory and Hester was provided with a robe to wear. The officers left the Audy Home and did not return there until 4:00 in the afternoon. Between 10:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. on April 21, Hester was kept in a room in the Audy Home infirmary which he described at his trial as a 'dungeon room'. The defendant did admit, however, that the room contained a bed with a blanket and clean sheets that he laid upon; he further stated that he was given lunch but claimed he did not eat it. The Audy Home superintendent testified the room was 7 feet 9 inches by 12 feet 8 inches with a 12-foot ceiling, and contained a hospital bed with a 6-inch innerspring mattress, a hospital table and stool, a light fixture, radiator, 28-by-52-inch transom, and 42-by-52-inch barred window.
About 4:00 P.M. Hester was provided with clothes and brought into an interview room at the Audy Home where he was questioned for approximately five minutes by Officers Thomas and Perkins, and Sergeants William Keating and John Killackey. The room where this interview took place was estimated by Officer Perkins to be 15 feet square with a barred window. Sergeant Killackey testified that the four officers began by introducing themselves to Hester, and that the defendant sat next to a wall flanked by Perkins and Thomas while Sergeant Keating sat behind a desk which he (Killackey) was sitting on. Officer Perkins testified that none of the policemen was closer to the defendant than 4 1/2 to 5 feet during this 5-minute period. When Hester denied complicity in the crime he was confronted with the results of the crime laboratory tests which he was told revealed human blood on his clothes, a hair from a Caucasian female and a lipstick smear on his coat, and certain filings from his pocket. The defendant alleges that in addition to this incriminating evidence he was told that his fingerprints were found on the icebox which was in the bookroom. He further claimed that Sergeant Killackey called him a liar when he denied responsibility for the murder and warned him 'something was going to happen'. The defendant testified that Killackey drew close to him, stuck a pen in his face and spit at him. The allegations of threatening, spitting and telling Hester about his fingerprints being found on the icebox were denied at the trial by all four of the officers who were in the room.
At the end of the 5-minute interview Sergeants Killackey and Keating, both of whom are Caucasian, left Hester in the room with the Negro officers Perkins and Thomas. According to the defendant, Officer Thomas told him that the two white officers were going to knock his head through the wall if he didn't admit the crime, but that Thomas assured him, 'We ain't going to let them knock your head through the wall.' Hester testified that he was then promised that if he admitted the murder his mother would bring him some clothes and he would be allowed to go home. The defendant's version of a police 'Mutt and Jeff routine' (see Miranda v. State of Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 452, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1616, 16 L.Ed.2d 694) was denied by the officers who testified that Hester was only encouraged 'to tell us about it and get it off his chest.' Thomas and Perkins testified that after the defendant was given this advice he made an oral admission that an 'accident' had occurred which resulted in his stabbing Mrs. Keane. They stated that Hester told them he tripped over some books at the entrance to the bookroom, that this caused a knife which was attached by rubber bands to his wrist to come into his hand, and that he stabbed Mrs. Keane as he fell; that he became scared and stabbed Mrs. Keane several more times, and then proceeded to sexually assault her. In describing his sexual assault, the officers testified that Hester said that he laid on top of her and 'squirted', then bent over her to see if her heart was beating, and after he could not hear a heartbeat he locked the bookroom door with keys that he had found, dropped the keys 'somewhere', and rejoined a classmate, Sherman Baker, with whom he then returned to Miss Webster's class. After defendant's oral confession to the officers, Perkins testified that he brought photographs of the murder scene into the room and Hester pointed out certain items in the picture which he had mentioned in his statement. The defendant's testimony on this point is directly contradictory to the explanation of the police officers. Hester testified that the photographs of the bookroom were shown to him before and not after he confessed the crime, that he concocted the confession after viewing the pictures of the murder scene, and that the police coached him in portraying the details of the crime.
At approximately 5:00 P.M. Hester was examined by medical personnel at the Audy Home. Following the examination he was taken to the office of the State's Attorney in the Family Court Building which adjoins the Audy Home; and about 6:30 P.M. in the presence of assistant State's Attorney Louis Garripo, a court reporter, and Sergeant Keating, Hester made a confession of the crime which was substantially identical to the statement he had given to Officers Perkins and Thomas. At 8:15 P.M. three typed copies of the confession were returned by the court reporter and Garripo read the statement aloud as Hester followed along by reading a copy with which he had been supplied. Hester testified that the statement was read too fast for him to follow, but the State's witnesses stated that the confession was read slowly with the defendant pointing out several mistakes in the transcript. The copy of the confession admitted into evidence...
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