People v. Jones

• Decision Date: 22 September 1961
• Docket Number: No. 35891,35891
• Citation: 22 Ill.2d 592,177 N.E.2d 112
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Defendant in Error, v. Eddie JONES, Plaintiff in Error.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 112

177 N.E.2d 112

22 Ill.2d 592

PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Defendant in Error, v. Eddie JONES, Plaintiff in Error.

No. 35891.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Sept. 22, 1961.

Joseph N. DuCanto, Chicago, for plaintiff in error.

William G. Clark, Atty. Gen., and Daniel P. Ward, State's Atty., Chicago (Fred G. Leach, Asst. Atty. Gen., and John T. Gallagher and William L. Carlin, Asst. State's Attys., Chicago, of counsel), for defendant in error.

HERSHEY, Justice.

Defendant was tried by a jury for murder, was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary for a term of 199 years. He brings this writ of error to review his conviction, contending that the People failed to prove the corpus delicti and also that the court committed prejudicial error in the admission of evidence.

It is unnecessary for an understanding of the rather narrow issues presented on this writ of error to restate all the sordid details disclosed by the record. The People's evidence, which was the only evidence presented, indicates that one Walter Chevers was shot in the bathroom of his apartment in the early morning of December 31, 1955. Present at the time of the shooting besides the deceased and the defendant were James Williams, a companion of the defendant, who was also indicted for murder but was not tried with the defendant, and one Robert E. Price, Jr., a friend of the deceased. Price testified for the People that he saw and heard defendant fire a gun at Chevers, whereupon the witness, Price, fell into the bathtub. When Price emerged from the bathtub, defendant and Williams were gone. Price found Chevers lying in a pool of blood. He felt Chevers' pulse and detected a faint pulse beat. He went to the telephone and dialed the operator, who apparently called the police. Price remained in the apartment until the police arrived.

Arnette Holmes, one of the police officers sent to Chevers's apartment, testified that he took a body, identified as that of Chevers, to Michael Reese hospital, where the body was examined by a doctor. Holmes then took the body to a funeral parlor. While there, Holmes undressed the body and observed a wound in the chest over the heart, which he surmised was a bullet wound. Holmes was permitted, over defendant's objection to testify that, in his opinion, death was caused by the wound.

Eutopia Morsell, a mortician, testified that the body was brought to her mortuary by Holmes and another police officer, that the officers removed the clothes from the body, that she observed a wound over the chest. Over defendant's objection, she was permitted to testify that the wound appeared to be a bullet wound and that, in her opinion, death was caused by a gunshot wound of the chest.

The defendant contends that the People failed to prove the corpus delicti beyond a reasonable doubt. He argues, first, that proof of the elements of the corpus delicti must be made by the best evidence available, and that proof of the cause of death should, therefore, have been established by competent medical testimony rather than by the testimony of two lay witnesses. He also contends that the court erred in permitting incompetent opinion testimony of these two witnesses to be used to establish that death was caused by a criminal agency.

The rule as to what constitutes the corpus delicti has been stated many times. In a murder case, it consists of two essential elements, the fact of death and the fact that death was caused by the criminal agency of some person. People v. Manske, 399 Ill. 176, 77 N.E.2d 164; People v. Bentley, 357 Ill. 82, 191 N.E. 230. Although defendant made some effort to contend that neither element had been proved, we think that there can be no question that the death of Walter Chevers was conclusively established, and we do not understand defendant to press this part of his argument.

The contention that the State failed to prove the second element of the corpus delicti, that the death was caused by the criminal agency of some person, is more difficult to dispose of. The only direct evidence as to the cause of death was given by two lay witnesses, Arnette Holmes and Eutopia Morsell, each of whom was permitted, over defendant's objection, to state an opinion that the death was caused by the bullet wound in the chest. Although the record indicates that the body was examined by a doctor at Michael Reese hospital and there is some intimation that an autopsy was performed, no medical testimony was offered as to the cause of death, nor did the People offer any explanation for their failure to produce such evidence.

Defendant cites the case of Campbell v. People, 159 Ill. 9, 42 N.E. 123, as laying down the proposition that the corpus delicti must be proved by the best evidence available and argues that in this case, the best evidence as to the cause of the death of Chevers would be the testimony of the physician who examined his body at the hospital and that, since the People failed to produce this physician as a witness or to show that he was unavailable, the People have not sustained the burden of proving the corpus delicti. We think that the language of the opinion in the Campbell case must be understood with reference to the particular facts of that case. The Campbell case was a prosecution for the murder of an illegitimate child. The child had apparently been disposed of immediately after its birth and there was no direct evidence either of the fact of death or that the death had been caused by a criminal agency. The question, therefore, was whether the corpus delicti could be established entirely by the circumstantial evidence. The defendant conceded that the second element of the corpus delicti, the criminal agency as the cause of death, could be established by circumstantial evidence, but argued that the first element, the fact of death, must be established by direct evidence in every case. The court rejected this contention, holding that when there was no direct evidence, the fact of death could be established by circumstantial evidence.

Except for the broad distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence, we do not understand the Campbell case as establishing any fixed hierarchy between different types of evidence or as prescribing any particular manner in which the corpus delicti must be established in every case. Rather, we understand the rule to be that the corpus delicti, like every essential element of a criminal case, must be proved by competent evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. While prudent practice suggests that the People should produce medical testimony as to the cause of death where such testimony is readily available, the failure to do so is not in itself grounds for reversal where the cause of death has been established beyond reasonable doubt by other competent evidence. The question before us is not whether the People might have pursued a better method of establishing the cause of death, but whether the fact that the death was caused by a criminal agency has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

A considerable portion of the argument is devoted to the question of whether the policeman, Arnette Holmes, and the mortician, Eutopia Morsell, were shown to have sufficient qualifications to enable them to testify as to their opinion as to the cause of death. We do not, however, regard this question as decisive. Defendant's argument is based upon the assumption that, without the opinion evidence of these two lay witnesses, there was no evidence as to the cause of death. In our opinion, however, even if the court committed technical error in...