People v. Lettrich
| Decision Date | 17 September 1952 |
| Docket Number | No. 32310,32310 |
| Citation | 413 Ill. 172,108 N.E.2d 488 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. LETTRICH. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
Francis T. McCurrie, Robert E. Harrington, and Irwin D. Bloch, all of Chicago, for plaintiff in error.
Ivan A. Elliott, Atty. Gen., and John S. Boyle, State's Atty., of Chicago (John T. Gallagher, Rudolph L. Janega, Arthur F. Manning, and William J. McGah, Jr., all of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.
Plaintiff in error, George Lettrich, hereinafter called defendant, comes to this court by writ of error to review his conviction and death sentence by the criminal court of Cook County for the crime of murder.
On the morning of December 18, 1948, the body of one Roberta Rinearson, a girl of the age of ten years, was found lying in a ditch on the east side of County Line Road, a north and south road dividing Cook County on the east and Du Page County on the west. She was lying on her left side with a green coat spread out over her which was held up by the grass and weeds. Both her shoes were missing and a pair of panties was stuck into her mouth. A large white man's handkerchief bearing initial 'P' was found near the body. Subsequent medical examination revealed that there were bruises behind each of her ears, on the left jaw, and scratches on either side of the neck; a tear in the vagina and hemorrhages on the tissues beneath the vagina lining; congestion of the brain, the organs of the neck, mouth and trunk. The examining physician testified that she came to her death as a result of asphyxiation, the result of a foreign body in the mouth and external violence applied to the neck.
Nearly eighteen months after the body was found, on August 10, 1950, about 1:00 P.M., the defendant was arrested while he was sitting on a bench waiting for a bus at the entrance of Cermak Park in the city of Chicago. From the time of his arrest at 1:00 P.M. on Thursday, until 1:15 A.M. on Sunday he was held incommunicado, in the presence of various police officers at the Lyons, McCook, and a Chicago police station. During this period he was questioned many times by various officials but always denied any knowledge of the murder of the Rinearson girl. About 4:30 P.M. on Saturday, August 12, he was taken to the Chicago Eleventh and State Street police station and advised by officer Walsh that he would have to submit to a lie detector test. This officer outlined the crime and then asked defendant a series of questions.
The defendant testified that the test was given to him four times and each time before the questions were asked the officer related the details of the crime to him; that the officer became angry, 'made passes at him,' threatened him and told him to admit the crime and get it over with; that he became frightened and finally said, 'All right, I did it;' the officer then again related the details to him for the fifth time before taking a written statement from him at 1:15 A.M. on August 13. At 3:15 A.M. he was questioned by the State's Attorney in the presence of several witnesses and at 5:00 A.M. they took him to the scene to go through a re-enactment of the crime in the presence of approximately 150 spectators, reporters, photographers and police officers.
The defendant made and signed two separate confessions which were, after a hearing before the court on their admissibility, admitted into evidence as People's exhibits 8 and 9. Defendant contends they were extorted by violence, duress and unlawful confinement and were not made voluntarily; that all witnesses to the procuring, making and signing of said confessions were not produced on the preliminary hearing on their admissibility, nor were those witnesses produced on the hearing in the presence of the jury; and that the force and duress used to obtain the first confession continued to exist and influenced the making of the second statement.
The defendant testified that he was struck several times by police officers as he was taken to and from his cell, that on two occasions one of the officers said they would 'get it out of him if we have to keep him up all night or knock it out of him;' and that the officer who gave him the lie detector tests struck at him, threatened him and told him 'he would knock my head through the wall and go on the other side and make mincemeat out of it.' All these charges were denied by the accused officers, and a physicial examination of defendant made by a physician on August 13 revealed no bruises or discolorations on defendant's body.
Although there may be evidence of threats or promises made to induce the making of a confession, if there are sufficient facts and circumstances proved to show that the confession was voluntarily made there is no abuse of judicial discretion in allowing it to be presented to the jury. Bartley v. People, 156 Ill. 234, 40 N.E. 831. The decision of the trial court on the question whether a confession is voluntarily made will not be disturbed unless it is manifestly against the weight of the evidence. People v. Albers, 360 Ill. 73, 195 N.E. 459. The court is not required to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the confession was voluntarily made. People v. Borrelli, 392 Ill. 481, 64 N.E.2d 719. We have carefully examined all the evidence in regard to the manner and method of procuring the defendant's confession here and although we do not approve the repeated and persistent questioning by police officers of a person in their custody such as was here employed, we do not believe the decision of the trial court that the confessions were voluntarily made was manifestly against the weight of the evidence.
But this by no means determines that this defendant has had a fair and impartial trial under all the circumstances of this case. We are here confronted with the prosecution of an individual for a crime where there is not a scintilla of evidence to connect him with that crime except his repudiated confession, taken by police officials after he has been held incommunicado for more than sixty hours, had been repeatedly questioned by the police, subjected to several lie detector tests, and finally questioned continuously for a period of eight hours, which admittedly culminated in his 'emotional upset' and subsequent statements, now repudiated, which are, in some very material details, unquestionably at variance with known facts and circumstances of the offense. Where there has been a conviction and sentence of death on that confession alone, justice and the protection and preservation of the rights of the innocent inexorably demand that this court scrutinize the record with utmost care and caution to make sure that the defendant has had every opportunity to controvert the State's proof that the confession was voluntarily made, to show that it was not true, or that he did not commit the offense. Where such confession stands uncorroborated, it should clearly appear that it was voluntarily made, that it is true, and that the confession is fairly and justly presented to the court and jury so that the conviction is not tainted by depriving the defendant of an opportunity to present his case or by any prejudice induced in the minds of the jurors by overzealous prosecutors. We are not...
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