People v. Pace

• Decision Date: 19 December 1935
• Docket Number: No. 23253.,23253.
• Citation: People v. Pace , 362 Ill. 224, 198 N.E. 319 (Ill. 1935)
• Parties: PEOPLE v. PACE.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

362 Ill. 224

198 N.E. 319

PEOPLE

v.PACE.

No. 23253.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Dec. 19, 1935.

Error to Criminal Court, Cook County; Charles P. Molthrop, Judge.

Peter Pace was convicted of murder, and he brings error.

Affirmed

Samuel A. Hoffman, of Chicago (George A. Gordon, of Chicago, of counsel), for plaintiff in error.

Otto Kerner, Atty. Gen., Thomas J. Courtney, State's Atty., of Chicago, and A. B. Dennis, of Danville (Edward E. Wilson, John T. Gallagher, and Richard H. Devine, all of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

SHAW, Justice.

Plaintiff in error, Peter Pace, was convicted of murder and sentenced to a term of 199 years' imprisonment on the verdict of a jury in the criminal court of Cook county. On this writ of error he brings only the common-law record, and urges for reversal that the verdict, sentence, and judgment are contrary to law because: (1) The sentence exceeds the statutory limit; (2) is impossible of execution; (3) defeats the object of the Parole Act (Smith-Hurd Ann.St. c. 38, § 801 et seq.); and (4) is prohibited by the Constitutions of Illinois and the United States as not proportioned to the offense, and as being cruel and unusual.

All of the arguments presented by Pace may be summarized very briefly. He says that we must take judicial notice that his sentence cannot be served in a lifetime and that it is therefore impossible of execution; that by specifying so long a period of years he has been deprived of any hope of serving as much as one-third of it, and will therefore never have any opportunity to apply for parole, whereas under a life sentence so designated he would be eligible to clemency after 20 years' imprisonment. This so-called circumvention of the Parole Act is really his only cause of complaint, as life sentences are so usual as to make any discussion of their legality unnecessary. The briefs agree that the precise question here raised is one of first impression, and no cases on the exact point are cited or discussed.

It is the defendant's major premise that we should take judicial notice that no one, no matter of what age or condition of health, could live to serve this sentence, and that in so far as it exceeds his lifetime it is necessarily void because impossible of execution. From this premise he proceeds to urge that the court and jury sought to, and if the judgment stands actually did, evade the provisions of the Parole Law.

It must first be observed that any sentence, no matter how short,...