People v. Parisie

• Decision Date: 26 June 1972
• Docket Number: No. 11162,11162
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John S. PARISIE, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 310

287 N.E.2d 310

5 Ill.App.3d 1009

PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John S. PARISIE, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 11162.

Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District.

June 26, 1972.

Morton Zwick, Executive Director, Illinois Defender Project, Chicago, E. Roger Horsky, Dist. Defender and Thomas Holum, Asst. Dist. Defender, Illinois Defender Project, Elgin, of counsel, for defendant-appellant.

Richard A. Hollis, State's Atty., Springfield, for plaintiff-appellee.

MILLS, Justice:

'The tragedy of man is that he can conceive perfection but he cannot achieve it. Man's reach is always beyond his grasp.'

--Reinhold Niebuhr

The Perfect trial has yet to be tried. And we venture to suggest that it never will be. For any creation of man is merely a reflection of himself-imperfection. Consequently, there is no such thing as a Perfect trial. All we can reasonably and logically strive for is a Fair trial--the 'cutting edge' to our system of criminal justice.

The jury trial in this case admittedly was not perfect, but it was fair. Every constitutional right and safeguard was afforded the defendant as is reflected by the 2,706 pages of the record before us. A brace of very able and ingenius court-appointed trial defense counsel obviously labored long in an exhausting effort to (1) win before the trial judge, (2) get a favorable verdict from the jury or (3) preserve sufficient error to satisfy a reviewing court that a reversal must occur. However, and in short, we hold that the trial judge did not commit reversible error in his procedural rulings, that the jury trial was fair and its verdict proper and that whatever error exists in this record is insufficient to dictate reversal. In balance, justice was done.

Briefly, the facts in this murder prosecution are as follows: At about 10:45 on an April evening, a two truck driver on his way to see a customer found a man alongside a lonely country road outside the City of Springfield. The man said that he had been shot and asked to be taken to a hospital. The tow truck driver reported to his base station immediately on his radio, and the State Police came to the scene at about 11:15 P.M. The State Trooper Boone found the tow truck sitting in the middle of the road and the man lying alongside of the road. He recognized the man as a local automobile dealer and observed that his shirt front was covered with blood. Trooper Boone asked the man who shot him and he said he didn't know. The Trooper also asked where his car was and he said he didn't know. The wounded man was taken to the hospital and at approximately 1:30 A.M. the following morning Trooper Boone had another conversation with the man. In the emergency room the wounded man told him again that he did not know who shot him, that he had met this fellow at 5th and Jefferson Streets in Springfield, that they went for a ride around the lake and that they had not parked. Another trooper, Dragoo, was present at the first conversation and testified to a conversation with the wounded man substantially similar to the one related by Trooper Boone. Following emergency surgery, the wounded man died at approximately 10:30 A.M. that morning.

A deputy sheriff testified that the defendant was found asleep in the decedent's car at 5:22 A.M. the same morning and that there was blood on the left front seat, left door and left rear fender of the car. When he was apprehended, the defendant had the decedent's driver's license and credit cards in his own wallet, and he had the victim's cigarette lighter and wallet (containing checks and papers of the decedent) in his pocket. The decedent's sport jacket was found folded on the back seat of the car and in the pocket was decedent's gold wedding ring. The defendant was placed under arrest and remained in the county jail until trial. At the jury trial, Parisie testified on his own behalf and admitted that he shot deceased. He also admitted that he had stolen the pistol used to kill the decedent during a burglary a few days earlier and that he had fired the pistol in his hotel room before the shooting of the decedent. Parisie was found guilty by the jury and was sentenced by the court to a penitentiary term of 40 to 70 years.

The defense was that of insanity--insanity based upon 'homosexual panic.' The single constant thread woven throughout the fabric of this appeal is the issue of homosexuality and the theory of defendant attempting to equate 'homosexual panic' with insanity. And since this theory underlies some of the specific issues raised, we will consider it at the outset.

The defendant on the stand testified that he had met the deceased sometime before the date of the incident when he was in the automobile dealership looking for a used sports car. He testified that on the night in question he was walking on 5th Street in Springfield when decedent's car pulled up next to him and the decedent offered him a lift. He said that the decedent drove out of Springfield, past the lake, turned down a gravel road and parked. Defendant further testified that after turning off the lights and sliding back the seat, decedent made a homosexual advance, smiled and said if the defendant refused he would have to walk. Parisie testified that he just 'blew up, went crazy,' vaguely remembered struggling with the decedent and hearing a noise that he assumed to be gunshots. The next thing he remembered clearly was being in the deceased's car in a Springfield parking lot and he did not remember how he got there.

Defense, both at the trial stage and in this court, has devoted much of its energies to impute that the prosecution failed to prove defendant's sanity beyond a reasonable doubt. In this regard, the Illinois law reads thusly:

' § 6--2. Insanity

'(a) A person is not criminally responsible for conduct if at the time of such conduct, as a result of mental disease or mental defect, he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.

'(b) The terms 'mental disease or mental defect' do not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct.'

(Illinois Revised Statutes, 1967, Chapter 38.)

With this legislative overleaf, we now look at the extensive and voluminous testimony and evidence given by both the prosecution and the defense in this area. (The court notes at this point that the trial judge permitted very liberal and extensive testimony by the professional and expert witnesses in this area.) Defendant called a clinical psychologist who testified that Parisie was a highly delusional paranoid schizophrenic, who was a loner, with a basic distrust of people, a highly latent homosexual with strong feelings of inferiority, and that a severe stress situation of any type could result in an acute schizophrenic reaction with accompanying amnesia. Defendant then called a psychiatrist who testified that 'homosexual panic' is severe panic or fear reaction that is provoked by extreme anxiety or psychological trauma, and this often takes the form of a state of amnesia, in which the person sets aside or forgets unconsciously something that his conscious mind cannot tolerate. He was then given a hypothetical question, covering the entire background and history of the defendant and the basic facts surrounding the defendant's theory of the case on trial. The psychiatrist answered the hypothetical question by testifying that it was Possible that this hypothetical individual suffered an acute homosexual excitatory state at the time he shot the victim. The psychiatrist then testified that it was Possible that a person suffering from this type of reaction--an acute 'homosexual panic'--would be acting purely instinactively and conceivably without ability of self-control. Furthermore, on direct, the psychiatrist allowed that 'homosexual panic' is not Per se an illness, but is a symptom. On cross examination, he stated that 'homosexual panic' is not recognized as a memtal illness, nor is it included in psychiatric nomenclature, that it is not a mental defect recognized by psychiatric nomenclature and is merely a symptom of a psychiatric disturbance. At the culmination of his testimony defendant's psychiatrist stated that the person in the hypothetical, who was suffering from a state of acute 'homosexual panic,' was at the time of the act in question unable to conform, and unable to control the given impulse, but that this would be by reason of the Possibility that he might have been undergoing a 'homosexual panic' and would not be by reason of his suffering from a mental disease. He was unable to render an opinion whether Parisie suffered a mental disease or defect which caused him to lack substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct.

In rebuttal, the prosecution called a psychiatrist who testified that Parisie was a psychopath and not suffering from schizophrenia or insipient schizophrenia. He further testified that an acute homosexual panic is not a mental defect or mental disease, but is a personal disturbance. He was of the opinion that this was not a homosexual panic since defendant was not a homosexual. He answered the hypothetical question by saying that the person described therein had sufficient capacity to comprehend the nature and consequences of his acts and that he was not insane and not suffering from any form of mental disease or mental defect. He also stated that 'homosexual panic' is not recognized as either a mental disease or defect--it is a personality disturbance.

The burden, of course, is upon the state to prove the capacity of the defendant to commit the offense charged. And the presumption in favor of sanity and mental capacity is always present until the defendant has presented sufficient evidence to overcome that presumption. There can be no question that defendant suffered from personality disorders, and even perhaps from all...