People v. Pfeiffer

• Decision Date: 03 February 1910
• Citation: 90 N.E. 680,243 Ill. 200
• Parties: PEOPLE v. PFEIFFER.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

243 Ill. 200

90 N.E. 680

PEOPLE

v.PFEIFFER.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Dec. 22, 1909.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 3, 1910.

Error to Criminal Court, Cook County; R. W. Clifford, Judge.

John Pfeiffer was convicted of forgery, and he brings error. Reversed.

A. J. Hanlon, for plaintiff in error.

W. H. Stead, Atty. Gen., John E. W. Wayman, State's Atty., and June C. Smith (W. A. Rittenhouse and Joseph L. McNab, of counsel), for the People.

VICKERS, J.

John Pfeiffer, plaintiff in error, was indicted, tried, and convicted in the criminal court of Cook county of forgery. He has sued out a writ of error from this court to obtain a review of the record.

The only error insisted upon in this court is that, conceding all of the facts testified to by the witnesses for the people, they do not make a case of forgery.

The undisputed facts established by the evidence are as follows: On the 16th of November, 1901, the premises known as 882 West Monroe street, in the city of Chicago, were owned in fee simple by Ernest G. Troy, Harry L. Troy, and their mother, Emeline Troy. Emeline Troy afterwards quitclaimed her interest in the property to the two sons. At the time referred to there was an incumbrance upon the property for $1,000, held by Anna M. Blodgett. The Troys desired to negotiate a further loan of $2,000 upon this property, and on the date above named a loan for $2,000 was made on the property by Hulda Vogel, who was represented in the transaction by plaintiff in error as her attorney. On the 19th of November, 1901, the Troy brothers and their mother executed their promissory note for $2,000, together with ten interest coupon notes for $60 each, payable to themselves, and indorsed them to Hulda Vogel. To secure the payment of the said notes, the Troys executed a trust deed on the property above referred to, in which plaintiff in error was named as trustee, with the usual powers incident to such trust. The notes were delivered to Hulda Vogel and by her placed in her safety deposit vault, and in May, 1903, she sailed for Europe, leaving the notes in the vault, except two or three of the interest coupons which had been paid at maturity. The trust deed was retained by plaintiff in error. Some time in the month of June, 1903, the Troy brothers had an offer of $4,750 for said property by Elizabeth Greenwood Lighthall which they desired to accept. The money was placed in escrow with the Chicago Title & Trust Company; the escrow agreement being signed by Ernest G. and Harry L. Troy and by John Pfeiffer, their attorney, and by John Pfeiffer personally. Under the agreement the money placed with the trust company was only to be paid on the written order of Mrs. Lighthall. She insisted that the Blodgett incumbrance and the Vogel trust deed should be released of record before the money was paid over to the Troys. The absence from the United States of Mrs. Vogel made it impossible to obtain possession of the notes which she had left in her safety deposit vault in Chicago. The evidence shows that on June 16, 1903, the plaintiff in error wrote a letter to Harry and Emeline Troy, in which he stated that the original notes were either lost or misplaced, and asked the Troy boys and their wives and Emeline Troy to sign a new set of notes, which were inclosed in the letter, to be used in lieu of the original notes. The Troys, accordingly, signed the $2,000 note and the interest coupon notes and returned them to the plaintiff in error. These notes, together with the trust deed, were turned over by plaintiff in error to the Chicago Title & Trust Company, and at the same time he deposited a release deed releasing the $2,000 trust deed, and he received from the Chicago Title & Trust Company a check for $2,060, being the full amount due under the Vogel trust deed. The plaintiff in error did not account to his client for this money. The indictment charges him with forging and uttering the last set of notes. The evidence is uncontradicted that the Troys signed these notes, and that they understood at the time they were so signed that they were to be used for the purpose of securing a release of the Vogel trust deed. The only question to be decided in this case is whether the foregoing facts warrant a conviction of plaintiff in error of the crime of forgery.

In the case of Goodman v. People, 228 Ill. 154, 81 N. E. 830, we had occasion to quote a number of common-law definitions of the offense of ‘forgery,’ and form these authorities it was held that in order to constitute forgery the three following elements must exist: (1) There must be a false writing or alteration of an instrument; (2) the instruments as made must be apparently capable of defrauding; (3) there must be an intent to defraud. The definition of ‘forgery’ found in paragraph 105 of our Criminal Code (Hurd's Rev. St. 1908, c. 38) is, in substance, the common-law definition extended to take in some instruments which were not known to the common law. There is under our statute no distinction between making, altering, or counterfeiting an instrument with intent to prejudice, and in uttering, publishing and passing as true and genuine any such forged instrument with an intent to damage or defraud, knowing the same to be false, altered, forged, or counterfeited. Every person who is guilty either of making and forging or uttering and passing or attemptingto utter and pass, under the conditions named in the statute, is deemed guilty of forgery.

It is conceded on behalf of the state that plaintiff in error is not guilty of falsely making and forging the notes in question; but it is strenuously contended that the delivery of the notes to the Chicago Title & Trust Company constituted an uttering and passing of such notes, and therefore a forgery under our statute, if such notes were, in fact, forgeries and known to be such by plaintiff in error. It is contended by the defendants in error: That these notes were, in fact, false; that they purported on their face to have been made on the 16th of November, 1901, when, in fact, they were made in June, 1903; and that the uttering and passing of such notes by plaintiff in error, knowing that the notes were not what they purported to be, constitute the offense of forgery, and some authorities, mainly from English courts and writers, are cited which seem to support that view. The case of Regina v. Ritson, 1 L. R. C. C. 200, is the strongest of these authorities in support of the state's contention. The facts in that case are as follows: ‘In January, 1868, R., the owner, borrowed from G. £>730, giving him an equitable mortgage and deposit of title deeds. In May of the same year R. went into bankruptcy. G. came into possession of the land by deed from R. and the trustee in bankruptcy. Subsequently the son of R. commenced an action of trespass against G.; he holding a deed from R. which purported to be executed in March,...