People v. Riley

• Decision Date: 10 April 1941
• Docket Number: No. 25443.,25443.
• Citation: 376 Ill. 364,33 N.E.2d 872
• Parties: PEOPLE v. RILEY et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

376 Ill. 364

33 N.E.2d 872

PEOPLE

v.RILEY et al.

No. 25443.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

April 10, 1941.

Error to Criminal Court, Cook County; R. J. Dunne, Judge.

Edward Riley and Orville Watson were sentenced to death on their pleas of guilty to an indictment charging them with murder, and they bring error.

Affirmed.Wm. Scott Stewart, of Chicago, for plaintiffs in error.

John E. Cassidy, Atty. Gen., Thomas J. Courtney, State's Atty., of Chicago, and A. B. Dennis, of Springfield (Wilbert F. Crowley, Edward E. Wilson, John T. Gallagher, Melvin S. Rembe, and Blair L. Varnes, all of Chicago, of counsel), for defendant in error.

SHAW, Justice.

Edward Riley and Orville Watson were sentenced to death in the criminal court of Cook county on their pleas of guilty to an indictment charging them with murder of Alex Ferguson. These pleas were entered after defendants were duly advised by the trial court as to the nature of the charges against them, after being duly warned and cautioned as to the effect of their pleas and as to the penalties which might be inflicted upon them. In open court they each stated that they had been given no promise of reward or immunity and there is no reason apparent to this court for interfering with the judgment of guilt entered pursuant thereto.

After the entry of these pleas the court proceeded to comply with section 4 of division 13 of the Criminal Code (Ill.Rev.Stat.1939, chap. 38, par. 732) concerning circumstances in mitigation or aggravation of the offense, and in the course of this hearing received in evidence all of the circumstances surrounding the murders and also the previous criminal record of each of the defendants. At a previous term of this court we arrived at an opinion in all respects affirming the judgment and sentence of the trial court, but upon a petition for rehearing decided further to examine into the procedure adopted by the court in connection with the hearing on the question of mitigating or aggravating circumstances. It is thus that the cause is before us now and inasmuch as the prior opinion has not been published, we think it appropriate to restate the facts.

There is no substantial dispute as to these facts nor is there anything brought forward in any part of the record to indicate that there could be any dispute. On May 2, 1939, there were a number of persons in a tavern on North Western avenue in the city of Chicago, among them three policemen in plain clothes who had just previously been relieved from duty. The defendants Watson and Riley entered, and, after pretending briefly to be customers of the place, produced pistols, ordered every one to put their hands on the bar and announced that it was ‘a stick up.’ One of the policemen resisted, shooting followed, and after Riley and Watson had departed all three policemen were on the floor, two of them dying, who afterwards did die, and officer McIntyre, who was shot through the head but eventually recovered. Officer Ferguson, who was named in the indictment was one of those who died.

Leaving the tavern Watson received a bullet in his spine from the pistol of one of the officers. His partner Riley took Watson to the latter's apartment where he was living with a woman not his wife, and proceeded to get a surgeon for him. This was accomplished by giving a fictitious name and a fictitious pretense to the doctor who was called and then forcing the doctor at the point of a pistol to go to the apartment. On arriving there the doctor protested he had no instruments, but the woman in the case produced an old razor blade and under threat of Riley's weapon the doctor was compelled to remove the bullet from Watson's spine, with no other instrument and without any anesthetic. Riley and the woman then took Watson down to their waiting automobile and absconded from the State, being captured the next day in Detroit, after a chase by a Detroit police car and an effort to dispose of one of the incriminating pistols. The foregoing facts are all conclusively proved by the testimony of many witnesses and admitted by the free confession of each of the defendants.

At the conclusion of the hearing as to aggravating or mitigating circumstances the assistant State's attorney read into the record what purported to be the previous criminal record of the defendants. The more serious items in this previous criminal record had already been proved by the testimony of a policeman to whom they had been freely admitted, and this witness had already testified that the defendants had also admitted more than a score of hold-ups and the shooting of an oil station attendant. It is apparent that some of these items mentioned by the assistant State's attorney should not have been presented. It was not only incompetent but immaterial that Riley had been arrested in New Orleans nineteen years previously when that arrest was not followed by any prosecution or conviction. It was likewise incompetent and immaterial that he had been arrested twenty-two years previously on what must have been a petty larceny charge. As to Watson it was immaterial and incompetent to show he had been arrested eight years before on an armed robbery charge, on which arrest he was discharged and which detention must have been unsubstantiated. It was unnecessary and unfair on the part of the prosecutor to include these immaterial matters and an error on his part which might very easily bring about a reversal of the judgment in some cases. On a hearing of this kind the prosecutor is under both a legal and moral duty not to offer anything for the consideration of the trial Judge which may be of doubtful competency and materiality. On this kind of a hearing the attorneys must be held accountable for the highest ethical standards and if it can be seen that a breach of such standards has prejudiced a defendant it must be expected that any sentence so attained will be set aside. We must, therefore, direct our inquiry to a determination of whether or not anything that happened in the criminal court of Cook county has materially or substantially prejudiced these defendants.

The briefs for plaintiffs in error and their petition for rehearing are replete with quotations from and citations of cases in which a death penalty resulted from a trial on a plea of not guilty. That cases of this sort are not in point here was clearly pointed out in People v. Popescue, 345 Ill. 142, 177 N.E. 739, 77 A.L.R. 1199. We made it clear in that case that the position of one who was pleaded guilty is decidedly different from one who asserts his innocence and goes to trial on a plea of not guilty. None of the cases and none of the language in cases which arose on a plea of not guilty is applicable to the case at bar and need not be considered in this opinion.

Any person indicted stands before the bar of justice clothed with a presumption of innocence and, as such, is tenderly regarded by the law. Every safeguard is thrown about him. The requirements of proof are many, and all moral, together with many technical, rules stand between him and any possible punishment. After a plea of guilty admitted murderers are in a much different position. As such they are felons. Instead of being clothed with a presumption of innocence they are naked criminals, hoping for mercy but entitled only to justice. What might, at their own choice, have been an issue to be determined by a jury has been changed into an inquiry by the result of which the discretion of the trial judge is to be exercised in determining their punishment. This judge is confronted with the immediate necessity of determining whether he shall impose a sentence of fourteen or more years in the penitentiary or that the welfare of society and the determent to crime require the death penalty, which he is fully authorized to impose. The statute requires that he hear evidence in aggravation or mitigation of the offense and the clear intent of this statute is that he shall hear such evidence as will the better enable him to exercise that wide judicial discretion which has been placed in his care. People v. McWilliams, 348 Ill. 333, 180 N.E. 832. In People v. Popescue, supra, we held that under such circumstances the evidence of other prior crimes was admissible. Our holding in the Popescue case was in accordance with the...