People v. Smith
| Decision Date | 28 September 1962 |
| Docket Number | No. 36212,36212 |
| Citation | 185 N.E.2d 150,25 Ill.2d 428 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Defendant in Error, v. Harold Dwayne SMITH, Plaintiff in Error. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
William H. Snively and John R. Snively, Rockford, for plaintiff in error.
William G. Clark, Atty. Gen., Springfield, and William R. Nash, State's Atty., Rockford , for defendant in error.
The defendant, Howard Dwayne Smith, was tried by jury in the circuit court of Winnebago County and convicted of the crime of burglary. A writ of error has been issued to review the judgment of conviction.
The defendant contends that his written confession should not have been admitted in evidence. Prior to its admission, a hearing was held out of the presence of the jury, the defendant having charged that the confession was obtained as the result of threats of increased punishment and a promise of leniency. The defendant testified at the hearing that following his arrest he asked if he could call his mother and his lawyer and was told by two police officers that he had no rights because he was on parole from a former conviction. The defendant testified that when he was paroled on his prior conviction the prison authorities told him that if he ever got in any other trouble and was innocent there was no one who could help him except his parole agent who was his friend and would back him 100%. The defendant testified that he told the police that he wanted to see his parole agent. After several days the parole agent visited the defendant at the jail and asked him whether he committed the crime. The defendant told the agent that he had not and according to the defendant the parole agent cursed him, told him that he was a liar and told him that he would sit in jail until he confessed. The police officers told the defendant that if he signed the confession they would not be too hard on him. Following this promise by the police and the threat by the parole agent, the defendant signed the confession. The two police officers testified at the hearing and each of them admitted that they had told the defendant that he had no rights since he was a parole violator. They each attempted to explain that they did not mean that he had no rights on the present charge, but that he had no rights insofar as revocation of his parole was concerned. The parole agent did not testify at the hearing.
We have recently held that a confession should not be admitted in evidence until each material witness has been produced or his absence explained. (People v. Wright, 24 Ill.2d 88, 180 N.E.2d 689; People v. Bullocks, 23 Ill.2d 515, 179 N.E.2d 628.) The failure to produce the parole agent whose threats, according to the defendant, induced him to confess, rendered the confession inadmissible and the court erred in permitting it to be admitted in evidence before the jury. The judgment of conviction must therefore be reversed and the cause remanded for a new trial.
Since the cause must be remanded for a new trial, it is appropriate to discuss other alleged errors. The...
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