People v. Stevens
| Decision Date | 19 June 1929 |
| Docket Number | No. 19315.,19315. |
| Citation | 167 N.E. 49,335 Ill. 415 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. STEVENS. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Circuit Court, Franklin County; Julius C. Hern, Judge.
Walter Stevens was convicted of burglary of a chicken house and larceny of 16 chickens, and he brings error.
Affirmed.
R. E. Smith, of Benton, for plaintiff in error.
Oscar E. Carlstrom, Atty. Gen., Roy C. Martin, State's Atty., of Benton, and Roy D. Johnson, of Springfield, for the People.
Plaintiff in error, Walter Stevens (hereinafter referred to as the defendant), was found guilty by a jury in the circuit court of Franklin county on an indictment charging him with the burglary of a chicken house and the larceny of 16 chickens, of the value of $16, owned by Minerva Johnson. The jury found his age to be 39 years. Motions for new trial and in arrest of judgment were overruled by the court, and he was sentenced to serve an indeterminate term in the penitentiary. The record was brought to this court for review by writ of error.
The undisputed facts in the record are the following: On the night of February 20, 1927, Minerva Johnson, who is blind, lived with her husband, J. Marshall Johnson, in West City, which is located on the west side of the west line of the city of Benton, in Franklin county. She owned 37 chickens, which were cared for by her husband and their neighbors, George and Becky Summers. Some of the chickens were marked by having the rear toe cut off of the right foot. On the night aforesaid, the chicken house in which these chickens were kept, which was closed and locked, was broken into, and 23 chickens roosting therein were stolen. The defendant lived at Bakerville, in Jefferson county, about 4 miles south of Mt. Vernon, and about 18 miles north of Benton, on the State hard road between Benton and Mt. Vernon, in a house owned and also occupied by Mr. and Mrs. John J. Baker. On Friday after the chickens were stolen, Johnson went with the sheriff and a deputy sheriff of Franklin county to Bakerville and to Mt. Vernon, where the defendantwas under arrest by the sheriff of Jefferson county, and from Mt. Vernon to the home of James P. Williams, about 4 miles southeast of Mt. Vernon and a short distance east of Bakerville. In the chicken house and chicken yard of Williams, Johnson saw and identified among the chickens there several that he claimed to be his wife's chickens that had been stolen. After Johnson had returned home, Williams and the deputy sheriff of Franklin county delivered to the Johnsons at their home fourteen of the chickens that Johnson had identified as belonging to his wife. Williams also then paid $2 to the Johnsons for 2 of the chickens so identified that he had been unable to catch. Williams had previously bought of the defendant the chickens that he delivered to the Johnsons, for which he paid him $17. After Williams had returned the chickens to the Johnsons, the defendant's wife repaid to Williams $17, the amount Williams paid to the defendant for the chickens he sold to Williams.
Nine witnesses testified for the state. J. Marshall Johnson and his wife, Minerva Johnson, and Becky Summers and her husband, G. W Summers, near neighbors of the Johnsons, living in West City, testified that a number of the chickens stolen from Mrs. Johnson's chicken house were previously marked by cutting off their right rear toes; that Johnson, Mrs. Becky Summers, and her husband assisted in the raising and caring for Mrs. Johnson's Chickens, and were well acquainted with them, and knew how they were marked; that Mrs. Summers assisted in marking them by cutting off their rear toes, and she and her husband and Johnson identified a number of the chickens returned to Mrs. Johnson by Williams, and they all testified that the chickens were stolen on the night of February 20, 1927, which was Sunday, and that they were returned to Mrs. Johnson on Friday, February 25, 1927. These three witnesses further testified that the stolen chickens were returnedlate in the evening in sacks, and that, when they were turned loose on the Johnsons' premises, they at once went to roost in the same henhouse where they had customarily roosted before they were stolen, and thereafter laid eggs in the same nests they had laid before they were stolen. There was one hen among the stolen chickens that did not have her rear toe cut off, but these three witnesses were able to identify her as Mrs. Johnson's chicken by the fact that she was a ‘speckled hen’ of a very different appearance from the ordinary speckled hen. Johnson identified a glove that was introduced in evidence (one of the state's exhibits) as the same glove that was found on the Johnson premises by Neely Gant on February 23, 1927, after the chickens were stolen. Gant, a witness for the state, testified that he found the glove under a barbed wire fence on the Johnson premises, about 100 yards from the Johnson chicken house, on February 23, 1927, and gave it to Johnson. He was shown the glove that was marked as a state's exhibit, and which Johnson testified was the same glove given him by Gant, and Gant testified it looked like the same glove he dilivered to Johnson.
John J. Baker and his wife, Lizzie Baker, testified for the state that the defendant was at home on Sunday morning, February 20, 1927, but left with his wife on that day in an automobile, going south toward Benton, and that he returned about 11 o'clock that night; that, when he returned, he asked Baker where he could put some chickens that he had, and Baker told him that he could put them in his ‘chicken park,’ near a store on Baker's premises; that the defendant said on that night that he had tire trouble on the road and had lost a glove. Mrs. Baker testified that she heard the defendant talking to her husband, and heard him say that he had lost a glove on the hard road, ‘just out of Benton.’ Baker further testified that the glove found by the witness Gant was like the gloves that he had seen the defendant with on the day before that Sunday. Mrs. Baker further testified that on the next day after that Sunday she saw some chickens at her husband's chicken park, and that on the following Wednesday those chickens were taken away by Williams in sacks, and that the defendant came to her house (also his home) and got the sacks in which the chickens were so carried away.
James P. Williams and his wife, Opal Williams, who live about three-eighths of a mile east of Bakerville, testified for the state, in substance, that on February 20, 1927, he got a load of coal from the defendant, and also bought 16 or 18 chickens from him, for which he paid him $17, and that those chickens that he bought were just sough of an old store building in Bakerville; that a few days after buying the chickens Williams received information from his wife that Johnson had been at his home and identified the chickens as belonging to Mrs. Johnson; that he then caught 14 of the chickens and delivered them to the Johnsons, in West City, and paid them $2 for 2 chickens that he could not catch. Williams further testified that the defendant never told him where he bought the chickens, and that, after he had taken them back to the Johnsons, the defendant's wife paid him back his money for those chickens, $17. Mrs. Williams also testified that she thought that it was of February 23, 1927, that Johnson was at their house and identified the chickens.
The state's exhibit, the glove found by the state's witness Gant on the premises of the Johnsons, is described in the record as a ‘high-cuff, black glove.’
Clyde Stevens and Roy Stevens, two brothers of the defendant, and Goldie Stevens and Bonnie Stevens, their wives, and Bertha McKinney and Ada McDonald, testified for the defendant that they were at the home of Roy Stevens, in Bluford, in Jefferson county, about 8 miles east of Mt. Vernon, on the afternoon and evening of February 20, 1927, at a party and celebration of the birthday of Clyde Stevens. They all testified that the defendant was at the home of Roy Stevens that evening until about 9 or 10 o'clock, and they fixed the time of his arrival ‘at about 2 o'clock to 4:30 o'clock,’ every witness fixing a different time as his arrival and departure.
The defendant testified substantially as follows: He was at the home of his b...
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