People v. Thomas
| Decision Date | 24 May 1951 |
| Docket Number | No. 31932,31932 |
| Citation | 409 Ill. 473,100 N.E.2d 588 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. THOMAS. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
Geter & Geter, of Chicago, for plaintiff in error.
Ivan A. Elliott, Atty. Gen., and Robert R. Canfield, State's Atty., of Rockford (Dale F. Conde, of Rockford, and Harry L. Pate, of Tuscola, of counsel), for the People.
Plaintiff in error, Edward F. Thomas, hereinafter referred to as the defendant, was indicted by the grand jury of Winnebago County, at the October term, 1943, on two counts, the first charging robbery while armed with a dangerous weapon and the second charging rape. He was tried before a jury, found guilty and sentenced to the penitentiary on the first count to a term of from ten to twenty years and on the second count to a term of thirty-five years. It was further ordered that the sentence on the count for robbery run consecutively with, and follow, the sentence for rape under the second count of the indictment.
The errors assigned and argued are: (1) The court erred in not discharging the defendant on his motion that he was not tried within four months after his arrest; (2) that the People did not prove the defendant's sanity beyond a reasonable doubt; and, (3) that the defendant was not proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The record discloses that on the night of April 24, 1943, the complaining witness and a young man about her own age attended a show at Rockford and, after leaving about 9:30 P.M., drove in his automobile several miles in the country and stopped the car on the side of the road. About that time, according to the testimony of the complaining witness, the defendant, Edward F. Thomas, rapped on the window of their automobile and, with a gun in his hand, ordered them out; that he forced them to precede him for several yards over a fence and for a distance of about one hundred yards into the woods beyond; that the defendant then robbered the complaining witness, took her escort back to their automobile where he locked him in the trunk, returned to the complaining witness and forcibly committed the act charged. The defendant then threw the automobile keys to the complaining witness who, after releasing her escort, proceeded immediately to the police station at Rockford, to report the incident; that there she described the defendant to the police as being a light-skinned Negro wearing bib overalls. Later the defendant was arrested and placed in jail at Waukegan, for some charge not disclosed by the record, after which the sheriff from Rockford took the complaining witness and her escort to Waukegan, where they both identified the defendant as the person who committed the robbery and rape on the complaining witness.
It appears that from that time until July, 1948, the defendant was held in the Illinois Security Hospital at Menard, but no record appears showing under what process he was committed to that institution. The record does show that he was discharged as being sane on a writ of habeas corpus July 1, 1948, from said hospital and, on that same date, was turned over to the Winnebago County authorities to be tried on the charges there standing against him. As disclosed by the record, the defendant, being represented by counsel, was brought to trial within four months after he had been turned over to the Winnebago County authorities, at which time the criminal capias which had been issued forthwith at the time of his indictment was served on him.
The defendant contended he was not guilty of the crime of robbery and rape upon the complaining witness and was not in Winnebago County at the time of the alleged commission of the crimes; that at the time of the alleged commission of the crimes he was an insane person having been committed to the hospital at Kankakee in 1940, from Vermilion County; that at the time of his arrest in Waukegan in 1943, he was not in the commission of any crime; that he should have been brought immediately before the court and either tried for the alleged offense or, if proved to be insane, committed to a mental institution, where he should remain until he had fully and permanently recovered.
The People's theory of the case was that the defendant robbed and raped the complaining witness; that at the time of the commission of the crimes he was sane; and that the evidence showed the defendant to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Defendant first contends he should have been discharged because he was not tried within four months after his incarceration, due to no fault of his, and that the court erred in overruling his motion for such discharge.
It is true, as contended by the defendant, that he was taken in custody by a deputy sheriff on September 12, 1943, while he was seated in an automobile, and that the People offered no evidence as to what happened to defendant following his arrest or how he became an inmate of the Illinois Security Hospital, from which he was released by writ of habeas corpus July 1, 1948, but the record is also silent as to his being arrested and in custody on the particular charge for which he was later indicted. His custody on this charge seems to date from the time he was turned over to the authorities of Winnebago County on July 1, 1948, and from that date he appeared by counsel and agreed to proceed to trial, which was within the four months' period. A capias was ordered forthwith at the time of his indictment, but was never served on him until July 8, 1948, after he was released from the...
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...were deemed a sufficient opportunity to observe and sufficient foundation to rebut a presumption of insanity, in People v. Thomas, 409 Ill. 473, 100 N.E.2d 588. Defendant cites as authority for his position, People v. Phipps, 268 Ill. 210, 109 N.E. 25, wherein it was contended that competen......
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