People v. Vanda

• Decision Date: 23 December 1982
• Docket Number: No. 80-1147,80-1147
• Citation: 444 N.E.2d 609,67 Ill.Dec. 373,111 Ill.App.3d 551
• Parties: , 67 Ill.Dec. 373 PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Thomas VANDA, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 609

444 N.E.2d 609

111 Ill.App.3d 551, 67 Ill.Dec. 373

PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Thomas VANDA, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 80-1147.

Appellate Court of Illinois,

First District, Fourth Division.

Dec. 23, 1982.

James J. Doherty, Public Defender of Cook County, for defendant-appellant; John Lanahan, Asst. Public Defender, of counsel.

Richard M. Daley, State's Atty., for plaintiff-appellee; Michael E. Shabat and James S. Veldman, Asst. State's Attys., of counsel.

JIGANTI, Justice:

After a jury trial, the defendant Thomas Vanda was found guilty of the stabbing murder of Marguerita Bowers and was sentenced to serve 300 to 500 years imprisonment. The sole issue raised at trial was whether the defendant should be found not guilty by reason of insanity; it has remained undisputed that the defendant killed Bowers. On appeal, the defendant contends that he was denied a fair trial because of eight alleged trial errors and consequently asserts that the evidence that reached the jury was so unbalanced in the State's favor that the jury had virtually no choice but to find the defendant guilty of murder. Specifically, the defendant contends: (1) that the trial court erroneously refused to admit letters written by the defendant as rebuttal evidence of his mental state; (2) that the trial court improperly allowed evidence of another killing committed by the defendant and that the State violated the trial court's ruling in limine regarding discussion of the facts surrounding the earlier crime; (3) that it was error for the court to admit the defendant's post-arrest request for a specific attorney as evidence of the defendant's sanity because it infringed upon the defendant's Miranda rights; (4) that the court erroneously admitted a receipt into evidence without proper foundation; (5) that the court improperly restricted cross-examination of State expert witnesses; (6) that expert psychiatric witnesses called by the State were allowed to testify outside their area of expertise; (7) that the court allowed a jury instruction that improperly highlighted the testimony of State's witnesses; and (8) that the prosecution made improper comments during closing arguments. For these reasons, the defendant requests that we remand his case for a new trial.

The first issue raised by the defendant is whether the trial court improperly refused to admit letters into evidence that were written by the defendant to his parents and to his former attorneys. During its case in chief, the State offered into evidence a letter written by the defendant to a fellow inmate after the defendant's arrest. It described how to successfully evade a murder charge by pleading insanity. In rebuttal, the defendant sought to admit several letters written by him to his parents and to the attorneys who had represented him on a prior murder charge. From what we can gather from the record, these letters contained defendant's false representations that he was acting in authoritative positions within the prison, such as helping the superintendent run the jail or serving as a fireman and being injured while putting out fires at the jail. While in most instances the defendant offered the actual letters into evidence, he also wished to have his mother testify regarding the contents of letters he had written to her that had been destroyed. Stating that all of the letters offered by the defendant were inadmissible hearsay and "self-serving", the court refused to allow them to be admitted into evidence. We disagree and find that the letters should have been admitted as relevant non-hearsay evidence of the defendant's mental state.

We first find that the letters were relevant to the issue of the defendant's mental state. When a defendant's sanity is in issue, great latitude is allowed in admitting evidence relating to a defendant's mental condition because "[t]o determine insanity, you cannot take an isolated cross section of a single series of acts and myopically examine it within the narrow confines of the date set forth in a formal charge. In order to make a proper determination, there must be more than a cross section; we must examine the person, his history, his relationship with the victim, prior mental illnesses and other intervening factors of causation." (People v. Haun (1966), 71 Ill.App.2d 262, 268, 217 N.E.2d 470, 473.) Within reasonable time limits, every act in a defendant's life is relevant to the inquiry regarding his sanity (McCormick, Evidence § 249, at 592-93 (2d ed. 1972)), including events that occurred both prior to and subsequent to the crime committed by the defendant. (People v. Lannes (1966), 78 Ill.App.2d 45, 223 N.E.2d 440.) Therefore, as Professor Wigmore has stated, "The first and fundamental rule, then, will be that any and all conduct of the person is admissible in evidence. There is no restriction as to the kind of conduct. There can be none; for if a specific act does not indicate insanity it may indicate sanity. It will certainly throw light one way or the other upon the issue." (2 Wigmore, Evidence § 228, at 9 (Chadbourn rev. 1979).) We thus find that the defendant's letters were relevant to the issue of his sanity because they were offered to demonstrate alleged delusions under which he suffered.

Because we find that the letters were relevant evidence, we must now determine whether they nonetheless should have been excluded as inadmissible hearsay. We find that the letters are quite simply not hearsay statements and that the hearsay rule should not have barred their admission into evidence.

Hearsay is in-court testimony or written evidence concerning an out-of-court statement where the out-of-court statement is offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. (People v. Garlick (1977), 46 Ill.App.3d 216, 4 Ill.Dec. 746, 360 N.E.2d 1121; McCormick, Evidence § 246, at 584 (2d ed. 1972).) Where out-of-court statements are offered to circumstantially prove or disprove insanity, they are offered to show the defendant's mental state rather than the literal truth of the defendant's assertions. (2 Wigmore, Evidence § 228, at 14-15 (Chadbourn rev. 1979); McCormick, Evidence § 249, at 592-93 (2d ed. 1972); see also Cleary and Graham, Illinois Evidence § 801.6, at 402-3 (3d ed. 1979).) In the instant case, the defendant's letters were not offered to prove that he was actually helping the superintendent run the jail or that he was a prison fireman, but rather to demonstrate that the defendant was suffering from delusions and was therefore insane. Thus, the letters were not offered to prove the truth of their contents and they consequently cannot be considered as hearsay. See also People v. Garlick (1977), 46 Ill.App.3d 216, 4 Ill.Dec. 746, 360 N.E.2d 1121 (defendant's out-of-court statements admissible as nonhearsay evidence of mental state); People v. Chancy (1980), 91 Ill.App.3d 817, 47 Ill.Dec. 123, 414 N.E.2d 1239 (the words "Fantastic, Super Dopee and Me" written on blackboard at scene of crime were nonhearsay); Sollars v. State (1957), 73 Nev. 248, 316 P.2d 917 (defendant's "classic paranoid letters" admissible as non-hearsay evidence of mental state); Chase v. State (Alaska 1962), 369 P.2d 997 (defendant's out-of-court statements admissible on insanity issue).

The State cites People v. Hester (1968), 39 Ill.2d 489, 237 N.E.2d 466, in support of its position that the defendant's letters were "self-serving" hearsay. The Hester court held that an examining doctor secured solely for the purpose of testifying at trial cannot testify regarding subjective symptoms described by the patient. (See also McCormick, Evidence §§ 292, 293, at 690-94 (2d ed. 1972).) However, in the instant case, the State fails to make a distinction between statements, such as those in Hester, that are offered for the truth of their contents and statements, such as those in the case at bar, that are offered simply as circumstantial evidence of the defendant's mental state. Illustratively, in State v. Lucas (1959), 30 N.J. 37, 152 A.2d 50, the New Jersey Supreme Court found that even an examining physician, such as the doctor in Hester, could testify regarding statements made to him by the defendant where the issue is insanity rather than guilt. Therefore, the State's reliance upon Hester is misplaced and we conclude that the letters offered by the defendant were not inadmissible hearsay.

Having determined that the defendant's letters were relevant non-hearsay evidence, we must determine whether they could be refused admission into evidence simply because they were "self-serving." We find the term "self-serving" to be something of a misnomer because any evidence or testimony offered by any party to a lawsuit is logically and necessarily "self-serving" to that party's presentation of his case. An examination of Illinois case law reveals that it is the hearsay rule that generally precludes a party from proving his own self-serving statements. (People v. Colletti (1968), 101 Ill.App.2d 51, 242 N.E.2d 63.) The rationale for exclusion is that testimony regarding out-of-court statements made by a defendant after commission of a crime is not competent because the defendant had a motive to fabricate favorable testimony relating to his innocence. (People v. Lewis (1979), 75 Ill.App.3d 259, 30 Ill.Dec. 751, 393 N.E.2d 1098.) However, in the instant case, the fact that the defendant killed the victim is not at issue; the jury was only concerned with the question of the defendant's sanity or insanity. Indeed, while the defendant may have had a motive to lead others to believe he was insane, we find two reasons for this to be a matter weighed in the jury's determination of his sanity rather than an issue of admissibility. First, the defendant's "self-serving" statements were not hearsay and therefore do not fall under the hearsay rule's ancient prohibition against admission of such statements. (See generally McCormick,...