People v. Walden
| Decision Date | 29 September 1960 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 34744-35532,s. 34744-35532 |
| Parties | PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Defendant in Error, v. Oscar WALDEN, Jr., Plaintiff in Error. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
McCoy, Ming, & Leighton, Chicago (George N. Leighton and Richard D. Gumbel, Jr., Chicago, of counsel), for plaintiff in error.
Grenville Beardsley, Atty. Gen., and Benjamin S. Adamowski, State's Atty., Chicago (Fred G. Leach, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Francis X. Riley, and William W. Winterhoff, Asst. State's Atty., Chicago, of counsel), for defendant in error.
In September of 1952 the defendant. Oscar Walden, Jr., was convicted of rape and was sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of 75 years. In 1955 he filed a petition under the Post-Conviction Hearing Act (Ill.Rev.Stat.1959, chap. 38, pars. 826-832), which was dismissed upon motion. We allowed his petition for a writ of error and remanded the cause for a hearing on the merits. (No. 2209, January 24, 1957.) Such a hearing was had, the trial court denied the petition, and we allowed a writ of error (No. 34744) to review that judgment.
Subsequently the defendant prosecuted a writ of error from his original judgment of conviction. In both cases the defendant asserts that coerced confessions were admitted in evidence against him, and upon the writ of error to review the original judgment of conviction (No. 35532), he also contends that his guilt was not established beyond a reasonable doubt. The two cases have been consolidated in this court.
The complaining witness testified that she was returning home from her daughter's house about 10:00 P.M., on November 24, 1951. Near the intersection of 103rd Street and Michigan Avenue, she was grabbed by a man who dragged her into a nearby vacant lot. She struggled, and he repeatedly threatened to kill her. When he put his left hand in her mouth to silence her screams, she bit his fingers. She was held in the vacant lot for approximately an hour, during which her assailant raped her several times, committed an unnatural act upon her, and forced her to commit an unnatural act upon him. When she was finally released, she went to her daughter's house.
The daughter testified that her mother arrived shortly before midnight and said that she had been attacked by a colored man. The police were called, and the complaining witness described her assailant as being five feet eight or ten inches tall, with a flat nose, heavy lips and a soft voice. He wore glasses with thick heavy lenses, dark clothing and a hat.
The complaining witness was taken to a hospital. The examining physician testified that there were cinders and dirt on her hands and shins, her lips were swollen and bloody, there were numerous abrasions on her hands and bruises on her forearms and shoulders, and she was bleeding from the vagina.
The complaining witness remained in the hospital for several weeks and there confronted 15 to 20 suspects. After her discharge from the hospital, she viewed other suspects, both at her home and at the police station. She identified none of them. On December 23, 1951, she saw the defendant at 103rd and Michigan and recognized him as the man who had attacked her. She testified that he saw her, went into a drug store, then emerged almost at once and 'dashed across the street and boarded a northbound street car.' On January 11, 1952, an employee of the drug store saw the defendant boarding a bus and notified the police.
At the hearing before the court and out of the presence of the jury on the question of the admissibility of the confessions, the defendant testified that he was arrested on a bus at 3:15 P.M., on January 11, 1952. He was taken to the Kensington Police Station and questioned briefly, and the complaining witness identified him as her assailant. He was then taken to police headquarters for a lie-detector test. He was again questioned at the Kensington station and was taken after dark to the Burnside Police Station which has sleeping facilities, where he spent the night in a cell.
Questioning was resumed at the Kensington station at 11:00 A.M., on January 12. The defendant testified that he was told that if he would confess, the police would urge leniency and that he would get 'probation or six months.' He also stated that the police threatened that unless he confessed, his parents would lose their jobs, be evicted from their home and placed in jail. He testified that police officers, particularly officer Sweitzer and officer Faculak, called him names, slapped him in the face, bent back his fingers and kicked him in the shins nearly 50 times, that he received a cut on a finger of his left hand, that his face was swollen, and that his shins were bruised and cut. He said also that the officers threatened to suspend him above the floor by a rope, take off his clothes and beat him with a rubber hose.
He testified that at about 1:30 P.M., on January 12, because of this force and coercion, he agreed to confess. He said that the police officers told him what to say, and also that he was told to apologize to the complaining witness. He did so, and then signed a written confession.
About 5:30 that afternoon, Patrick Egan, an assistant State's Attorney, came to the station with a court reporter. The defendant started to repeat his earlier confession, and then asked to be alone with Egan. Egan had the policemen leave the room, whereupon the defendant said that everything he had said previously was a lie and that he had been beaten and forced to confess. Egan testified that he examined the defendant's hands and face, that his fingers moved freely, his hands appeared to be in normal condition, and that his face bore no marks or swelling of any kind. Egan then had the available policemen enter the room, including Faculak, but the defendant could not identify any of them as the officers who had beaten him. The defendant repeated him story again while in Egan's office on the morning of January 14. Egan and the first assistant State's Attorney testified that they both then examined the defendant and that he had no marks, scars, abrasions, or contusions on his legs or elsewhere, and that there was no blood on his clothing.
Officers Sweitzer and Faculak and other policemen who were present at the Kensington station categorically denied the defendant's accusations. The defendant...
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Walden v. City of Chicago, No. 04 C 0047.
...in 1952 for rape, which resulted in Plaintiff's conviction by a jury for the charged crime. See generally Illinois v. Walden, 19 Ill.2d 602, 169 N.E.2d 241 (1960) (denying post-conviction petition following jury verdict of guilty). Plaintiff served approximately fourteen years in prison, an......
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People v. ex rel. Garner v. Clutts
...a circumstance which has been been looked upon as pointing up the reliability of an identification finally made. See: People v. Walden, 19 Ill.2d 602, 169 N.E.2d 241. Although it does not appear in the statement of facts presented in relator's brief, he asserts in his argument that Burrell,......
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People v. Houck
... ... Hood (1974), 59 Ill.2d 315, 319 N.E.2d 802). Furthermore, corroboration is unnecessary where the testimony of the complainant is clear and convincing. (People v. Walden (1960), 19 Ill.2d 602, 169 N.E.2d 241.) Here, it appears that the jury believed complainant's testimony regarding force and resistance portions of which we note were corroborated by the attending physician, her husband, and the investigating officer rather than that given by defendant. Upon a ... ...