People v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 19 December 1972
• Docket Number: Gen. No. 71--274
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Lee Helen WILSON, Appellant.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 270

291 N.E.2d 270

8 Ill.App.3d 1075

PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Lee Helen WILSON, Appellant.

Gen. No. 71--274.

Appellate Court of Illinois, Fifth District.

Dec. 19, 1972.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 22, 1973.

Linda West Conley, Staff Atty. Illinois Defender Project, Chicago, Charles I. Weitzman, Senior Law Student, for appellant.

William J. Scott, Atty. Gen., State of Illinois, James B. Zagel and Michael J. Murphy, Asst. Attys. Gen., Don. P. Koeneman, State's Atty., Chester, of counsel for appellee.

CREBS, Justice:

In a jury trial in the Circuit Court of Randolph County defendant was convicted of the offense of murder and was sentenced to the Illinois State Reformatory for Women for a term of not less than 14 nor more than 24 years. Dennis Phillips, a co-defendant, pleaded guilty to the crime prior to defendant's trial and, subsequent thereto, was sentenced to a like term of 14 to 24 years in the penitentiary. In this appeal defendant contends that her guilt was not established beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the court committed reversible error in refusing a request for a continuance and in admitting into evidence certain statements which she made prior to her arrest. Defendant also requests this court on review to reduce the crime from murder to solicitation, and, in conjunction therewith, to reduce her sentence to a term of no more than one to five years.

Defendant and Phillips were jointly indicted for the murder of defendant's husband on February 6, 1971. It is undisputed that defendant accompanied Phillips to St. Louis where they picked up defendant's husband. On their way back home to Brookport they stopped the car on the side of the road where Phillips killed the victim by hitting him on the head with a hammer and slitting his throat with a hunting knife, almost decapitating him. Defendant took no active part in these physical acts. Phillips, testifying for the State, stated that he had known defendant for a number of years and her husband for about four months. Defendant lived in Brookport and her husband lived and worked in St. Louis and only infrequently came home. Phillips stated that during the husband's absences from home he had become intimate with defendant; that he saw her at least once a day, stayed overnight at her house, and that on one occasion they had taken a trip together to Florida representing themselves as husband and wife. He stated further that defendant was having financial trouble. Starting in January, 1971, she mentioned on several occasions her desire to get rid of her husband and collect on his insurance. She first suggested that she would arrange his death while he was cleaning his guns so that it would look like an accident. She then asked Phillips if he would hit her husband on the head and knock him out, saying that she personally would then stab him. On January 5th he agreed to take her to St. Louis. On the way they discussed where they might commit the act, and they picked out a likely place. When they found defendant's husband, he agreed to come home with them, and on the way they bought a six pack of beer which defendant kept pressing on her husband insisting that he drink as much as possible. They finally stopped to relieve themselves in a field along the road and it was at this point that the murder was committed. Phillips admitted that defendant took no part in the killing itself, but stated that when they got back in the car she asked him if he was sure that he had done a good job. Also, he said, she put on a pair of nylon gloves and while he was driving she cleaned the blood from the knife using kleenex soaked in beer. Later they stopped at a cemetery and attempted to burn the gloves and bloody kleenex. The spent the rest of the night at defendant's house, and that morning Phillips threw the knife into the river and the hammer into a lake near his home.

The victim's body was found immediately and, from a telephone number found on his person, defendant was called. Accompanied by Phillips and another person who came to the funeral home to identify her husband, she expressed surprise at what had happened and stated that she did not know who could have done it. She stated that she had not seen her husband for two weeks, but that she had talked with him on the telephone the previous evening. In talking with the undertaker, who was also the coroner in Brookport, she stated that her husband had two life insurance policies. In subsequent interviews with investigating officers she offered to help with any information she had but she stated that she did not have any idea who might have killed him, though she thought Phillips had been acting awfully strange. She stated that he was her third husband and that she had married him in March of 1969 and that he sent her money each week. She was last interviewed at her home on February 24. On March 4, Phillips confessed and implicated defendant, and later that same day defendant was also arrested.

The State's evidence further showed that the victim had three insurance policies on his life totalling $31,000, and that defendant was the sole beneficiary. The last policy in the amount of $13,000 was taken out in November, 1970, and defendant was paying the premiums from her own bank account. She was receiving between $90 and $110 a week from her husband and her bills approximated $400 per month. The hammer and knife were recovered and were placed in evidence together with the charred gloves which had been found in the cemetery described by Phillips.

Another witness, a friend of defendant's, stated that defendant had talked to her about the murder but she did not mention anything about Phillips. However, she did say that her husband's son and daughter-in-law may have had something to do with it.

Testifying in her own behalf defendant stated that she did not plan the killing, did not participate in it, and did not clean the knife as Phillips had testified. She admitted that she and Phillips had been intimate, and that together they...