City of Chicago v. Hill

238 N.E.2d 403, 40 Ill. 2d 130, 1968 Ill. LEXIS 356
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedJune 21, 1968
Docket39701
StatusPublished
Cited by23 cases

This text of 238 N.E.2d 403 (City of Chicago v. Hill) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Chicago v. Hill, 238 N.E.2d 403, 40 Ill. 2d 130, 1968 Ill. LEXIS 356 (Ill. 1968).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Schaefer

delivered the opinion of the court:

Each of the defendants, John A. McDermott, Reverend John Hill, Reverend Thomas Heaney and Reverend Richard Heidkamp, was charged with violating ordinances of the city of Chicago prohibiting the obstruction of traffic (Municipal Code, sec. 27 — 291) and disorderly conduct (Municipal Code, sec. 193 — 1). The cases were consolidated for trial. Each defendant was found guilty and each was find $100 for obstructing traffic and $25 for disorderly conduct.

On this direct appeal, the defendants attack the constitutionality of both ordinances on the ground that they violate section 13 of article IV of the constitution of Illinois. They also assert that the disorderly conduct ordinance “is unconstitutionally vague because it can be used to deny the protected freedoms of speech and assembly,” and they contend that the ordinances were discriminatorily enforced and that the conduct of the police amounted to entrapment.

On the afternoon of June 11, 1965, the defendants were among approximately 300 to 350 civil rights demonstrators who participated in a march that began just south of Soldiers’ Field in Chicago. The group marched north from Soldiers’ Field, four to eight abreast, in the two most westerly lanes of the Outer Drive leaving the other lanes open for motor vehicles. They were escorted by a number of police officers both in front and to the side of the line of march. At the intersection of the Outer Drive and Balbo Drive, they turned west and continued in the two most northerly lanes of Balbo Drive, leaving four lanes open for motor vehicles. On the west side of the intersection of Columbus Drive and Balbo Drive, there were police officers formed in a line designed to funnel the marchers from two traffic lanes into one. Balbo Drive narrows from six to four lanes at the bridge over the tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad, between Columbus Drive and Michigan Avenue.

The marchers objected to this change, and stopped while a discussion took place with the police officers in charge. The police told the leader of the demonstration that to facilitate the flow of vehicular traffic the marchers had to confine themselves to one lane of traffic beyond Columbus Drive. The demonstrators, however, insisted that they had received prior authorization from the police to occupy two traffic lanes throughout their march. They refused to proceed, and sat down in the street. Officer Robert Murray, who was assigned to crowd control, testified that during this confrontation he observed “approximately 350 people sitting down in the intersection and traffic was stopped * * * and they were holding hands and arms, singing songs * * * and chanting slogans * * * at the top of their voices.” Five other police officers, including Deputy Chief of Police John P. Kelly, who was “in charge of the police detail assigned to the * * * marchers,” corroborated this statement. The officers also testified that they saw the four defendants sitting in the intersection of Columbus and Balbo.

Chief Kelly testified that prior to the sit-down about twenty cars would pull up before the traffic light turned to green so that they could cross Balbo Drive on Columbus Drive. After the demonstrators sat down, however, a line of cars “approximately one block north and one block south of Balbo Drive [was] tied up.” Chief Kelly assigned officers to direct the cars that “were backed up [to] make a U-turn and go in the opposite direction, the direction they had come from.” He testified that his aide, Commander Riordan “went up and down, to the people who were sitting in the street, and ordered them to get up and leave or they would be arrest[ed] * * Chief Kelly further testified that he personally ordered the three defendants who are priests “to get out of the street, and * * * advised them if they did not, they would be arrested, and they refused * * *.” Over 150 arrests were made.

Section 13 of article IV of the constitution provides: “No act hereafter passed shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.” The defendants’ contention that the ordinances are invalid because they violate this provision is without merit. “Section 13 of article IV of the constitution, to which counsel refer, applies only to acts of the legislature and not to city ordinances. Harris v. People, 218 Ill. 439.” City of Metropolis v. Gibbons, 334 Ill. 431, 434; see also, Chicago Cosmetic Co. v. City of Chicago, 374 Ill. 384, 393.

Defendants contend that their convictions "must be reversed because the police actions in this case constitute entrapment in that the convictions were obtained for actions which the police had indicated were lawful.” They assert that the police had agreed to allow the marchers to use two traffic lanes throughout the march, and argue that the arrests for blocking the intersection after the police insisted that the march be confined to one traffic lane west of Columbus Drive were “for performing activities which the police had permitted earlier and upon which defendants relied to their ultimate hurt.”

Although the record suggests that at least two of the defendants may have believed that the police had authorized the use of two lanes throughout the march, and one defendant testified that at the beginning of the march the demonstrators were instructed by their leader to remain in two lanes, there is no evidence that any specific agreement had been reached. In fact, the defendants’ evidence which bears most directly on the question tends to negate that conclusion. Defendant McDermott testified that at the premarch conference at which the agreement was allegedly made, “Mr. Albert Raby, the leader of the march, informed the police * * * that we did not intend to occupy the whole street * * Defendant Heaney stated that “after conferring with the police officers * * * [Mr. Raby] agreed we would conduct an orderly demonstration and not occupy the whole street as had been done on previous occasions.” These statements tend to support Chief Kelly’s testimony that the marchers had been informed that at least one lane in each direction was to remain open to vehicular traffic.

Defendants rely upon Raley v. Ohio (1959), 360 U.S. 423, 3 L. Ed. 2d 1344, 79 S. Ct. 1257, for the proposition that it is “an indefensible sort of entrapment by the State— [to convict] a citizen for exercising a privilege which the State had clearly told him was available to him.” (360 U.S. at 426, 3 L. Ed. 2d at 1348.) In Raley, the defendants refused to answer questions put to them at sessions of the Ohio Un-American Activities Commission after the Commission had informed them that they could invoke their privilege against self-incrimination. They were subsequently convicted for their refusals under an Ohio immunity statute. Thus, the defendants in Raley were convicted for the very act they had been told they could commit. The defendants here were convicted for sitting down in an intersection and blocking traffic. There is no evidence that the police had even indirectly suggested that such conduct was permissible, and the defendant’s contention that they were entrapped must be rejected.

The contention that the ordinance prohibiting the willful obstruction of traffic was discriminatorily enforced against the defendants is also without merit.

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Bluebook (online)
238 N.E.2d 403, 40 Ill. 2d 130, 1968 Ill. LEXIS 356, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-chicago-v-hill-ill-1968.