Keating v. People

43 N.E. 724, 160 Ill. 480, 1896 Ill. LEXIS 1531
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedMarch 28, 1896
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 43 N.E. 724 (Keating v. People) 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
Keating v. People, 43 N.E. 724, 160 Ill. 480, 1896 Ill. LEXIS 1531 (Ill. 1896).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Magruder

delivered the opinion of the court:

On the evening of January 31,1895, a man by the name of Morse B. Davis was met on one of the streets in the city of Chicago by the plaintiff in error, a prostitute, and enticed into the private room of a saloon. While there he and she drank whisky together, and she stole from him, as is charged by the People, a roll of money amounting to §220.00. Later in the evening, after parting with her, he discovered his loss, and procured her arrest by the police. She was taken at once to a police station, and, upon search being made, §200.00 of the money was found upon her person. This is an indictment against her for the larceny of the money. The trial below resulted in her conviction, and, by the judgment of the court, she was sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary for the term of two years at hard labor. The object of the present writ of error is to review the judgment thus rendered.

The indictment was found at the January term, 1895, of the Criminal Court of Cook county. At the following March term, 1895, the jdaintiff in error made an application for a continuance of the cause. The first assignment of error relates to the denial of this application and the action of the court in relation thereto.

First—Plaintiff in error, in her affidavit for a continuance, alleged that there was a woman by the name of Sarah Cole in Denver, Colorado, by whom she expected to prove, that, on the evening of the day on which she was arrested, she sold a diamond ring to said Cole for §200.00, and that said Cole paid her, as the purchase price of said ring, §200.00 “in paper money, in hills,” in the ladies’ parlor of the Grand Pacific Hotel, and said, while they were dining together, that she was glad to give the money to plaintiff in error, as she had been frightened and “barely escaped being robbed of it by a man.” The original affidavit for a continuance was presented to the court and filed on March 5, 1895, at which time the judge stated, that he would adjourn the trial for two days to enable the plaintiff in error to telegraph to Denver and procure the attendance of the witness at the trial in Chicago. The next day, March 6, 1895, plaintiff in error presented a second affidavit, stating that the witness, Sarah Cole, expected to be confined in childbirth in a few days, and could not come to Chicago. Thereupon, the court overruled the motion for a continuance, and required the State’s attorney to admit, that Sarah Cole, if present, would testify as alleged in the affidavit.

It is not claimed, on behalf of the accused, that, in this matter of the continuance, the action of the court was not in strict accordance with the “Act to regulate the granting of continuances in criminal cases,” approved June 26, 1885, (Laws of Ill. 1885, p. 73; 3 Starr & Cur. Stat. p. 882), but it is contended, that the act in question is unconstitutional as being in contravention of section 9 of article 2 of the constitution, which provides, that “in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have the right *’ * * to meet the witnesses face to face, and to have process to compel the attendance of witnesses in his behalf.” (1 Starr & Cur. Stat. p. 103). This identical question was presented and considered by this court in the case of Hoyt v. People, 140 Ill. 588. We there held, that the act of 1885 was not in conflict with section 9 of article 2 of the constitution, and the reasoning, upon which the conclusion there reached is based, need not be here repeated.

Second—It is urged that erroneous instructions were given for the prosecution. One of the instructions claimed to be erroneous is the following:

“The possession of stolen property soon after the commission of a theft is prima facie evidence of the guilt of the person in whose possession it is found, and is sufficient to warrant a conviction, unless the other evidence in the case or the surrounding circumstances are such as to raise a reasonable doubt of such guilt.”

As a statement of the law, the proposition contained in the instruction is sustained by many authorities, among which are the following: Smith v. People, 103 Ill. 82; Unger v. State, 42 Miss. 642; Foster v. State, 52 id. 695 ; Tucker v. State, 57 Ga. 503; Brown v. State, 59 id. 456; State v. Turner, 65 N. C. 592; Knickerbocker v. People, 43 N. Y. 177; Commonwealth v. Randall, 119 Mass. 107. It is urged, however, that the instruction assumes, that there was stolen property. It is not denied, that paper money or bills to the amount of $200.00 were found secreted upon the person of the plaintiff in error, but it is said that this money is not conceded to have been stolen. We think that the question, whether or not the property was stolen, was fairly left to the jury when all the instructions are considered together as one charge. The court gave for plaintiff in error the following instructions:

8. “The taking of the property charged against the defendant to have been taken is an essential element of the crime charged, and unless the evidence shows, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the property charged to have been taken was taken, then it is your duty to find the defendant not guilty.

9. “The burden is on the prosecution to prove that Morse B. Davis did own and have possession of, or did have the possession and did have the right to possess, the property alleged to have been from him taken and carried away, and that in this case, unless the evidence shows that Morse B. Davis did own and have possession of, or did have the possession and did have the legal right to the possession of, said property, it is your duty to find the defendant not guilty.

10. “It is essential to be proven that the property alleged to have been taken from Morse B. Davis was so taken. If, from the evidence, you have any reasonable doubt whether the property was so taken, it is your duty to find the defendant not guilty.

17. “If you believe, from all the evidence, that the defendant received $200 of the money found upon her person at the time of her arrest, from Sarah Cole, it is your duty to find the defendant not guilty. And further, if the evidence tending to show that said money was received from said Sarah Cole raises in-your mind any reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant, it is your duty to find her not guilty.”

If the instructions thus1 given for the defendant are read in connection with the instruction given for the prosecution, it will be seen that the jury must have understood it to be their duty to determine from the evidence, whether the money found npon the person of the accused was the money that had been stolen from the prosecuting witness, or not. Taking all the instructions together, we are unable to see that the statement of the proposition of law embodied in the instruction complained of could have done the plaintiff in error any harm.

After a careful examination of the instructions given for the prosecution upon the question of reasonable doubt, we find that they conform to the law upon that subject as heretofore laid down by this court in many cases. The third instruction here given for the prosecution corresponds exactly with the sixth instruction given for the People in Miller v. People, 39 Ill. 457, and there approved of.

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Bluebook (online)
43 N.E. 724, 160 Ill. 480, 1896 Ill. LEXIS 1531, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/keating-v-people-ill-1896.