People v. Dear

121 N.E. 615, 286 Ill. 142
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 18, 1918
DocketNo. 12278
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 121 N.E. 615 (People v. Dear) 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
People v. Dear, 121 N.E. 615, 286 Ill. 142 (Ill. 1918).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Dunn

delivered the opinion of the court:

Earl Dear was convicted of murder and sentenced to death and has sued out a writ of error. Eugene Hartnett was indicted jointly and tried with him. He was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for fourteen years.

On the evening of January 18, 1918, Harold P. Tucker, a private in the Canadian army, his brother, Archibald W. Tucker, the latter’s wife and Miss Barbara Lessner spent the evening together in the city of Chicago. They left the Alps cafe about eleven o’clock and went to Ward & Larose’s saloon, at the southwest corner of North avenue and LaSalle street, where they remained until about one o’clock, when they were joined by Rudolph Wolf, a chauffeur. Archibald W. Tucker left soon afterward, and in a few minutes the party went up-stairs to a Chinese restaurant. While they were waiting to be served Wolf looked out of the window and then ran down-stairs. Tucker, after looking out the window and seeing a man sitting in Wolf’s car trying to start it and another leaning on the door on the south side of the car, (the side next the sidewalk,) followed Wolf down-stairs. In the meantime the man at the side of the car said to the man in the car, “Hurry up! Give her more juice!” Wolf came from the entrance to the restaurant, went around in front of the car, and said, “What are you doing to this machine?” The man at the wheel then got out of the car, which was left-hand drive and facing east, on the north side, came around in front, and said, “What is it of your business?” Wolf pushed him, saying, “I will make it my business,” and then, just as Tucker came through the door, ten or twelve feet away, the man shot Wolf with a revolver through the body. Both men then ran south on LaSalle street and Tucker remained to take care of Wolf, whom he put in the car and drove to the Henrotin Hospital, where Wolf died from the effects of the wound in the p afternoon of that day. The two men, immediately after the shooting, ran south on the west side of LaSalle street. Snow had been shoveled off the sidewalks and was piled up on each side of the street four or five feet high. In a short distance the two men running met two police officers, one of whom grappled with and threw or knocked down one of them. The other officer followed, overtook and arrested the other man. The men arrested were the plaintiff in error and his co-defendant, Hartnett. The officer who arrested the plaintiff in error produced on the trial a revolver which he testified that he took from plaintiff in error, who had it in his hand when he met the officers. It contained four loaded shells and one empty shell.

Both the defendants testified in their own behalf, and after giving an account of their actions in the afternoon of January 18, during which they were at various places and drank various intoxicating drinks, stated that just before the shooting they were coming north on the west side of LaSalle street and tried the side door of Ward & LaRose’s saloon but could not get in, whereupon they separated, Hart-nett walking south on LaSalle street and the plaintiff in error going north. The plaintiff in error testified that he had just turned the corner of North avenue when he heard a shot fired, and on looking saw a car, with a man standing on the running-board, wearing a cap, and another standing in the street. He did not see the man that was shot, but on the moment the impulse came to him, as he was just out of jail, and he started to run south on LaSalle street. One of the men started to run, and he did not see the man with the cap after that. As the plaintiff in error started to run he saw Hartnett. The plaintiff in error had only gone a little way when an officer seized him and knocked him down. He did not have any revolver, and the first time he saw the revolver which the officer said he took from him was when the officer had it after he knocked him down. Hartnett testified that after he said good-night to the plaintiff in error he walked south and hearing the report of a pistol shot turned around and looked north. He saw an officer running south and asked him what he was running for, but the officer did not answer. Hartnett then ran south a few feet. He saw someone knock Dear down and kept on running, but he soon fell down and an officer came up and arrested him.

Dr. Spencer Brown testified for the defendants that he was a dentist, though he had not completed the course and had no license to practice dentistry and did not practice but did laboratory work, and that at the time of the shooting he was walking on the north side of North avenue at the northwest corner of LaSalle street. He heard an explosion that sounded like a tire or pistol shot, and then he saw a man grabbing his breast and saying, “My God! He shot me!” This man was just north of the rear of the car and the witness saw the man who did the shooting, who was on the north side of the car, close to it, leaving the man who had been shot. The man who did the shooting was a tall man wearing dark clothes with a hat pulled well down over his face, and he ran around the corner and went south on the east side of LaSalle street to Germania place, where he turned east. The witness did not notice the car until the shot was fired and did not see any other man in the car than the man who was shot and the one who did the shooting. He testified that no one was on the corner of North avenue and LaSalle street when the man passed there. The witness went down the east side of LaSalle street to Germania place, when he heard a scuffie across the street and saw one man standing over another in a snow bank. He went over and stood beside the officer, and the man whom the officer had was not the man who ran south on the east side of LaSalle street.

The eye-witnesses who testified on the part of the prosecution were Harold P. Tucker, Miss Lessner, John L. Meyers and John Haupt. Mrs. Tucker at the time of the trial was sick and in the hospital. Tucker and Miss Lessner testified to the circumstances which have been already stated in regard to meeting Wolf, going to the restaurant, and Wolf’s looking out of the window, running down-stairs and Tucker following him down. Tucker testified to the facts stated in regard to the shooting but was unable to identify the man who fired the shot except by his clothing and the fact that he was the taller of the two men. Miss Lessner testified to the same circumstances of the meeting, going to the restaurant, Wolf’s looking out of the window and running down-stairs, and further, that she and Mrs. Tucker raised the window and saw one man at the wheel of the car and one man leaning over the running-board; that she saw one of the men shoot, and she identified him positively as the plaintiff in error, describing his clothing as it was described by Tucker. She afterward saw the plaintiff in error when he was brought back in the custody of the police officers in the police patrol wagon and testified that he was the same man who shot Rudolph Wolf.

John L. Meyers was a printer, living at 1421 North LaSalle street. He was walking east on the south side of North avenue, and as he approached the corner of LaSalle street his attention was attracted by two men jumping into an automobile, one of whom tried to start it while the other stood with one foot on the running-board.

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Bluebook (online)
121 N.E. 615, 286 Ill. 142, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-dear-ill-1918.