People v. Lee

238 N.E.2d 63, 96 Ill. App. 2d 105, 1968 Ill. App. LEXIS 1153
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedMay 27, 1968
DocketGen. 51,314, 51,315
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 238 N.E.2d 63 (People v. Lee) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Court of Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Lee, 238 N.E.2d 63, 96 Ill. App. 2d 105, 1968 Ill. App. LEXIS 1153 (Ill. Ct. App. 1968).

Opinion

MR. JUSTICE MURPHY

delivered the opinion of the court.

In a two-count indictment, defendants were charged with rape and aggravated kidnaping. After a bench trial, they were both found guilty of both charges. Defendant Lee received separate sentences of 2 to 7 years on both counts, to be served concurrently. Defendant Gustus received separate sentences of 2 to 5 years on both counts, to be served concurrently. On appeal, defendants contend they were not proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Defendants’ separate appeals, Nos. 51,814 and 51,315, are consolidated in one opinion for convenience.

The undisputed facts show that about two o’clock in the morning of December 9, 1965, Mrs. Jessie Carlisle parked her car in front of her mother-in-law’s house at 1707 Washington Boulevard, Chicago. The complaining witness, Mary Glenn, and her husband, John Glenn, were with her. Mrs. Carlisle and Mr. Glenn went upstairs to pick up the Carlisle children, while Mrs. Glenn remained in the car with the motor running. She didn’t feel well, and she could keep warm for the short time they were to be gone. While Mrs. Glenn dozed in the front passenger seat, the two defendants, Edgar Lee, Jr., and Roy Gustus, entered the car and drove off with Mrs. Glenn, whom they had never met before.

Mrs. Glenn testified she asked the defendants what they were doing, and they told her to keep quiet. Gustus threatened to kick in her face. After they drove for a few minutes, she told them she had to go to the washroom and asked them to pull over to a filling station, which they refused to do. Later, they stopped in a parking lot of a housing project at 2245 Lake Street and let her out. While she was urinating, Police Officer Jackson came up and inquired what she was doing, and she told him. She then told Officer Jackson that Lee and Gustus had stolen the car. The officer questioned the defendants and opened the trunk of the car. Mrs. Glenn begged him to take her home, and he refused to do so and left in a squad car.

After the officer left, Mrs. Glenn ran over to the housing project, screaming and shouting. The defendants pulled her into an elevator and “punched the button'. I was down on the floor of the elevator. . . . One of them hit me in the mouth. They had their arms around my mouth, mugging my mouth, because I was hollering and telling them to leave me alone. Lee said, ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’ He kept pulling me until they got me inside and had me in the elevator. ... I couldn’t kick; I couldn’t holler because he had his hand over my mouth. I was fighting, but I couldn’t hit anybody. Lee hit me in the mouth outside the elevator, I don’t know how many times. I had a bump on my head from them dragging me by the stair steps.”

Mrs. Glenn was dragged to the top of a stairway, where Lee pulled down her undergarments, and both of them had sexual intercourse with her. A written statement given to the police immediately after the affair included: “This man Lee pulled my pants off and then he had Gustus standing in the door listening. Lee finished, Gustus had me, they hit me in the mouth, then I heard some keys rattle, that’s when the two men ran. Then two policemen came up the stairs. . . . One went to the stairs and I went downstairs with the other policeman. When we got downstairs or right after that I saw Gustus and Lee again and the police had them. I told the police that these were the men.”

Michael Bolton, one of the arresting police officers, testified that when they arrived at the housing project at 2245 Lake Street, they went to the third-floor stairway landing, where they observed Mrs. Glenn. “She was kind of incoherent. She was sobbing, crying, and her pants were down to about knee length. She was bare from the knees up to about the waistline. She said that she had been raped and assaulted by two colored boys. Shortly after she spoke these words, I heard some footsteps on a stairwell which led upward. I went up the stairs to between the fourth and fifth-floor landing. I observed a boy coming down the stairs (indicating Edgar Lee). I accompanied him down the stairway to the third-floor landing, where I asked Mrs. Glenn if this boy was one of the two boys who had raped and assaulted her and she stated yes, he was one of them. I brought him downstairs to the main floor landing, where my partner, Officer Minasola, was standing with another fellow (indicating Roy Gustus). At this time Mary Glenn identified Gustus as the other offender.”

On cross-examination, he testified: “Mary Glenn told me two colored boys had raped and assaulted her, struck her on the side of her head and all over her face. That was all she said. I had no further conversations with her or with the two boys.”

Another witness for the State, Booker Porter, a police officer, took a written statement from Mary Glenn in the presence of the defendants. “After Mrs. Glenn’s statement, Detective Smith had a conversation with Edgar Lee in the interrogation room. Roy Gustus was standing next to him, Mrs. Glenn and Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle and I were present. Detective Smith asked him, ‘What happened over there?’ He didn’t say anything. Detective Smith said, T just talked to Gustus out in the hall and he told me that everything that Mrs. Glenn said was the truth and I know all about what happened. Now you tell me what happened.’ Lee said, ‘Well, everything what she says is just about the truth. We took the car and we went over there. Everything is just about the truth with the exception that I didn’t force her to have relations and I didn’t hit her.’ ”

John E. Glenn, husband of Mary Glenn, a plasterer by trade, testified to the events up until the time he left his wife sitting in the car, and that they had been to the American Legion Post, and “she had one beer to drink.”

The two defendants testified. They admitted having intercourse with Mary Glenn but insisted it was with her consent. They had seen her sitting in the automobile and invited her to have a drink with them, and she consented. Lee drove the car, and they went to the El Chico Lounge, about two and one-half blocks away, where he parked the car and bought a half-pint of gin. At the parking lot, Mrs. Glenn got out, and they were sitting in the car when Officer Jackson arrived and questioned them. She “drank about a shot or a shot and a half when she got back into the car.” She walked into the building and the elevator of her own accord. They also denied admitting the truth of the statement given by Mrs. Glenn at the police station.

Police Officer Jackson testified for the defense and related the parking lot incident, and said, “As I was walking back to the car she asked me to take her home. I told her I couldn’t take her home . . . that it is against the rules and regulations, unless it is on official police business. She said nothing to me about the defendants trying to rape her or beat her up or anything else. . . . I noticed no bruises or marks on Mary Glenn while I was talking to her. She appeared to have been drinking.” On cross-examination he said he believed she was drinking because of the way she talked and the way she looked — “I smelled liquor on her breath.”

Defendants’ first contention is that there was a failure of proof of the essential element of resistance. Defendants argue that the testimony of the complaining witness herself established that she did not resist the two men.

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Bluebook (online)
238 N.E.2d 63, 96 Ill. App. 2d 105, 1968 Ill. App. LEXIS 1153, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-lee-illappct-1968.