People v. Munday

127 N.E. 364, 293 Ill. 191
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedApril 21, 1920
DocketNo. 13147
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 127 N.E. 364 (People v. Munday) 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. Munday, 127 N.E. 364, 293 Ill. 191 (Ill. 1920).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Cartwright

delivered the opinion of the court:

William Lorimer, Sr., and the plaintiff in error, Charles B. Munday, with two others, were indicted in the criminal, court of Cook county under section 25» of division 1 of the Criminal Code for receiving, as officers of the LaSalle Street Trust and Savings Bank, a deposit of $275 from David H. Hoops when the bank was insolvent and the defendants well knew of the insolvency, and thereby the deposit was lost to Hoops. The defendant Munday was granted a change of venue to the circuit court of Grundy county, and upon a trial was found guilty and his punishment was fixed .at imprisonment in the penitentiary and a fine of $550.

In the criminal court a motion to quash the indictment was made but not decided, and when the case was called for trial in the circuit court the motion to quash was denied. The motion was oral and did not point out any particular wherein the indictment was alleged to be defective, and it was therefore in the nature of a general demurrer and raised only questions as to defects of substance. .If a defendant may make a general motion to quash an indictment without specifying any defect and on a writ of error have the ruling of the court denying his motion reviewed, the ruling can only be held to be error where there are innate and substantial defects in the indictment which would make it insufficient to support a judgment. Briefly stated, the indictment charged that William Lorimer, Sr., was president and Charles B. Munday vice-president of the LaSalle Street Trust and Savings Bank, a corporation doing a general banking business in the city of Chicago; that on June n, 1914, the corporation was and for a long time prior thereto had been insolvent; that on said day the defendants, as such officers, corruptly, willfully, knowingly, fraudulently and feloniously received'from David H. Hoops a certain sum of money therein described, said Hoops not being indebted to the corporation and the corporation being insolvent, as the said defendants then and there well knew, and that because of such insolvency the deposit so made was lost to said Hoops, whereby and by force of the statute in such case made and provided the defendants were deemed to have committed the crime of embezzlement. The alleged defect is' that the indictment merely concluded from the facts stated that the defendants were deemed guilty of the crime of embezzlement, and that it was necessary to malee a direct charge that the defendants did fraudulently embezzle and convert to their own use the funds deposited. The statement of the offense was in the language.and followed the form of the indictment in Meadowcroft v. People, 163 Ill. 56, and it was there said that the indictment stated the offense in the terms and language of the statute creating the offense and was therefore to be deemed sufficiently tech-meal and correct. The rule laid down there was, that the crime created by the statute is consummated when the insolvent bankers fraudulently receive a deposit and by their failure, suspension or involuntary liquidation by reason of insolvency the depositor is deprived of the benefit of his deposit. The indictment contained every one of the elements: that the money was received by the" defendants and the bank insolvent to the knowledge of the defendants, and by reason of such insolvency the deposit was lost to the depositor. The facts stated constituted the crime of embezzlement, and to say that the defendants were deemed guilty of embezzlement was merely a conclusion of law. It was not necessary, after averring the facts which the statute makes embezzlement, to say that it was embezzlement or repeat the charge in another form. (2 Bishop on Grim. Pfoc.—3d ed.—sec. 318.) The acts which defendants were charged with committing constituted the crime of embezzlement, which the court would know, and it was not necessary to add information of that fact. The averments of the indictment above stated were followed by a charge that the defendants then and there, in manner and form aforesaid, the said personal goods, funds, money and property of the said David H. Hoops from the said David H. Hoops then and there being found, did then and there feloniously steal, take and carry away. These words charged larceny, but it is apparent that the offense could not be larceny under the statute, which makes it embezzlement, and the penalty fixed is different from the penalty for larceny. It is therefore conceded that this conclusion of law is to be treated as eliminated. The indictment was sufficient in substance and the motion to quash for insufficiency was properly overruled.

Another ground now alleged for quashing the indictment is that the grand jury returning it was not drawn nor summoned in accordance with the statute. There are two reasons, either one of which prevents the consideration of that question: First, no defect in .the selection or summoning of the grand jury was pointed out in the motion; and second, a motion to quash an indictment can be granted only for defects apparent upon the record, and the record does not show how the grand jury was selected or summoned. There are two methods of questioning the legality of a grand jury, and they are by a challenge to the array or motion to quash the indictment for some illegality or irregularity pointed out in the motion, which was long ago decided in Stone v. People, 2 Scam. 326. In that case the prosecuting attorney, in certifying to .the record, excluded that portion of it containing recitals of the mode of summoning and returning the venires and panels of the first and second grand and petit jurors and the time and manner of their discharge. The court said that those portions of the record were irregularly incorporated into the record, because they could alone have been regularly made a part of the record by having challenged the array and thus brought those proceedings before the court, or by a motion on affidavit of some irregularity in the proceedings connected with the issuing of the venires or the want of power in the court to issue them and execution by the sheriff for some defect apparent therein, and that they formed no more a portion of the proceedings in that case than they did in any other pending at that time in the circuit court. In McKinney v. People, 2 Gilm. 540, it was assigned for error that various matters required by law did not appear in the record, and the court, after stating the extreme technicality of the English courts in the administration of the criminal laws from a humane desire to shield those charged with crime from excessive and cruel punishments, and the different system of criminal jurisprudence prevailing in this State, said that records from the circuit court frequently contained statements which did not necessarily constitute any part of a record correctly made out. The court said that in a criminal case, after the caption stating the time and place of holding the court, the record should consist of the indictment, properly indorsed as found by the grand jury; .the arraignment of the accused; his plea; the impaneling of the traverse jury; their verdict, and the judgment; that this, in general, is all that the record need state, and if during the progress of the prosecution motions are made and overruled, the facts can be preserved by a special entry on the record or by bills of exception, and in one or the other of these ways it is necessary to preserve every fact that the prisoner may deem essential to his rights and a fair and regular trial.

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Bluebook (online)
127 N.E. 364, 293 Ill. 191, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-munday-ill-1920.