People v. Munday

215 Ill. App. 356, 1919 Ill. App. LEXIS 57
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedOctober 14, 1919
DocketGen. No. 6,604
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 215 Ill. App. 356 (People v. Munday) 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. Munday, 215 Ill. App. 356, 1919 Ill. App. LEXIS 57 (Ill. Ct. App. 1919).

Opinions

Mr. Justice Dibell

delivered the opinion of the court.

William Lorimer, Sr., Charles B. Munday, Charles G. Fox and Thomas McDonald, were indicted by a grand jury in the Criminal Court of Cook county on the charge that, as officers of the LaSalle Street Trust & Savings Bank (hereinafter called the bank), they received a deposit of $275 from David H. Hoops on June 11, 1914, when said bank was insolvent and when said defendants well knew of said insolvency, and thereby said deposit was lost to Hoops. Munday took a change of venue to the Circuit Court of Grundy county. A motion to quash the indictment was denied. Munday pleaded not guilty and was tried and found guilty, and his punishment was fixed at imprisonment in the penitentiary and a fine of $550. Motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment were denied and there was a judgment upon the verdict. Munday prosecutes this writ of error to review said proceedings. Lorimer and Munday and others were indicted by the same grand jury for conspiracy to ruin this same bank. Munday had a like change of venue to the Circuit Court of Grundy county, and was there tried. The judgment in that case was reviewed in People v. Munday, 204 Ill. App. 24, and 280 Ill. 32. The opinions there published give a history of the origin, conduct and failure of the bank which need not be repeated here.

1. On the day set for the trial of the cause defendant appeared in person and by counsel and moved to dismiss the suit on the ground that the record and files did not show any jurisdiction. This motion was submitted without argument, and was denied. The bill of exceptions does not show whether any proofs were offered upon that motion, unless the statement at the close of the evidence that this is all the evidence offered upon the trial can be understood to apply to motions heard before the trial began. In the latter ease it means that no evidence was offered upon the hearing of the motion. If that statement does not apply to motions heard before the trial began, then the bill of exceptions is silent as to whether evidence was heard on said motion or not. Defendant then entered a written motion to strike from the files the transcript of the record of the Criminal Court of Cook county. The attorney for the People read some portions of said transcript. The bill of exceptions does not show whether any proofs were offeree! upon that motion. Defendant’s counsel submitted the motion without argument, and it was denied. The transcript does not show a bail bond given by defendant for his appearance at the Circuit Court of Grundy county, but he was there in open court, and for aught that here appears he may have been produced in the custody of the proper officer of the law. No reason appears why these motions were not properly denied. Counsel for defendant then renewed a motion previously made in Cook county to quash the indictment, and declined to argue it, and it was denied. Two grounds for said motion are here asserted. The first is that the grand jury which found this indictment was illegally drawn. There are several answers to this contention. The abstract only shows a motion by defendant to quash' the indictment, and that that motion was overruled, and that defendant excepted. Whether any points were filed in support of that motion does not appear, nor whether, if in writing, the supposed illegal drawing of the grand jury was one of them, does not appear in the abstract. For aught that appears in the abstract the points may have been in writing, and the point that the grand jury was illegally drawn may have been omitted therefrom, and, if so, it was waived. For want of a sufficient abstract on this subject, no such question is presented for review. Again, the bill of exceptions does not show what proof was heard by the court on this motion, and in the absence of any statement whether any or what proof was heard by the court on that motion we must assume in support of the ruling of the court that the proof justified its action. But defendant contends that the common-law record shows that the grand jury was illegally drawn. This indictment was presented by the grand jury on October 22, 1914. The clerk has inserted in the record kept by him a general order of the Criminal Court of. Cook county on September 11, 1914, at a prior term, directing the clerk to draw from the grand jury box fifty names of persons to appear as grand jurors and to issue a venire for said persons to appear on the second Monday of the next term to constitute a grand jury. We doubt very much whether this general order at a prior term is any part of the common-law record of this case. If not, it could not be made so by the mere act of the clerk in copying it into this record, but should have been offered in evidence and embodied in the bill of exceptions in order to preserve it for our consideration. The next matter copied into the record by the clerk and necessary to enable defendant to question the drawing of this grand jury is a statement by the clerk that he did repair to said jury box and draw therefrom fifty names and issue a venire for said persons. We are of the opinion that said certificate did not become a part of the common-law record by the mere fact that the clerk of the court copied it into this .record. The statute does require the clerk to certify to the sheriff the names drawn, that they may be summoned according to law. That writ issued to the sheriff is not in this record. If the clerk did draw fifty names from the box and did issue a venire for them, those facts should have been proved at the hearing upon the motion to quash, and that proof should have been preserved in the bill of exceptions. The alleged facts so certified by the clerk are not preserved for our consideration. But if all the above properly appeared in the record, still it may be that the venire and return by the sheriff thereon (absent from this record) would show that the sheriff was able to find only twenty-three of the fifty persons named. It is argued that the sheriff selected'at his pleasure twenty-three out of the fifty, but that is not necessarily so. These facts, if they existed, should have been proved on the hearing of the motion to quash and preserved in the bill of exceptions. The action of the court on this question is sustained either by assuming that no proof was offered, or that proof was heard and it did not sustain the contention of defendant. Clearly the record does not present this question for review. In any view of what the record really is, it does not show that the grand jury was illegal. We do not concede that the order to draw fifty names and compliance therewith made it illegal.

2. It is also said that the indictment is bad because it does not charge embezzlement, but uses the words “feloniously steal,” and that its allegations are not aided by the charge that defendants “are deemed to have committed the crime of embezzlement.” This indictment is in the main in the language of the statute, and an indictment so drawn is usually considered sufficiently technical and correct. It appears to be in the form approved in Meadowcroft v. People, 163 Ill. 56. In a like case under the same statute in People v. Paisley, 288 Ill. 310, it was held that the word “feloniously” should be treated as surplusage. The same rule should be applied to the use of the word “steal.” The court did not err in overruling the motion to quash the indictment.

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34 N.E.2d 552 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 1941)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
215 Ill. App. 356, 1919 Ill. App. LEXIS 57, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-munday-illappct-1919.