The People v. Hudson

233 N.E.2d 403, 38 Ill. 2d 616, 1968 Ill. LEXIS 522
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 19, 1968
Docket37713
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 233 N.E.2d 403 (The People v. Hudson) 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
The People v. Hudson, 233 N.E.2d 403, 38 Ill. 2d 616, 1968 Ill. LEXIS 522 (Ill. 1968).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Kluczynski

delivered the opinion of the court: ■

In a 1961 jury trial in the circuit court of Cook County, defendant, David Hudson, was found guilty of rape and robbery and sentenced to 65 years in the penitentiary. He brings direct appeal claiming that his constitutional rights were violated by the trial court’s erroneous admission of his confessions into evidence, by the State’s withholding of evidence favorable to his defense and by the court’s undue restriction of one of his attorney’s participation in the trial.

The rape and robbery occurred at about 4:00 A.M., September 13, i960, when an intruder entered the window of the complainant’s apartment, raped her at knife point, committed unnatural acts upon her and took a wallet from her .purse. That same morning the victim described her assailant to police and shortly before 6:00 A.M., Chicago police officers, acting on a “hunch”, went to the home of the defendant and took him into custody. The police considered defendant a likely suspect because he had been arrested on August 30 with a knife in his possession while drunk and sleeping in a stairwell in the building complex where the rape and robbery were committed. While in police custody, defendant made and signed the two confessions which were admitted at trial.

We first consider defendant’s charge that his confessions were coerced and were therefore involuntary and constitutionally inadmissible. He urges that we make an independent determination of voluntariness based on the entire record, citing Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U.S. 737, 16 L. Ed. 2d 895, 86 S. Ct. 1761, and that we review the entire record under the “totality of circumstances” doctrine pronounced in Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 10 L. Ed. 2d 513, 83 S. Ct. 1336.

In determining admissibility of a confession the ultimate test is the test of voluntariness made without reference to the probable truth or falsity thereof. It is for the trial court to determine this question, and its determination depends not upon any one factor, but on the totality of all the relevant circumstances. “Thus, the scope of inquiry at the preliminary hearing must be sufficiently broad to place before the trial judge all of the relevant circumstances surrounding the taking of the confession and bearing upon the question of voluntariness. The precise scope of the preliminary hearing necessary to determine whether or not a confession is voluntary will depend somewhat upon the circumstances of each case.” (People v. Scott, 29 Ill.2d 97.) If the trial court rules the confession admissible and additional facts, not brought out at the preliminary hearing, later develop in the trial and bear upon the question of voluntariness of the confession, it is the duty of the trial court to require a thorough and complete investigation, and if such further development indicates that the confession was involuntary or that the defendant’s will was overborne when given, it becomes the duty of the trial court to set aside its previous ruling and exclude the confession. People v. Holick, 337 Ill. 333.

At the preliminary hearing, defendant testified that on September 13, i960, at 5 :4o A.M., while at home in bed, he was arrested by police officers and taken to the nth District Police Station where, although questioned and threatened with bodily harm, he denied participation in the rape and robbery. He was transferred, he said, at about noon to nth and State streets, the location of the police crime laboratory and sex bureau. There, at the request of the police officers, he voluntarily submitted to a lie test. Afterwards, he was taken to a small room in the building and informed that he had “flunked” the lie test and that his fingerprints were found at the scene of the crimes. He testified that officers threatened him and, more specifically, .Officer McFarland told him: “You read in the newspapers where we are easy on you, the police on the police force, but we are not easy ón you. We will beat the hell out of you.” He said he refused to admit implication in the crimes but that the police “got so heavy” on him “without eating or sleeping” he had to confess. In addition, he claimed that the police then took him to the scene and forced him to reenact his entry into the apartment where the crimes were committed.

When returned to the nth District Station, he initially refused to sign a statement, but did so after being threatened. Later, he made and signed another statement in the presence of the victim.

On cross-examination defendant stated that the only beating administered to him was in the small room at nth and State streets, that McFarland told him that if he were in Mississippi he would be found at the bottom of the lake and people in his situation usually “don’t have a trial”, but that “if you confess here in the State of Illinois, you will get probation, we’ll cut you loose "or send you to a mental institution.” McFarland, he said, beat him over the head and in the stomach six or seven times and only then did he “admit it.” All this occurred in the presence of other officers who did not “beat him up.”

All of the officers who participated in the interrogation and events surrounding defendant’s confessions and admissions testified. Each of them denied threatening, beating or coercing the defendant, and each said he did not hear McFarland make the statements defendant attributed to him or "see him strike defendant. McFarland, himself, specifically denied the charges. The gist of their testimony was that defendant, when taken to the police station, was interrogated for a short period and then moved to 1 ith and State streets where he was given lunch and held pending an appointment at the crime laboratory. At 4:00 P.M. he was given a lie test, lasting about an hour and a half, and then interrogated in a small room for about fifteen to twenty minutes at which time he orally admitted participation in the offenses. Subsequently, he was taken to the place where he said he threw the stolen wallet, but a search failed to uncover it. Defendant then agreed to and did re-enact his entry into the victim’s apartment. Upon his return to the district station he signed a confession at 8:45 P.M. and made a second confession in the presence of the victim at 10:3o P.M. which was signed by him and also by the victim as a witness. The trial court, upon the conclusion of this testimony, ruled the confessions admissible.

In the presentation of the People’s case at trial, testimony was given as to the circumstances surrounding the procurement of the confessions prior to their admission into evidence. Defense counsel, in chambers, insistently referred to and sought to introduce the lie-test result, bringing out that the examiner’s opinion was that defendant’s answers were inconclusive. The trial court correctly ruled the test result inadmissible and we consider that result here only insofar as it bears on the issue of voluntariness in light of defendant’s uncontroverted statement that the police said he “flunked” the test.

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Bluebook (online)
233 N.E.2d 403, 38 Ill. 2d 616, 1968 Ill. LEXIS 522, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/the-people-v-hudson-ill-1968.