Court Opinion

ID: 9884814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:15:39.114336+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:40.949700
License: Public Domain

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE UNDERWOOD, dissenting: I do not agree that it is necessary to remand this case for a new trial. In fact, it seems most unlikely that there is any real possibility of retrying in 1972 a murder case originally tried in 1957, some 15 years ago. The only defenses presented in this case were self-defense and insanity. The claim that this killing occurred in self-defense is, in my judgment, frivolous as is any argument that it occurred by misadventure, leaving for consideration only the insanity defense which the jury rejected. The majority holds that the jury was inadequately and improperly instructed, a holding with which I simply cannot agree. The opinion does not mention the fact that a jury had found the defendant competent in a pretrial hearing. At trial the evidence supporting the contention that the defendant was legally insane consisted, in large measure, of his own testimony. Dr. Haines concluded that the defendant was legally sane at the time of the offense, and, contrary to the inference that arises from the majority’s statement, the doctor substantiated the defendant’s testimony concerning his mental illness and treatment only to a limited extent, there being no corroboration of defendant’s testimony that he was admitted to the hospital in a strait jacket or that he received shock treatments while a patient. It is clear that the issue of legal culpability depended largely upon defendant’s credibility in the eyes of the jury. That question was determined adversely to defendant, as is apparent from the jury’s rejection of both his insanity and self-defense contentions. The alleged insufficiency of defendant’s instruction No. 8 was that it stated the applicable law in the negative. In my view the positive statement of law was clearly implied and furthermore this was defendant’s own instruction and therefore provides no ground for complaint nor basis for reversal. (See dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Ryan.) Additionally the inadequacy of this instruction could not .have been cured by either of the refused instructions for they were relevant only as they attempted to indicate the State’s burden of proof on the insanity issue. Those instructions might well have been given, but in view of the circumstances of this case, the refusal to do so was not, in my judgment, reversible error. The action of the trial court did not prevent the defendant from tendering an accurate instruction on the law of insanity which was in fact read to the defense counsel by the trial judge during the conference on instructions, but which defense counsel chose to ignore. Finally, the State’s instruction No. 11 was tendered without objection by the defendant at trial and cannot now be questioned unless it was “plain error,” and I do not so regard it. See Supreme Court Rules 615(a), 451(c). 50 Ill.2d R. 615(a), 451(c). I would accordingly affirm the judgment.