Court Opinion

ID: 9711800
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:39:37.763564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:07.579321
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE McNAMARA, dissenting: I disagree with the conclusion reached in the majority opinion that the court’s direction of a verdict on the charge of deviate sexual assault removes from consideration much of the evidence on which the State relies to support the jury’s verdict which found defendant guilty of indecent liberties with a child. The purpose of a motion for a directed verdict by a defendant in a criminal case is to present the question of law as to whether the evidence which has been presented is sufficient to sustain a conviction for the crime charged. (People v. Chiafreddo, 381 Ill. 214, 44 N.E.2d 888; People v. Post, 78 Ill.App.2d 121, 223 N.E.2d 238.) In directing a verdict as to the charge of deviate sexual assault, the trial judge merely found that the State had failed to prove one of the elements of the crime. That direction of a verdict did not, as the majority suggests, create any constitutional issue as to the remaining charge of indecent liberties with a child. It is not necessary, however, to consider any such question in determining the issues on this appeal. In directing the verdict, the trial court obviously held that there was no testimony as to the legal element of force necessary to support the charge of deviate sexual assault. The majority opinion, however, states that force is presumed as a matter of law when the crime of deviate sexual assault is committed against a victim of tender years. The majority directs my attention to no authority so holding that to be the law. And in my view, the assertion of such a rule is unique in construing this crime either under case law or statute. This court has applied the rule that force or threat of force is an essential element of the crime of deviate sexual assault. (People v. Fickes, 89 Ill.App.2d 300, 231 N.E.2d 602; People v. Bruno, 110 Ill.App. 2d 219, 249 N.E.2d 252.) Moreover, section 11 — 3(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides: “Any person of the age of 14 years and upward who, by force or threat of force, compels any other person to perform or submit to any act of deviate sexual conduct commits deviate sexual assault.” The Committee Comments state: “However, deviate sexual assault is restricted to force and intimidation situations, which áre more serious.” The principle that force is not presumed by the law in a crime of deviate sexual assault against a victim of tender years becomes more evident upon an examination of the section of the Code of Criminal Procedure which creates the crime of indecent liberties with a child. Section 11 — 4 of the Code provides: “(a) Any person of the age of 17 years and upwards who performs or submits to any of the following acts with a child under the age of 16 commits indecent liberties with a child: (1) Any act of sexual intercourse; or (2) Any act of deviate sexual conduct; or (3) Any lewd fondling or touching of either the child or the person done or submitted to with the intent to arouse or to satisfy the sexual desires of either the child or the person or both.” The Committee Comments to that section state: “Note, however, that the requirement is only of ‘any act of deviate sexual conduct,’ which includes such acts performed with the consent of the child, and is not restricted to the force situations required in Deviate Sexual Assault.” The General Assembly did not require proof of force in a prosecution for indecent liberties with a child. It seems evident that the General Assembly did intend to require proof of force as an element of deviate sexual assault, notwithstanding the fact that the victim was a child. The language of the statute defining the two crimes requires this conclusion. It also seems clear that the direction of a verdict in the deviate sexual assault charge in the instant case would not prevent the jury from considering all of the evidence in the indecent liberties charge, including the circumstantial evidence that defendant had inserted his penis in the child’s rectum. The majority’s reliance on People v. Haran, 27 Ill.2d 229, 188 N.E.2d 707, is misplaced. In that case, defendant was charged with rape, statutory rape and a crime against nature arising out of the same conduct. He was tried for rape and statutory rape and found not guilty by a jury. Fourteen months later, he was tried and convicted of a crime against nature. In reversing and remanding the conviction for a new trial, the court found that the only fact necessary to support a conviction for statutory rape was that defendant had intercourse with the victim. Since, in the earlier trial, a jury had found defendant not guilty of statutory rape, that finding amounted to a determination that defendant did not have sexual intercourse with the prosecutrix. The court, therefore, held that in a subsequent trial the State was estopped from presenting evidence of the intercourse. No such estoppel attaches as to any fact in the case at bar as the result of the directed verdict. Specifically, the prosecution was not estopped from presenting evidence that defendant had inserted his penis in the child’s rectum to establish the proof for the charge of indecent liberties with a child, nor was the jury estopped from a consideration of that evidence. The remaining question is whether the evidence adduced was sufficient to support the finding of guilty on the charge of indecent liberties with a child. The majority opinion would limit the evidence in support of the charge to that which would show a fondling or caressing of the child. I do not believe that the wording of the statute limits the prosecution of the crime to violations of a tender and caressing nature. The subsection under which the defendant was charged was sufficiently broad to include the conduct described at trial; and, the Committee Comments support this interpretation: “The language of subsection (a) (3) is probably broad enough to encompass those acts more specifically described in the two preceding subsections.” Further, the testimony and the exhibits, though circumstantial, were more than sufficient to prove each element of the crime. That evidence may be set forth briefly. Defendant, although emerging from a tavern necessarily equipped with washroom facilities, asked the child’s mother for the key to her apartment in order to use the toilet. About 15 minutes later, the child’s scream attracted the mother’s attention. She hastened to the door, but defendant failed to open the locked door for about five minutes. When defendant finally opened the door, the mother found him with his trousers unzipped and holding the baby. A doctor testified that the skin at the child’s rectum was torn, and also testified that the insertion of some foreign object from the outside could have caused the injury. Most inculpating, a police department chemist testified that there was fecal matter and blood not only on defendant’s trousers, but also on his undershorts. The defendant’s testimony that when he exited from the washroom, he noticed that the child was without a diaper and that he was looking for a diaper when the child had a bowel movement, was contradicted by the testimony of the mother. She testified that before she left the apartment she diapered the child, put the child to bed in his own bedroom, and when she returned she found that the child did not have a diaper, and that she found the unsoiled diaper the next day behind the open door in her bedroom near a clothes hamper. The evidence was sufficient to prove defendant guilty of indecent liberties with a child beyond a reasonable doubt. The directed verdict of not guilty as to the other charge in no way tainted the evidence presented to the jury. Accordingly, I would affirm the conviction.