Court Opinion

ID: 9884812
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:15:38.842425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:40.945438
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE SCHAEFER, dissenting: The statutory privilege was applied in this case to bar the defendants from showing the extent to which those witnesses whose testimony was most damaging to them had profited by reason of the fire, and in my opinion that privilege, so applied, deprived them of due process of law. Any legitimate purpose served by the privilege could be fully achieved without extending its scope to criminal cases. The situation here does not seem to me to be at all analogous to the Federal statutes which protect required accident reports from disclosure in civil actions for damages. I am also of the opinion that the defendants’ due-process rights were violated when the trial court refused to permit the defendants to call Maggie Davis as a witness. And since the trial court was unwilling to hear any testimony from Maggie Davis, I do not understand why an offer of proof, on which the court insists, was even appropriate, much less essential. Bartholow v. Davies (1916), 276 Ill. 505, 515. Even apart from these errors, both of which cut off evidence favorable to the defendants, I am not satisfied that their guilt was proved beyond a reasonable doubt.