{ "id": 2794999, "name": "The People of the State of Illinois, Defendant in Error, vs. Robert Lee, Plaintiff in Error", "name_abbreviation": "People v. Lee", "decision_date": "1961-09-22", "docket_number": "No. 36353", "first_page": "80", "last_page": "87", "citations": [ { "type": "official", "cite": "23 Ill. 2d 80" } ], "court": { "name_abbreviation": "Ill.", "id": 8772, "name": "Illinois Supreme Court" }, "jurisdiction": { "id": 29, "name_long": "Illinois", "name": "Ill." }, "cites_to": [ { "cite": "19 Ill.2d 602", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ill. 2d", "case_ids": [ 2744094 ], "pin_cites": [ { "page": "608" } ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ill-2d/19/0602-01" ] } ], "analysis": { "cardinality": 658, "char_count": 13633, "ocr_confidence": 0.793, "pagerank": { "raw": 6.307992816334927e-08, "percentile": 0.38803652259262994 }, "sha256": "46e4682e6fb7668e4c78becbf25dcce2e31b0c0872d1f28f5714bcfc66aae298", "simhash": "1:0a3863b26f2de25e", "word_count": 2354 }, "last_updated": "2023-07-14T18:46:42.308421+00:00", "provenance": { "date_added": "2019-08-29", "source": "Harvard", "batch": "2018" }, "casebody": { "judges": [], "parties": [ "The People of the State of Illinois, Defendant in Error, vs. Robert Lee, Plaintiff in Error." ], "opinions": [ { "text": "Mr. Chief Justice Bristow\ndelivered the opinion of the court:\nDefendant, Robert Lee, seeks review of a judgment of the criminal court of Cook County finding him guilty of raping his 16-year-old stepdaughter, and sentencing him to a term of seven years in the State Penitentiary. The sole issue on this review is whether defendant was proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.\nFrom the record it appears that the complaining witness, Frances Jean Maloney, had lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, prior to her mother\u2019s marriage to defendant in December 1957. There she was an honor student at the Chrispus Attucks High School, which her mother and uncles had also attended years before. At the time of the alleged events in October 1959, the girl was 16 years old and lived with her mother, her 84-year-old grandmother, two brothers, an infant sister, and her stepfather, the defendant, in a two-bedroom apartment on the south side of Chicago. She and her 13-year-old brother, Arnold, slept in a small den, to which there was no door, and the boy\u2019s bed was about three or four feet from hers.\nAccording to her testimony, sometime after she had gone to bed on the night of October 12, 1959, she was awakened to find defendant in bed with her. He held something like a sheet tightly around her neck so that she could not scream, and he warned her not to make any noise or he would pull it tighter. While struggling, she reached down and grabbed a shoe, which she threw at her brother to awaken him. The crotch of her pajamas had been cut, and defendant criminally assaulted here. After a few minutes, defendant got up, and the girl went into the bathroom crying. She claims defendant followed her and put his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet and that her brother summoned the mother, who had been asleep in the bedroom with the infant. The girl, the mother and defendant then went into the bedroom, where the girl told the mother what had happened. The mother said she didn\u2019t know what to do, and defendant said, \u201cWe discuss it.\u201d The girl was then told to go back to bed. In recalling this occasion, she testified that she did not bleed, and could not remember \u201cif she was irritated.\u201d\nIn connection with this episode the 13-year-old brother testified that he awoke and heard defendant talking \u201csex talk\u201d to his sister. As he faced the wall pretending to be asleep, he heard a tussle, and a few minutes later something hit him. He turned to find his sister half on the bed and half on the floor, and his stepfather trying to put her back into the bed. When his stepfather walked away, his sister went into the bathroom crying and his stepfather followed her. The boy ran to get his mother from the bedroom, and she came and found the girl lying on the bathroom floor hysterical. The stepfather was \u201cdown there trying to get her up, and had a towel in his hand.\u201d After a while the mother, stepfather and girl went into the bedroom, and the boy went back to bed. He did not hear what they were talking about; nor did he hear anything in connection with the other alleged rapings.\nThe girl testified further that defendant raped her again on October 19, 20, 21 and 23. On each of these occasions he held a cloth tightly around her neck and warned her not to scream out. After the experience of the 20th, the defendant said, \u201cDo you mean this is your first time ?\u201d When she said, \u201cYes,\u201d he told her that she might be unhappy at home, but if she ran off and got married he\u2019d slit her throat. When she told her mother about this, the mother said that she didn\u2019t know what action to take. Defendant kept saying that they should keep it in the family and not tell the uncles, and that he wouldn\u2019t do it again. On the last occasion of October 23, the girl was sleeping in her mother\u2019s bedroom and the mother was supposed to be sitting up in the living room so that the girl could sleep undisturbed. The mother fell asleep, however, and according to the girl\u2019s testimony, defendant came in with a knife, with which he cut her cheek, and warned her that if she didn\u2019t be still he would make her pregnant. When the girl told the mother what had happened, she asked her mother if she might go someplace else to live. The mother reportedly said that it would probably be the only solution.\nThe following morning the girl went to the drug store and telephoned a Mrs. Wickliffe, the director of the Department for Exceptional Children at Chrispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, who had befriended the girl when she was at the school. She told the woman that she had to go to Indianapolis, that something serious was going on in their home, and that her stepfather had molested her. Later that afternoon, Mrs. Wickcliffe and a friend arrived at the Lee apartment. According to Mrs. Wickliffe\u2019s testimony, the stepfather was home and there was much tension. The girl and her mother both said they were frightened, and the mother explained that her husband didn\u2019t want the girl to leave. When they were in the bathroom alone, the mother told the woman that she wanted the girl to go to Indianapolis. Mrs. Wickliffe then left, saying that she would return later.\nOn her return around 10 o\u2019clock that night, Mrs. Wickliffe was accompanied by her friend and two police officers, whom she had called because she was fearful of the area and of defendant. When Mrs. Wickliffe asked the mother to sign the paper, prepared in the interval, which would give the woman the right to take the girl to Indianapolis, the mother said she didn\u2019t know anything about it. Defendant prevented Mrs. Wickliffe from talking further to the mother, and belligerently told them that the girl couldn\u2019t leave. Mrs. Wickliffe then told the girl to tell the officer what had happened, and the girl told the police officers in defendant\u2019s presence that he had raped her five times.\nThe arresting officer testified that he had been told that the girl had been molested by her stepfather, and that he and his partner went up to the Lee apartment with Mrs. Wickliffe to see what it was all about. Defendant became belligerent about the girl\u2019s leaving. The officer said that serious charges had been made, which he intended to investigate. After the girl told about the rapes, in defendant\u2019s presence, the officer asked her whether she would be willing to make formal charges, and she agreed to do so. The officer then placed defendant under arrest, and asked the whereabouts of the mother. Apparently she had been in bed, and when asked by the officer, in defendant\u2019s presence, if she were aware of her daughter being raped, she said that she was, but couldn\u2019t do anything about it because the police weren\u2019t there and she had no phene. They all went down to the police station, where, according to the officer\u2019s testimony, the girl repeated the accusation against defendant, the mother again said that she felt there wasn\u2019t anything that could be done about it and she didn\u2019t want to bring embarrassment on her family, and defendant refused to make any statement without his attorney.\nThe officer further testified that he noted at the time the scar on the girl\u2019s cheek, and she explained that it was made by defendant with a knife when he was raping her. The following day defendant stated in the officer\u2019s presence, when questioned in the assistant State\u2019s Attorney\u2019s office, that he had awakened the girl on several occasions after she had retired for the night \u201cto look at television with her.\u201d\nThe girl was taken to the Juvenile Home. She was examined by a doctor on October 26th. According to the medical report and testimony, the hymen was \u201cdistensible and irregular,\u201d and the vagina admitted two fingers, suggesting prior intercourse. There was vaginal and menstrual discharge during the examination, and no recent lacerations or evidence of recent rape. The doctor admitted that if the asault had taken place two weeks before, the lacerations would have healed. The last normal menstrual period was on the \u201cioth-25th-i959.\u201d\nAt the trial the mother reluctantly testified as the court\u2019s witness. She stated that the girl complained to her on one occasion during that week that \u201cshe \u2014 her rest had been disturbed and suggested that he (defendant) had molested her.\u201d The mother admitted that she signed the complaint, but said that she had been confused and \u201churled into something,\u201d and she knew of no rape until she was at the police station. She admitted, however, making an examination of the bed clothes at the time her daughter complained, \u201con the basis of curiosity.\u201d With respect to her daughter\u2019s veracity, she said, \u201cI feel that perhaps she will \u2014 I will negate that. She will, as will all adolescents, falsify a fact if she has some particular point to make by so doing.\u201d\nThe defendant denied having carnal knowledge of the girl, and claimed he merely awakened her to watch television with him, and she occasionally objected to this. He testified that she struck him and he struck her back and then used the foul language. There were in addition two witnesses who testified that defendant\u2019s general reputation in the community was good.\nDefendant contends that it was error for the trial court to enter a finding of guilty, since the uncorroborated and contradictory testimony of the prosecutrix did not constitute proof of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.\nAlthough corroboration was unnecessary (People v. Walden, 19 Ill.2d 602, 608), our review of the record shows that the girl\u2019s account of the rape on October 12, 1959, was corroborated at least circumstantially by the testimony of her brother. His account of hearing the tussle and defendant\u2019s sex talk, of being struck by something, which the girl claimed she threw to awaken him, of seeing defendant struggling to put his sister back into the bed, of her going into the bathrom crying, of his running to get his mother, of the bathroom scene with his sister lying hysterical on the bathroom floor, and their all going into the bedroom afterward, substantiates the girl\u2019s testimony of what transpired, rather than defendant\u2019s story of a quarrel because the girl objected to his waking her to watch television.\nThe prosecution\u2019s case is also strengthened by the police officer\u2019s testimony that the mother originally admitted in defendant\u2019s presence, both at the apartment and at the police station, that she knew about the rapes but didn\u2019t know what to do about them, since she had no phone to call the police and didn\u2019t want to embarrass the family. These admissions, together with the fact that she signed the complaint, certainly affect the credibility of her subsequent testimony, as the reluctant witness of the court, that she had no knowledge of the rapes, and thought that her daughter, like all adolescents, might falsify a fact to make a point. A careful reading of the record, moreover, indicates that she was in fear of defendant. She openly expressed such fear to Mrs. Wickliffe, and it is reflected in her conduct at the apartment. The fear seems to be not without basis in view of the 3-inch scar, or \u201cscratch\u201d as defendant\u2019s counsel refers to it, on the girl\u2019s cheek, inflicted by defendant, and which he did not deny.\nOf further significance in support of the prosecution is the fact that defendant did not deny the rapes when accused by the girl at the apartment and again at the police station. There, according to the testimony of the police officer, he merely refused to say anything until he had a lawyer. The television explanation and denial came later. The trial judge apparently gave limited credence to it and did not consider it sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt. Nor do we.\nNor is such doubt created by the medical report and testimony. It shows at most \u201cno recent evidence of rape.\u201d However, the doctor admitted that any lacerations on the 12th would have healed within two weeks. The examination, moreover, was impeded by the reported vaginal and menstrual discharge. The presence of such menstrual discharge on the 26th, when the examination was made, substantiates the prosecution\u2019s interpretation that the girl\u2019s last monthly period began on October 25th, so that she could have been raped on the 12th without any bleeding, just as she testified. The phrase \u201clast normal monthly period it was on the ioth-25th-i959\u201d obviously refers to the 25th day of October, which is the 10th month, and does not mean that normal menstruation occurred on both the 10th and 25th of the month or extended between the dates, as defendant suggests, in trying to show that she would have been bleeding on the 12th when the rape occurred.\nNor do we perceive any merit in any other alleged contradictions in the girl\u2019s testimony. The fact that she was characterized as bright and used polysyllable words, and did not like her stepfather, or was happier in Indianapolis, do not constitute evidence rebutting the rape. Those were factors bearing on her veracity and were in the domain of the trial judge to evaluate.\nOn the basis of our analysis of this record, we find that the defendant was proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and there are no grounds for setting aside the sentence.\nJudgment affirmed.", "type": "majority", "author": "Mr. Chief Justice Bristow" } ], "attorneys": [ "McCoy, Ming & Leighton, of Chicago, (George N. Leighton, of counsel,) for plaintiff in error.", "William G. Clark, Attorney General, of Springfield, and Daniel P. Ward, State\u2019s Attorney, of Chicago, (Fred G. Leach, Assistant Attorney General, and John T. Gallagher and James R. Thompson, Assistant State\u2019s Attorneys, of counsel,) for the People." ], "corrections": "", "head_matter": "(No. 36353.\nThe People of the State of Illinois, Defendant in Error, vs. Robert Lee, Plaintiff in Error.\nOpinion filed September 22, 1961.\nMcCoy, Ming & Leighton, of Chicago, (George N. Leighton, of counsel,) for plaintiff in error.\nWilliam G. Clark, Attorney General, of Springfield, and Daniel P. Ward, State\u2019s Attorney, of Chicago, (Fred G. Leach, Assistant Attorney General, and John T. Gallagher and James R. Thompson, Assistant State\u2019s Attorneys, of counsel,) for the People." }, "file_name": "0080-01", "first_page_order": 80, "last_page_order": 87 }