Phillips v. People

Citations

• 55 Ill. 429

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal law—verdict upon special plea,. Where a party had pleaded not guilty to an indictment for an assault with intent to murder, and under which he could have been convicted of the lesser offense, an assault with intent to do a bodily injury, an application for leave to withdraw his plea of not guilty for the purpose of filing a special plea of former conviction in another jurisdiction for the same offense, was regarded of a most dangerous character to the accused, because, if he had failed in his special plea, the jury would have been compelled to find him guilty of the higher offense charged in the indictment.</p> <p>2. If such a plea were a proper one, it would be in the nature of a plea puis darrein continuance in civil cases, and the legal effect of it might be, if the defense arose after the plea of not guilty was entered, a waiver of the latter plea.</p> <p>3. Same—withdrawing plea of not guilty and fling special plea—how far discretionary. An application for leave to withdraw a plea of not guilty in such case, and to file the special plea, is so far addressed to the sound discretion of the court, that nothing short of a clear abuse of it can be assigned as error.</p> <p>4 Same—former conviction—whether a bar—of being twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. While it is true, that a person shall not be subject, for the same offense, to be twice put in jeopardy, yet a conviction and punishment in another State for a crime against our own laws, can not, in any legal sense, constitute that jeopardy.</p> <p>5. So where a party was indicted in this State, in a county bordering on the Mississippi river, for an offense committed upon a boat attached to the east bank of the river, and within the jurisdiction of this State, and was afterwards indicted in the State of Iowa, on the opposite side of the river, for an offense of the same character, alleged to have been committed within the jurisdiction of the latter State, and was convicted upon proof of the