Ciucci v. Illinois/Opinion of the Court

Petitioner was charged in four separate indictments with murdering his wife and three children, all of whom, with bullet wounds in their heads, were found dead in a burning building during the early hours of December 5, 1953. In three successive trials, petitioner was found guilty of the first degree murder of his wife and two of his children. At each of the trials the prosecution introduced into evidence details of all four deaths. Under Illinois law the jury is charged with the responsibility of fixing the penalty for first degree murder from 14 years' imprisonment to death. Ill.Rev.Stat. 1957, c. 38, § 360. At the first two trials, involving the death of the wife and one of the children, the jury fixed the penalty at 20 and 45 years' imprisonment respectively. At the third trial, involving the death of a second child, the penalty was fixed at death. On appeal the Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed the conviction, 8 Ill.2d 619, 137 N.E.2d 40, and we granted certiorari to consider petitioner's claim that this third trial violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 353 U.S. 982, 77 S.Ct. 1286, 1 L.Ed.2d 1141.

It is conceded that under Illinois law each of the murders, although apparently taking place at the same time, constituted a separate crime and it is undisputed that evidence of the entire occurrence was relevant in each of the three prosecutions. In his brief in this Court petitioner has appended a number of articles which had appeared in Chicago newspapers after the first and second trials attributing to the prosecution certain statements expressing extreme dissatisfaction with the prison sentences fixed by the jury and announcing a determined purpose to prosecute petitioner until a death sentence was obtained. Neither these articles nor their subject matter is included in the record certified to this Court from the Supreme Court of Illinois.

The five members of the Court who join in this opinion are in agreement that upon the record as it stands no violation of due process has been shown. The State was constitutionally entitled to prosecute these individual offenses singly at separate trials, and to utilize therein all relevant evidence, in the absence of proof establishing that such a course of action entailed fundamental unfairness. Hoag v. New Jersey, 356 U.S. 464, 78 S.Ct. 829; see Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 328, 58 S.Ct. 149, 153, 82 L.Ed. 288. Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER and Mr. Justice HARLAN, although believing that the matters set forth in the aforementioned newspaper articles might, if established, require a ruling that fundamental unfairness existed here, concur in the affirmance of the judgment because this material, not being part of the record, and not having been considered by the state courts, may not be considered here.

Accordingly, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Illinois is affirmed, with leave to petitioner to institute such further proceedings as may be available to him for the purpose of substantiating the claim that he was deprived of due process.

It is so ordered.

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Mr. Justice BRENNAN concur, dissenting.