The PEOPLE v. Brown

In 1951, the grand jury of the criminal court of Cook County returned three indictments against defendant, Earnest Brown, charging him with two separate crimes of murder and one crime of rape. He pleaded guilty to all of the indictments and was sentenced to the penitentiary for concurrent terms of 199 years on each indictment. We have issued a writ of error to review the judgments of conviction.

The record shows that prior to the defendant’s pleas of guilty two sanity hearings were held. In the first hearing the judge directed the jury to return a verdict finding the defendant sane, but three…