delivered the opinion of the court:
Defendant, Jimmie Jackson, was convicted of the crime of armed robbery after a jury trial in the criminal court of Cook County and was sentenced to the penitentiary for a term of not less than ten nor more than twenty years. He has sued out this writ of error for review.
On December 31, 1957, about 9:30 A.M., Edward Harris, the owner of a grocery store in Chicago, was held up by an armed robber at his place of business and robbed of a sum he estimated to be $150. The money taken was in change and small bills, and it appears that another man had come into the store to make some small purchases immediately before the appearance of the armed robber. Persons outside the store saw four men drive away in a blue Oldsmobile with one license plate, and this information, together with a description of the men who had been in the store, was communicated to the police. One hour later, several miles from the scene of the crime, defendant, together with Isaac Hoskins, James Shanklin and Rick Taylor, were arrested by an officer who had heard a description of the car and its occupants over police radio. Other officers, including members of a city-wide task force, came to the scene of the arrest and a pistol was found behind the cushion in the rear seat of the car. A search of the men taken into custody produced change and small bills in the following amounts: Defendant — $10; Hoskins — $13.84; Taylor— $14.25 ; and Shanklin — $14.05.
At about 1 :oo P.M. Harris came to the police station in the district where the arrest had occurred and identified defendant as the armed robber, and Hoskins as the man who had preceded defendant into the store. He could not identify Taylor or Shanklin as having any connection with the robbery. The four men were held at the station and were questioned “on and off,” both singly and collectively, with Hoskins and Shanklin refusing to answer any questions. At about 3 :oo P.M., task force detectives arrived at the station and under their questioning defendant made an oral admission of guilt, while Taylor made an exculpatory statement. Defendant’s statement, which implicated all four men, was then typed and ultimately signed by him at about 6:30 P.M. He was not taken before a magistrate at any time on December 31 and, since the ensuing day was a legal holiday, it was not until January 2 that he was produced before a judicial officer.
At the trial the confession was admitted into evidence over defendant’s objection and the errors here assigned go largely to the question of its admissibility. Outside of the element of alleged illegal detention, no claim is made in this court that improper methods of physical or psychological coercion were - used to obtain the confession against the defendant’s will.
Section 7 of division VI of our Criminal Code directs that a person arrested without a warrant' shall be taken before a magistrate “without unnecessary delay,” (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1957, chap. 38, par. 660,) and defendant calls our attention to the fact that Rule 5 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure contains an identical command to Federal officers. It is defendant’s first contention that there was unnecessary and thus illegal delay in taking him before a magistrate and, pointing to the sameness of our statute and the Federal rule, he urges that this court should adopt a Federal rule of evidence first promulgated in McNabb v. United States,
Other than to point out that the McNabb rule is but a rule of evidence for criminal trials in the Federal courts, and that it does not arise from constitutional sources so as to extend to State prosecutions as a requirement of the fourteenth amendment, (Gallegos v. Nebraska,
Statutes requiring that arrested persons be taken promptly before a judicial officer have been adopted by nearly all of the States as well as the Federal government. And while such statutes, like our own, require by their terms that law enforcement officers perform such duty “forthwith,” “immediately,” or “without unnecessary delay,” courts have uniformly held that some latitude is allowed, and that the duty must be performed with such reasonable promptness and dispatch as the circumstances may permit. (See: 6 C.J.S., Arrest., sec. 17b; 4 Am. Jur., Arrests, sec. 70; and cases there cited.) In short, no arbitrary rule may be judicially fixed, but whether there was or was not unreasonable delay must be determined from all the facts and circumstances of the particular case.
Two prior decisions of this court have persuasive application here and serve in particular to refute defendant’s argument that any delay after the time he was identified by Harris was unreasonable and illegal delay. In People v. Scott,
People v. Kelly,
Here the period of detention is measured in hours instead of days. Moreover, there are other circumstances which point up that the delay was neither unreasonable nor unnecessary. The period of approximately five hours that elapsed between the time defendant was identified and the time he signed his confession was not taken up with the examination of defendant alone, but also with the interrogation of the three men arrested with him, and with the typewritten preparation of both defendant’s confession and Taylor’s exculpatory statement. Since four men were questioned both separately and together in the brief period before defendant orally admitted his guilt, we cannot say the time consumed exceeded reasonable routine. It appears, too, that some of the time was consumed by the preparation of reports by the arresting officers and by the formal booking of all four men.
From all of the circumstances, we conclude there was no unreasonable delay or illegal detention so as to deny defendant the statutory right upon which he relies. The legislative directions that an accused be taken before a magistrate “forthwith” or “without unnecessary delay” cannot mean that police officers must forsake all other duties to comply, and neither can they mean that the police do not have reasonable latitude to fully investigate a crime.
What we have said disposes of defendant’s further contention that the admission of the confession obtained during “unlawful detention” deprived him of due process of law. There was no unlawful detention. Furthermore, while we have recognized that illegal detention is a circumstance to be considered in determining the voluntary or involuntary character of a confession, (People v. La Frana,
The judgment of the criminal court of Cook County is affirmed.
Judgment affirmed.