Daigle v. United States

• Decision Date: 05 April 1950
• Docket Number: No. 4464.,4464.
• Citation: 181 F.2d 311
• Parties: DAIGLE v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

181 F.2d 311 (1950)

DAIGLE v. UNITED STATES.

No. 4464.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit

April 5, 1950.

Robert J. Doyle, Nashua, N. H., for appellant.

Robert D. Branch, Asst. U. S. Atty, Concord, N. H. (John J. Sheehan, U. S. Atty., Concord, N. H., on brief), for appellee.

Before MAGRUDER, Chief Judge, WOODBURY, Circuit Judge, and SWEENEY, District Judge.

WOODBURY, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment sentencing the appellant to a term of imprisonment after he had been found guilty by a jury of knowingly transporting and causing to be transported a girl from Manchester, New Hampshire, to Boston, Massachusetts, for an immoral purpose in violation of § 2 of the White Slave Traffic Act, 36 Stat. 825, 18 U.S.C.A. § 398, now 18 U.S.C.A. § 2421. The principal contention on this appeal is that the evidence is not sufficient to support the conviction.

The testimony is conflicting, but from it the jury could well find that the defendant first met the girl involved sometime in 1946 or 1947 when she was about fourteen years old; that from that time on he had sexual intercourse with her on several occasions until just prior to April 23, 1948, when she was committed to the New Hampshire Industrial School in Manchester; that on August 9, 1948, at about 8 o'clock in the morning, the defendant drove up to the vicinity of the school in his car with the girl's brother; that she met them, entered the car at their invitation, and that the defendant then drove them to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where by prearrangement they met a friend of the defendant's who drove them all on to Boston in his car. In Boston the defendant and the girl separated from the others and took a taxicab to a hotel where the defendant engaged a room for the girl, and bought her a meal. Then it appears that the two went to the movies and after that returned to the hotel room where they had sexual intercourse. Following this the two, with other friends who had joined them, went to "night clubs", and then, leaving the girl at the hotel, the defendant returned to Lawrence to pick up his car and drive to his summer cottage at a New Hampshire beach. A few days later the girl went to Hartford, and from there the defendant at his own expense took her to Georgia where, with her parents' consent, she married a much older man who was a friend, and at that time an employee, of the defendant's.

The defendant did not take the stand, but his counsel in cross-examining the girl, and later by introducing the testimony of members of the girl's family, attempted to show that the girl had planned to escape from the Industrial School because she did not like it, and furthermore, that it was to the defendant's advantage to remove the girl from the State of New Hampshire to prevent her from testifying in criminal proceedings growing out of their previous intimacies then pending against him in that State.

On the basis of the foregoing the defendant contends that there is no legally admissible evidence that the defendant's interstate transportation of the girl was for any immoral purpose defined in the statute. He says that the evidence of his immoral relations with the girl, both before and after the transportation, was inadmissible for the reason that it tended to show the commission of another crime and hence was irrelevant and highly prejudicial, so that, on the only admissible testimony, it could only be found that he transported the girl either for the purpose of removing her from the state to prevent her from giving testimony in the prosecution for statutory rape, or for the purpose of helping her, out of pure good-will, to carry out her plan to escape from the Industrial School; neither purpose being an illegal one so far as the White Slave Traffic Act is concerned.

Clearly the statute makes it a felony to transport a woman or girl in interstate or foreign commerce only when the transportation is for one or more of the immoral purposes enumerated therein. It has been so held by the Supreme Court from the beginning. See Hoke v. United States, 227 U.S. 308, 320, 33 S.Ct. 281, 283, 57 L.Ed. 523, 43 L.R.A., N.S., 906, Ann. Cas. 1913E, 905, in which it is said of the statute generally that "What the act condemns is transportation obtained or aided, or transportation induced, in interstate commerce, for the immoral purposes mentioned." And in Jarabo v. United States, 158 F.2d 509, 512, this court held after careful consideration, and we see no reason to canvass the matter again, "that evidence of specific instances of sexual immorality indulged in by the accused and the woman or girl alleged to have been transported, if proximate enough in point of time, is relevant on the issue of the purpose or intent of the transportation." See also United States v. Reginelli, 3 Cir., 133 F.2d 595, 598. Thus, contrary to the defendant's contention, there is admissible evidence that one at least of the purposes for which he transported the girl from Manchester, New Hampshire to Boston, Massachusetts was to have sexual intercourse with her, for their previous acts of that nature, as testified to by the girl, were proximate enough in point of time, considering her incarceration in the Industrial School, to indicate that the defendant had that purpose in mind at the start of the journey. Moreover, their relations in the hotel room in Boston, testified to by the girl as occurring soon after the completion of the interstate trip, also indicate that its purpose was an immoral one. In connection with this latter evidence it is to be noted, however, that this is not a case in which the government relies entirely upon evidence of a moral dereliction at the end of an interstate trip to sustain a conviction under the statute in the face of direct evidence that the trip was originally undertaken for some innocent purpose, with the result that on all the evidence it would be as probable as not that the moral dereliction at its termination was an afterthought, or a mere casual incident, of an otherwise innocent interstate journey. The evidence of prior moral derelictions with the girl involved, coupled with the evidence of their dereliction at the end of the trip, adequately supports the conclusion that from the beginning at least one of its purposes was illicit intercourse. Nor is this a case like Van Pelt v. United States, 4 Cir., 240 F. 346, 349, in which no plausible reason is suggested by the record for taking an interstate trip in order to accomplish an immoral purpose which could be accomplished as conveniently without the trouble and expense of such a trip, for it is evident that illicit relations with the girl stood a far better chance of undisturbed accomplishment in the concealment of the metropolis of a neighboring state, out of the immediate reach of the New Hampshire authorities, than in New Hampshire, where presumably the authorities would be promptly alerted and on the watch to apprehend the girl as soon as she was missed at the Industrial School.

But is it enough for a conviction under the statute that one of the purposes for the transportation of a woman or girl is an immoral one within the statutory wording when there is also evidence of other purposes, perhaps equally motivating, but innocent so far as the statute is concerned? This question was not raised by counsel for the defendant, either here or in the court below,...