Butts v. State
| Decision Date | 18 May 1916 |
| Docket Number | A-2400. |
| Parties | BUTTS v. STATE. |
| Court | United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma |
Syllabus by the Court.
In a prosecution for seduction under a promise of marriage, it is not necessary that the promise should have been expressed in any set form or in any particular language. It is sufficient if language was used which implied such a promise, and was intended to convey that meaning, and was, in fact, so understood by the prosecutrix.
Sexual intercourse "with an unmarried female of previous chaste character," to which her consent is obtained by promise of marriage, is seduction, as defined by Penal Code (section 2423, Rev. Laws 1910), and all of the elements of seduction as defined by the statute, including the previous chaste character of the prosecutrix, must be alleged and proved to support a conviction.
Code Crim. Proc. (section 5886, Rev. Laws 1910) provides that upon a trial "for having, under promise of marriage, seduced and had illicit connection with an unmarried female of previous chaste character, the defendant cannot be convicted upon testimony of the person injured unless she is corroborated by other evidence tending to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense."
Held, that under this statute the prosecutrix is only required to be corroborated as to the promise of marriage and the illicit intercourse.
Held, further, the statute does not require direct and positive corroborative evidence, but simply such facts and circumstances as fairly tend to support the testimony of the prosecutrix.
Upon a trial for seduction under a promise of marriage corroboration as to the fact that the prosecutrix was "an unmarried female of previous chaste character" is unnecessary; this allegation being simply descriptive of the person whom it was the purpose of the statute to protect.
Upon a trial for seduction under a promise of marriage it is proper to admit evidence to prove the birth of the child as evidence of the fact of seduction.
The corroborative evidence in this case as to the promise of marriage considered, and held sufficient to sustain the verdict.
Additional Syllabus by Editorial Staff.
A female of "previous chaste character" is one who has not had sexual intercourse unlawfully, out of wedlock knowingly and voluntarily.
Appeal from District Court, Murray County; R. McMillan, Judge.
Adolphus Butts was convicted of seduction, and appeals. Affirmed.
Blanton & Andrews, of Pauls Valley, for plaintiff in error.
S. P. Freeling, Atty. Gen., and J. B. Harrison, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The plaintiff in error, Adolphus Butts, hereinafter referred to as the defendant, was tried and convicted for having, under promise of marriage, seduced one Fay Dodson, an unmarried female of previous chaste character, and in accordance with the verdict of the jury he was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment in the state penitentiary. From the judgment and sentence he appealed by filing in this court February 15, 1915, a petition in error with case-made.
The evidence shows that Fay Dodson, the prosecutrix, lived with her parents at Davis, and she became acquainted with the defendant in August, 1911. The defendant was engaged in teaching at the Hoover schoolhouse, about seven miles west of Davis, and began keeping company with the prosecutrix in December of that year. From then until the following May he called on her at her home nearly every week. His custom was to come to Davis each week on Friday evening, and he would call on her that night and the Saturday and Sunday following. She was then under 18 years of age. The following school year he was engaged in teaching school at the Wynnewood View schoolhouse, about nine miles from Davis, and while teaching there his usual custom was to come to Davis on Friday evening each week and call on her and on the Saturdays and Sundays following until the end of his school term, about May 1, 1913.
The prosecutrix testified that in May 1912, he proposed, was accepted, and promised to marry her; that, relying on his promise of marriage, she consented and he had carnal connection with her; that they were to be married Christmas 1912; that a few days before Christmas he went to Edmond to visit his parents; when he returned he said "that he had got into it with a girl up there at Edmond, and he was afraid that she would put him in the penitentiary if he married; that he was going to take the girl at Edmond to Oklahoma City and have her operated on"; he then told her they would get married the coming Easter; that she made preparations to be married on Easter Sunday, and later he told her that they could not get married until after his school was out; that after Christmas he called on her two or three times a week as before; that she had made all the necessary preparations for her marriage, and when his school was out he said he had to go home and make arrangements there for them to live with his father and mother; that she told him her preparations for the marriage were complete; that she had made up all her clothes, including her wedding dress, as he had asked her to do; that he then wanted her to meet him at Oklahoma City and they would be married there, and she told him her parents would object to that arrangement; that at that time she was in the family way; that shortly after they became engaged she went to Midlothian, Tex., to visit her brother for a few weeks, and the defendant wrote her that he was coming there to visit her; that he arrived there the following Sunday and visited her at her brother's house several days; that he wanted her to return with him and they would stop at Ft. Worth and register as man and wife, saying that there would be no harm in that; that lots of boys and girls did that way; that this was his first improper proposal to her, and she refused to return with him; that when she told him that she was pregnant he gave her some tablets to take; that after their first carnal connection she submitted to him nearly every time he called on her up to May 6, 1913, which was the last time she saw him; that she loved him and believed that he was in earnest when he said he was going to marry her when she yielded to him the first time, and for that same reason she yielded to him thereafter; that she never did go with any other man, except that she went two or three times with a boy, and no other man ever had sexual intercourse with her; that she was delivered of a child on the 5th day of November, 1913, of which the defendant was the father. On her cross-examination she was asked to identify about a dozen letters; some of them she admitted writing, but claimed that they had been changed, and others she denied. She...
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