Chapman v. State

• Decision Date: 05 June 1901
• Citation: 61 Neb. 888,86 N.W. 907
• Parties: CHAPMAN v. STATE.
• Court: Nebraska Supreme Court

61 Neb. 888

86 N.W. 907

CHAPMAN

v.STATE.

Supreme Court of Nebraska.

June 5, 1901.

Syllabus by the Court.

1. A statute which denounces an act as criminal does not cease to be effective because another statute declares the same act to be a crime when done at a particular place or under special circumstances.

2. Where a statute states the elements of a crime, it is generally sufficient, either in an indictment or information, to charge such crime in the language of the statute.

3. It is not error to refuse a special instruction embodying an idea which has been given by the court to the jury in the general charge.

4. It is not error to refuse an instruction which is argumentative, and singles out and gives undue prominence to some portions of the evidence.

5. Evidence examined, and found sufficient to support the verdict and sentence.

Error to district court, Sherman county; Sullivan, Judge.

Bruce Chapman was convicted of crime, and brings error. Affirmed.R. J. Nightingale, for plaintiff in error.

The Attorney General, for the State.

SULLIVAN, J.

This was a prosecution for statutory rape. The jury found the defendant guilty, and the court sentenced him to imprisonment in the penitentiary for a period of three years.

The petition in error contains many assignments, but the principal ground relied upon for a reversal of the sentence is that the state's evidence, while tending to prove seduction, disproves completely the crime charged in the information. Briefly stated, the main facts of the case are these: Bruce Chapman resides in Sherman county, and is now between 32 and 35 years of age. One evening in August, 1899, he attended a campmeeting at Round Grove, where he satisfied his religious yearning,--slaked his thirst for spirituality,--and then permitted his attention to become engrossed with secular things. At the meeting he fell in with the prosecutrix, Ora Nell Johnson, and the two went home together. On the way home, it would seem, Chapman felt the rise and surge of a tender passion, and took occasion to mention the fact to Miss Johnson. Finding her in a responsive mood, he indulged freely in erotic vagaries, and finally, after promising marriage and eternal fidelity, had sexual intercourse with her. The promise of marriage, it is now insisted, adds to the crime charged an extenuating element which reduces it from rape to seduction,--from a felony to a misdemeanor. We listened with great interest to the ingenious reasoning by which the learned counsel for the defendant undertook at the bar to sustain this position. We were charmed with the cleverness of the argument, but its logic was not irresistible. It failed to convince us that a person prosecuted for the commission of a criminal act must go free if it be made to appear at the trial that he transgressed two sections of the law against crimes, instead of one. It may be conceded that section 207 of the Criminal Code is in full force, and that the defendant might have been, and still may be, tried and convicted for debauching the prosecutrix. The act charged in the information constituted a crime under section 12 of the Criminal Code, while the act proved was a violation of both sections. One need not be specially skilled in divining the legislative will in order to perceive that the law forbidding illicit carnal relations under promise of marriage was not permitted to stand on the statute books for the benefit and protection...