Doyle v. State
| Decision Date | 05 May 1897 |
| Parties | DOYLE v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Error to circuit court, Duval county; R. M. Call, Judge.
E Doyle was convicted of rape, and brings error. Affirmed.
Syllabus by the Court
1. The courts may and should in all criminal trials, whenever necessary, caution the jury against convictions from prejudice, or upon insufficient evidence.
2. It is not a rule of law that the jury must view the offense of rape as one well calculated to create strong prejudice against the accused; nor that rape is an accusation easy to make and hard to be defended by an accused, though he be ever so innocent; nor is it a rule of law that the attention of the jury be specially directed to the difficulty growing out of the usual circumstances of the crime in defending against rape. These are merely arguments to be addressed to the jury by counsel, and the court commits no error in refusing to give them in the shape of instructions.
3. It is not error to refuse instructions embodying correct principles of law, where such principles are not applicable to the facts of the particular case on trial.
4. In a prosecution for rape, where the evidence tends to show that the commission of the offense was accompanied by an exhibition of weapons and threats on the part of the defendant, calculated to produce in the mind of the woman a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm in case of refusal or resistance on her part, it is not error to refuse to charge the jury that they must acquit the accused, unless satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the woman did not during any part of the act, yield her consent.
5. Consent of the woman from fear of personal violence is void and, though a man lays no hands on a woman, yet if, by an array of physical force, he so overpowers her that she dares not resist, his carnal intercourse with her is rape.
6. It is not error for the court to refuse instructions upon the weight of evidence, or instructions assuming as proven facts material matters which are in dispute upon the trial.
7. In the absence of statute, there is no law limiting the powers of the jury to convict upon the uncorroborated testimony of the prosecutrix in prosecutions for rape.
8. There is no rule of law that the jury must receive with more than ordinary doubt and suspicion the evidence of the prosecutrix in rape cases, and the court commits no error in refusing to so charge.
9. Where there is evidence to support a verdict, this court will not reverse the decision of the trial court refusing to grant a new trial on the ground of insufficient evidence, unless the preponderance of evidence is such that the jury must have been improperly influenced to render the verdict.
R. S. Cockrell and P. D. Cockrell, for plaintiff in error.
William B. Lamar, Atty. Gen., for the State. The plaintiff in error was tried and convicted at the spring term, 1896, circuit court of Duval county, for the crime of rape, and, after overruling his motion for a new trial, the court passed sentence of death upon him, from which he sued out writ of error to this court. The errors assigned here are based upon certain instructions refused and upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict. The state produced Priscilla Youmans, the prosecutrix, who testified that the defendant, on August 19, 1895, came to her house, in Duval county, and requested her to sell him five cents worth of pears; that she told him her husband did not allow her to sell the pears, but, as defendant seemed so anxious to buy them, she went into the house, and after she got in the house she turned around, and saw defendant; that he solicited her to sexual intercourse, and she told him to go away if that was what he came for, but defendant kept begging, and offered her five dollars to submit; that she still refused, and defendant then began cursing, and drew a knife, and theatened to kill her if she did not submit, saying he would gratify his desire any way; that he would kill her if she did not submit, so she 'worked back,' and laid down on the bed, and defendant, cursing and threatening to kill her, pulled up her dress, and 'did what he came there to do'; that defendant penetrated her; that when he got up he asked witness if she was going to tell, and she said, 'no,' and promised him not to tell; defendant said he would kill her if she did; that she recognized the defendant as the same person that assaulted her, although she had never seen him before the assault, and did not see him again until he was arrested, and brought before her, the following December. This witness was not interrogated as to any resistance on her part, nor as to any complaints made after the occurrence, nor as to any other matters connected with the crime, or her conduct at the time of or after its commission.
John Upton, on the part of the state, testified that he arrested the defendant in December, 1895, on a charge of having committed rape near Baldwin the previous summer; that defendant was gambling with a crowd of negroes, and told the witness he would give him all the money he had to protect him. As soon as he was arrested, defendant asked witness if he wanted him for something at Baldwin.
The defendant testified that he lived in Savannah, Ga., working in the resin yards there; that he was not in Baldwin in August, 1895; that he never saw the prosecutrix until he was arrested, and brought before her, in December, 1895; that when arrested he was on his way to a place in Florida to make turpentine boxes. Defendant exhibited to the jury 'his foot, which disclosed the fact that his big toe and the one next to it were gone,' and he also 'showed the jury scars on his face.' He testified that he was not arrested by Benj. McCallum, in Marion county, in December, 1894. The defendant read in evidence the depositions of Fred Jones, Mary Jones, Josephine Jones, Isaac Spier, Isaiah Doyle, and Simeon Doyle, none of whom had seen defendant since he was arrested, all of whom claimed to be able to identify defendant from the description contained in a letter from defendant's counsel, Mr. Cockrell, to Isaiah Doyle, defendant's brother; all of whom testified that Enoch Doyle was in Savannah, Ga., on August 19, 1895, or about that time. Some of them stated that Enoch Doyle, whom they saw at that time, had a scar on the check; others that his greater toe was gone. The letter of Mr. Cockrell was not given in evidence, nor any other description of defendant except as stated above.
John Whitehead and Wiley Clay, in rebuttal, testified that they had known defendant two or three years; that they saw him in Baldwin on August 14, 1895, and Wiley Clay had a conversation with him there that day.
Benjamin McCallum testified that he arrested defendant, Doyle, in December, 1894, in Marion county, Fla.; that he used to see defendant in Ocala. This was all the evidence introduced upon the trial.
The court refused the following instructions requested by plaintiff in error: ...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. Elsen
... ... harder to be defended by the party accused, though never so ... innocent. It has been said that such an instruction invades ... the province of the jury, who are the sole judges of the ... facts and the weight to be given the evidence. State v ... Rutledge, 63 Utah 546, 227 P. 479; Doyle v ... State, 39 Fla. 155, 22 So. 272, 63 Am.St.Rep. 159; ... State v. Davis, Mo.Sup., 190 S.W. 297; Crump v ... Commonwealth, 98 Va. 833, 23 S.E. 760; State v ... Birchard, 35 Or. 484, 59 P. 468. We are inclined to ... agree with the reasoning in these cases, and believe that ... ...
-
Cook v. State
... ... The ... defendant requested the court to instruct the jury that they ... should not convict from prejudice or upon insufficient ... evidence. We think, in view of the nature of the evidence and ... circumstances of this case, this instruction should have been ... given. Doyle v. State, 39 Fla. 155, 22 So. 272, 63 ... Am. St. Rep. 159 ... The ... third charge given by the court is as follows: 'Such ... killing, when perpetrated by an act imminently dangerous to ... others, evincing a depraved mind, with utter disregard for ... human life, without any ... ...
-
Flowers v. State
... ... carnal intercourse obtained from a woman by fear of personal ... violence is void, and though a man lays no hands on a woman, ... yet if by an array of physical force he so overpowers her ... that she dares not resist, his intercourse with her is rape ... See Doyle v. State, 39 Fla. 155, 22 So. 272, 63 ... Am.St.Rep. 159; Rice v. State, 35 Fla. 236, 17 So ... 286, 48 Am.St.Rep. 245; Peterson v. State, 90 Fla ... 361, 106 So. [152 Fla. 657] 75; Green v. State, 135 ... Fla. 17, 184 So. 504. The rule enunciated in Doyle v. State, ... supra, is ... ...
-
State v. Rusk
...State v. Dill, 3 Terry 533, 42 Del. 533, 40 A.2d 443 (1944); Arnold v. United States, 358 A.2d 335 (D.C.App.1976); Doyle v. State, 39 Fla. 155, 22 So. 272 (1897); Curtis v. State, 236 Ga. 362, 223 S.E.2d 721 (1976); People v. Murphy, 124 Ill.App.2d 71, 260 N.E.2d 386 (1970); Carroll v. Stat......