Durrence v. State

• Decision Date: 13 June 1917
• Docket Number: 8787.
• Citation: 92 S.E. 962,20 Ga.App. 192
• Parties: DURRENCE v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

92 S.E. 962

20 Ga.App. 192

DURRENCE v. STATE.

No. 8787.

Court of Appeals of Georgia, First Division

June 13, 1917

Syllabus by the Court.

The prosecutrix testified that she and the accused were "engaged to marry" when the latter first had sexual intercourse with her, and that she yielded to him because she "loved him and he promised to marry" her. There being, according to this testimony, a bona fide existing and virtuous engagement to marry, the jury were authorized to infer that the illicit intercourse was not a purely meretricious transaction, notwithstanding the further testimony of the prosecutrix that "he told me he would marry me if I got into any trouble, and that he loved me, and I told him that I loved him," and "I agreed to it because I loved him and thought he loved me, and because he said if he got me a baby that he would marry me, and that is why I let him do it." "To accomplish sexual intercourse with a virtuous woman, pending a virtuous engagement to marry her, may be seduction, though consent be obtained without other persuasion than that which is implied (considering the past courtship and the present relation of the parties) in proposing the intercourse and repeating the promise of marriage." Wilson v. State, 58 Ga 329. See, also, Cherry v. State, 112 Ga. 871, 38 S.E. 341; O'Neill v. State, 85 Ga. 408, 11 S.E 857; Disharoon v. State, 95 Ga. 351, 22 S.E. 698; Boyett v. State, 16 Ga.App. 150, 153, 84 S.E. 613.

(a) "Intercourse brought about by promise of marriage only with no aid from persuasion [italics ours] or other false and fraudulent means, will not constitute the offense of seduction." O'Neill v. State, supra. "But a promise of marriage which a woman believes to be made in good faith, and made as a climax to a long course of wooing, when the man has fully captured the heart of the woman, and she hearkens to the voice of love and yields to her lover because she trusts him, implies persuasion of the strongest character." Woodard v. State, 5 Ga.App. 451, 63 S.E. 575. See, also, Jones v. State, 90 Ga. 616, 16 S.E. 380. The indictment in this case charged the accused with committing the crime of seduction "by persuasion and promises of marriage" only.

(b) The evidence authorized the verdict, and there is no merit in the general grounds of the motion for a new trial.

The fourth ground of the amendment to the motion for a new trial complains that, after a panel of 48 jurymen was put upon the defendant and he had accepted it to strike from the court upon information that one of the said jurymen was related to the defendant, and without hearing any evidence upon the question, declared the juryman to be disqualified, and ordered that he be stricken from the list, over objection of the defendant and his counsel. It does not appear...