Griffin v. State

• Decision Date: 23 April 1908
• Citation: 155 Ala. 88,46 So. 481
• Parties: GRIFFIN v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

46 So. 481

155 Ala. 88

GRIFFIN v. STATE.

Supreme Court of Alabama

April 23, 1908

Appeal from Circuit Court, Dallas County; B. M. Miller, Judge.

Frank Griffin was convicted of rape, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

A. M Pitts and W. R. Shafer, for appellant.

Alexander M. Garber, Atty. Gen., for the State.

DENSON J.

From a judgment of conviction, and sentence to imprisonment in the penitentiary for a period of 15 years, for the crime of rape this appeal was taken by the defendant.

The testimony for the state tends to show that on the 4th day of April, 1907, the defendant knocked the prosecutrix (Florence Gardner) down with a stick, and without her consent had sexual intercourse with her. The testimony for the defendant tends to show that, though defendant had intercourse with the prosecutrix, it was with her consent. The testimony of the prosecutrix showed that, after she got loose from the defendant, she ran to where her father was working, and the defendant went to her house and left the stick with which he struck her on the porch. The court committed no error in refusing to exclude this testimony. Neither was there error in the rulings of the court in respect to the admissibility of the testimony of Lapsley Gardner in regard to finding the stick on the porch.

On her examination in chief the prosecutrix testified that she had never had intercourse with any man before the defendant ravished her; but at the time she so testified there was no evidence in the case tending to show consent on the part of the prosecutrix. In McQuirk's Case, 84 Ala. 435, 438, 4 So. 775, 776, 5 Am. St. Rep. 381, it is said: "That the prosecutrix was a woman of chaste or unchaste character was perfectly competent evidence, under all the authorities, as bearing on the probability or improbability of her consent to the alleged act of intercourse with the defendant. The impeachment of her character in this particular must however, be confined to general evidence of her reputation. Particular instances of her unchastity cannot be proved for this purpose, except that she can be interrogated as to her previous intercourse with the prisoner, although not to particular instances with third persons." Boddie's Case, 52 Ala. 395, 398; Roscoe's Criminal Ev. *881. In this view of the law, it must be conceded that the evidence of the prosecutrix was not only premature, but in the form given was illegal. But it was injected into the case by the state without objection, and if...