Hatton v. State

• Decision Date: 08 June 1908
• Docket Number: 13,324
• Citation: 46 So. 708,92 Miss. 651
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: MURPHY HATTON v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

46 So. 708

92 Miss. 651

MURPHY HATTON v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

No. 13,324

Supreme Court of Mississippi

June 8, 1908

FROM the circuit court of Harrison county, HON. WILLIAM H. HARDY Judge.

Hatton appellant, was indicted and tried for the seduction of his niece, Rovella Hatton, a female child under the age of eighteen years, was convicted, sentenced to the penitentiary for ten years; and appealed to the supreme court.

The opinion of the court states the facts. Code 1906, § 1414, cited in the opinion, provides that a person shall not be prosecuted for any offense, excepting certain enumerated felonies, seduction not being one of them, unless the prosecution be commenced within two years next after its commission. Code 1906, § 1415, prescribes that a prosecution may be commenced, within the meaning of the code section, by the issuance of a warrant, or by binding over or recognizing the offender to compel his appearance to answer the offense, or by affidavit or indictment.

Reversed and remanded.

J. T Garraway and W. G. Evans, for appellant.

The appellant was indicted under Code 1906, § 1081 (Code 1892, § 1004), which provides that any person who shall seduce and have illicit connection with any female child under the ago of eighteen years, of previous chaste character, shall, upon conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary for not more than ten years. Under Code 1906, § 1414 (Code 1892, § 1342), a prosecution for an offense under such section must be commenced within two years after the commission of the crime. The indictment, which was found against appellant on September 7, 1907, alleges that the appellant, on a day unnamed in the year 1907, seduced a female child, Rovella Hatton, under the age of eighteen years at the time of seduction. The undisputed evidence shows that the girl was seduced on June 15, 1905, more than two years before the finding of the indictment. It is true that there is evidence that appellant, after the original seduction, had successive acts of intercourse with the girl at sundry times until December, 1906, but certainly each successive act was not a separate seduction.

Since more than two years elapsed between the date of seduction, that is, the first act of intercourse, and the subsequent indictment of appellant, the bar of Code 1906, § 1414, applies, and the judgment of the court below must be reversed.

George Butler, assistant attorney-general, for appellee.

OPINION

CALHOON, J.

This was an indictment and conviction for seduction. It is only necessary for us to say that by Code 1906, §§ 1414 and 1415, which are the same as Annotated Code 1892, §§ 1342 and 1343, this prosecution is clearly shown to have been commenced more than two years after the commission of the crime, and the conviction is therefore of no force. Thompson v. State, 54 Miss. 740. The seduction occurred more than two years before the indictment was found. The proof is conclusive that it took place on June 15, 1905, and the indictment was not found until September 7, 1907, more than two years afterwards. There is no escape from the bar of the statute of limitations of two years--Code 1906, § 1414-on the face of the record, and while it is true that after the original seduction there were successive acts of coition up to December, 1906, still each successive act was not a separate offense of seduction. In Norton v. State, 72 Miss. 128 at 136, 16 So. on page 267, 48 Am. St. Rep. 538, the court, through WHITFIELD, J., now Chief Justice, announces what we regard as the only sensible rule in these words: "She who is, at the time of the alleged seduction, already unchaste, may be still further debauched, but not seduced." This is the true rule. Rapes may be perpetrated in multiples, but there can never be but one seduction, under Code 1906, § 1081, by the same man of the same woman.

It must be specially noted that the Norton case was an indictment under what is now Code 1906, § 1372, against carnal knowledge under promise of marriage, and not section 1081, as in the case at bar. This effectually disposes of People v. Millspaugh, 11 Mich. 278. That case was one of seduction under promise of marriage in 1860, and coition ceased for months, and was renewed in 1861 under reliance on a new promise of marriage. Even in that case MARTIN, J., dissented, and the court was dealing with a statute without the words "of previous chaste character" which appear in our statute. It is held that under charges of seduction the words "of previous chaste character" mean what the woman really is, not what she is reputed to be. People v Nelson, 60 Am. St. Rep., notes on page 597. They mean "actual personal virtue, in distinction from good reputation, and...