Holmes v. United States, 9889.
| Decision Date | 06 December 1948 |
| Docket Number | No. 9889.,9889. |
| Citation | 84 US App. DC 168,171 F.2d 1022 |
| Parties | HOLMES v. UNITED STATES |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
Mr. Maurice R. Weeks, of Washington, D. C., for appellant.
Mr. Stafford R. Grady, Asst. U. S. Atty., of Washington, D. C. with whom Messrs. George Morris Fay, U. S. Atty., and John C. Conliff, Jr., both of Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellee. Messrs. Sidney S. Sachs and John D. Lane, Asst. U. S. Attys., both of Washington, D. C., also entered appearances for appellee.
Before EDGERTON, CLARK and WILBUR K. MILLER, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from a judgment imposing the death penalty upon defendant upon a one-count indictment charging that defendant "carnally knew and abused a female child under the age of sixteen years, that is of the age of nine years." We find nothing whatever in the record to remotely justify reversal.
Because of the extreme penalty inflicted we have felt it incumbent on us to carefully examine the record in full and in detail and for the same reason we are impelled to discuss as briefly as is consistent with justice the several assignments of error urged upon behalf of appellant by his able counsel. The latter, incidentally, was appointed by the court to represent the appellant in what must have been a truly irksome duty. This duty Mr. Weeks performed with energy and devotion and the court is indebted to him for the manner in which he performed this task.
The record in the case discloses one of the most abhorrent and bestial crimes which has ever been presented to this court. We do not feel it necessary to discuss the record in all of its horrible and heart-rending details further than may be necessary in connection with one of the principal assignments of error on behalf of plaintiff. Suffice it to say for the present that the complaining witness was a child of nine living with her parents. On the afternoon in question she was sitting in front of her own home waiting for the return from work of her stepfather. She was accosted by a man whom she was able to describe in a way to which appellant answered in all respects who inquired the way to Washington, then seized her, clapped his hand over her mouth, dragged her into some adjacent timber, ravished her and brutally beat her and left her naked and covered with leaves where she was found unconscious some hours later by searching parties. She had been so brutally beaten that one leg was broken so badly that at the time of the trial she was still on crutches with her leg in a cast and was receiving treatment for paralysis of the muscles of the foot. She had been beaten about the face to the extent that her face was swollen and distorted and that her eyes were swollen shut. An attempt had been made to gouge her eyes with outstretched thumbs to such an extent that the evidence was that she was losing the sight of one eye. Her ear was seriously injured perhaps permanently.
The first point of appellant's appeal is that the court erred in on its own motion permitting the child complainant to sit on her mother's lap while she testified. This it was asserted might tend to inflame the jury. The child was a little girl of nine who had been subjected to a most terrible and horrifying experience to a degree which might well influence the balance of her life. She was at the moment on crutches and with her leg in a cast. What might have inflamed the jury was the pitiable condition of the little girl herself and it would doubtless have inflamed them more if she had been unable to sit in the witness stand comfortably by herself or had been compelled to stand on her crutches with her leg in a cast while testifying. The action of the trial court sua sponte in permitting the child to sit on her mother's lap to put the child at ease as much at least as was possible under the trying circumstances was not only proper as a humanitarian act but was praiseworthy as being in the interest of justice.
The appellant's...
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