Huddleston v. Com.

• Decision Date: 09 October 1950
• Docket Number: No. 3729,3729
• Citation: 61 S.E.2d 276,191 Va. 400
• Parties: ARCHER CONRAD HUDDLESTON v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA. Record
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Page 276

61 S.E.2d 276

191 Va. 400

ARCHER CONRAD HUDDLESTON v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA.

Record No. 3729.

Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia

October 9, 1950.

George E. Allen, Anne M. Fallwell and W. C. Fitzpatrick, for the plaintiff in error.

J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., Attorney General, and Henry T. Wickham, Assistant Attorney General, for the Commonwealth.

JUDGE: EGGLESTON

EGGLESTON, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

Archer Conrad Huddleston was convicted by a jury of statutory rape of Jean Mason, a ten year old girl, and his punishment fixed at fifteen years in the State penitentiary. (Code, sec. 18-54.) He assigns a number of reasons why the verdict should be set aside and the judgment entered thereon reversed.

The alleged insufficiency of the evidence gives us no trouble. The accused is a young man of twenty-seven years, who separated from his wife shortly after his honorable discharge from the armed forces in 1945. He and his wife had made their home with his mother, Mrs. Faris, in Cumberland county, but upon their separation he left that household and took up his abode near by in what is described as 'a dilapidated two-story building.' The only other occupant of his home was a woman to whom he was not married. He denied having improper relations with her.

The prosecutrix is the half sister of the wife of the accused and likewise lived in the Faris home. There conditions were far from ideal. In three rooms and a kitchen fifteen persons, including several married couples and their children, lived. From this home, as the local superintendent of public welfare testified, the prosecutrix went to school 'poorly clothed, hungry and with bruises on her head.'

In August, 1948, Dr. Joseph H. Smith, a local physician, was called to the Faris home to attend the prosecutrix. His examination disclosed that she 'had had repeated sexual experiences' which had culminated in pregnancy and a miscarriage.

On October 20 of that year, the local trial justice committed the prosecutrix to the State Board of Public Welfare, in whose custody she was at the time of the trial. She had been removed from the Faris home and taken to Richmond.

According to the testimony of the prosecutrix, which is before us in a narrative form, the accused 'had sexual relations with her many times' before she became ill in August, 1948. These relations, she said, continued even after that time. She further testified that these occurrences had taken place at the home of the accused.

Her direct accusation of the accused was not shaken on cross-examination, although she admitted that on previous occasions she had stated that two brothers of the accused, Thomas Cleveland Huddleston and John Calvin Huddleston, ¹ had had sexual relations with her, and that she had not claimed that the accused had done so.

On re-direct examination she explained that she had not disclosed the accused as one of her attackers because he had threatened to kill her if she did so.

The accused flatly denied the charge. He said that so far as he knew the girl had never been to his house alone. He further testified that as the result of wounds received in combat 'his sexual desire had been very definitely affected.'

Mrs. Faris testified that the prosecutrix was untruthful, and that on one occasion she had stolen $2.00 from her (Mrs. Faris') pocketbook.

As bad as it is, there is nothing incredible in the evidence on behalf of the Commonwealth. The medical testimony as to the child's condition is uncontradicted. It was for the jury to say whether they should accept the accusation of the girl or the denial of the accused. They were fully instructed on the weight to be given the uncorroborated testimony of the prosecutrix, and their finding on the sufficiency of the evidence cannot be disturbed.

At the commencement of the trial, upon motion of counsel, all witnesses were excluded from the courtroom. However, when the prosecutrix was called to the stand she entered the courtroom accompanied by Miss Ruth Light, a child welfare worker of the State Board of Public Welfare, in whose custody she had been since her removal from the Faris home, and by whom she had been brought to the courtroom. Upon the motion of the attorney for the Commonwealth and over the objection of counsel for the accused, Miss Light was permitted to sit in the courtroom while the prosecutrix was testifying and thereafter during the trial.

This action of the trial court is assigned as error on the ground that there was no valid reason why the rule excluding the witnesses from the courtroom should have been relaxed in favor of Miss Light. Moreover, it is argued, the prosecutrix was probably under the influence of Miss Light and 'would naturally feel under some compulsion to testify agreeably' to her.

The purpose of excluding the witnesses from the courtroom is, of course, to deprive a later witness of the opportunity of shaping his testimony to correspond to that of an earlier one. Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed., Vol. VI, sec. 1838, p. 352. While usually all persons come within the rule of exclusion, the authorities agree that the court, in the exercise of its sound judicial discretion, may make exceptions thereto. In the absence of a showing that there has been an abuse of such discretion, or that the accused was prejudiced thereby, such ruling will not be reversed on appeal. Burford v. Commonwealth, 179 Va. 752, 760, 761, 20 S.E. (2d) 509, 512.

Numerous cases are recorded where the rulings of trial courts in permitting the parent of an infant prosecutrix to remain in the courtroom while she is testifying, in like cases, have been upheld. See 23 C.J.S., Criminal Law, sec. 1011, p. 383, note 62; McGuff v. State, 88 Ala. 147, 7 So. 35, 16 Am.St.Rep. 25; Chambers v. State, 168 Ark. 248, 270 S.W. 528; Hester v. State, 32 Ga.App. 81, 122 S.E. 721; State v. Smith (Iowa), 193 N.W. 181; Druin v. Commonwealth (Ky), 124 S.W. 856.

In the case before us there is no showing of abuse of discretion by the trial court, or of prejudice against the accused by the presence of Miss Light in the courtroom. While she was later called as a witness she did not testify as to the particulars of the crime, nor was her testimony influenced by that of the prosecutrix.

Again, there is no showing that the child was under such influence of the welfare worker as to be swayed by the latter's presence in the courtroom.

In testifying as to the child's condition Miss Light said: 'She was a little girl who could not cry, had lines on her face, looked worn and haggard. We had a physician to examine her and she received treatment at the Venereal Disease Clinic in Richmond. She has been in a home where she was placed ever since.'

As the record shows, counsel for the accused 'objected to this witness testifying as to what the physician's report showed on the ground of its being hearsay.' Whereupon 'the court ruled that the witness could testify that Jean Mason was sent to a doctor for examination; that after the examination was made Jean Mason was treated for gonorrhea.'

This ruling is assigned as error because, it is said, its effect was to permit the witness to relate the result of the physician's examination, in violation of the hearsay evidence rule.

There is no merit in this assignment. The effect of the trial court's ruling was to exclude the testimony of Miss Light as to the contents of the physician's report, but to permit her to testify that the prosecutrix had been sent to a doctor...