Jeffries v. State
| Citation | 146 N.E. 753,195 Ind. 649 |
| Decision Date | 26 February 1925 |
| Docket Number | 24,638 |
| Parties | Jeffries et al. v. State of Indiana |
| Court | Supreme Court of Indiana |
1. RAPE.---Evidence.---Sufficiency to Support Verdict.---Evidence considered and held sufficiently to support an inference that the crime of rape was consummated by penetration. p. 650.
2. CRIMINAL LAW.---Instructions.---Necessity for Request.---If an instruction concerning the weight of the evidence, the credibility of witnesses, and the duty of the jury on a conflict of testimony, has been given but does not go far enough, and appellants have not tendered further instructions to supply omissions, they cannot complain if it was not as full and complete as they would be entitled to on proper request. p. 651.
3. RAPE.---Instructions.---Degrees of Crime.---Upon a prosecution for rape, after the jury have been instructed as to their duty if they find the defendants guilty of rape, or of contributing to delinquency, or of assault and battery, it is not reversible error if the jury is not instructed concerning assault and battery with intent to commit rape or other felony, if defendants have not tendered any instructions supplying that omission, particularly as no substantial rights of defendants could be affected, the penalty for the omitted offense being the same as for rape p. 651.
4. CRIMINAL LAW.---Instructions.---Forms of Verdict.---A jury having been instructed as to four forms of verdict which they might adopt, the appellants cannot complain that additional possible forms were not submitted when they have not tendered any, and have not pointed out any evidence or any state of facts that would not be covered by a form of verdict presented by the court. p. 652.
From Greene Circuit Court; Thomas VanBuskirk, Judge.
Teddy Jeffries and William Morris were convicted of statutory rape and they appeal.
Affirmed.
Will R Vosloh and Alfred M. Beasley, for appellant.
U. S. Lesh, Attorney-General, and Cronk & Wilde, for the State.
Appellants were convicted of the crime of forcibly raping a girl seventeen years old. She testified that the crime was committed by each of them, in turn, while out for a drive in an automobile.
Each of them told the arresting officers the next morning, after the alleged assault that he had had sexual intercourse with the complaining witness the night before, though each testified at the trial that he only hugged and kissed her, and tried without success, to induce her to submit to him. On returning from the drive they let the girl out of the car a square from her home, after midnight, and as she met her father "she was doubled over, limping, and trying to hollow at him, and crying," with her clothing badly torn and her body and limbs badly bruised. She described the acts of each defendant in the automobile, down in a woods far from any house, where the automobile was stopped, in language which reasonably could be understood only as meaning that after overpowering her by force, each held her in turn while the other had sexual intercourse with her, although decency of speech was observed to a greater degree than was strictly necessary. But the proof of what they did and what they said at the time, and of what they admitted to the police officers the next morning, sufficiently supported the inference which the jury drew that the crime of rape was consummated by penetration. Bradburn v. State (1904), 162 Ind. 689, 71 N.E. 133; Taylor v. State (1887), 111 Ind. 279, 12 N.E. 400.
Having correctly instructed the jury as to reasonable doubt, the presumptions in favor of defendants, and the rule as to concurrence of twelve minds in...
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