Lockhart v. State
| Decision Date | 13 May 1920 |
| Citation | 85 So. 153,79 Fla. 824 |
| Parties | LOCKHART et al. v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Error to Circuit Court, Jackson County; C. L. Wilson, Judge.
V. Tine Lockhart and Bertha Rodgers, alias Berta Rodgers, were convicted of living and cohabiting together in an open state of adultery while the defendant Rodgers then had a lawful husband living, and they bring error. Affirmed.
Syllabus by the Court
An indictment that charges defendants with having lived and cohabited together in an open state of adultery on July 4 1919, and on divers and many other days within two years next preceding the date of the finding and presenting of the indictment, and that Berta Rodgers and Tine Lockhart did then and there live and cohabit together in an open state of adultery when Berta Rodgers then and there had a lawful husband living, Berta Rodgers then being married to Jim Rodgers, and that Berta Rodgers had a husband living on the date named in the indictment, July 4, 1919, and between that date and that of filing the indictment on the 15th day of October, 1919, is not fatally defective, as vague indefinite, uncertain, and insufficient.
Where there is substantial competent evidence of all the facts legally essential to support the verdict, and there is nothing in the record to indicate that the jury were influenced by considerations outside the evidence, this court will not disturb the verdict.
A single act of adultery, unsupported by other circumstances is insufficient to support a charge of living in an open state of adultery, but where it is shown that the parties were living in the same house, that the woman cooked, washed and kept house for the man, that he introduced her to others as his wife, and the they were seen constantly together and acting generally as husband and wife, testimony of the single act was competent to establish the immorality that was necessary in connection with the other circumstances to constitute the offense.
When the court in its general charge covers clearly and fully all the legal questions affecting the cause, it is not error for the court to refuse to give special instructions, couched in different language, embodying the principle covered by the general charge.
COUNSEL Jefferson D. Stephens, of Marianna, for plaintiffs in error.
Van C. Swearingen, Atty. Gen., and D. Stuart Gillis, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
V. Tine Lockhart and Berta Rodgers were indicted and convicted in Jackson county. Omitting the formal portion, the indictment alleges that----
'On the 4th day of July, A. D. 1919, and on divers and many other days within two years next preceding the date of the finding and presenting of this bill of indictment, did then and there in said county live and cohabit together in an open state of adultery when she, the said Bertha Rodgers, alias Berta Rodgers, then and there had a lawful husband living, and the said Bertha Rodgers, alias Berta Rodgers, then being married to one Jim Rodgers.'
A motion to quash on the grounds that the indictment is vague, indefinite, uncertain, and insufficient; that it alleges no facts or acts of defendants constituting the offense of adultery; that it falis to state facts sufficient to constitute that offense; that it fails to allege that the defendants held themselves out as husband and wife, or that they lived together openly as husband and wife, was denied.
We do not think that the indictment was fatally defective on any of these grounds. It charges that they lived and cohabited together in an open state of adultery on July 4, 1919, and on divers and many other days within two years next preceding the date of the finding and presenting of the indictment, and that Berta Rodgers and Tine Lockhart did then and there live and cohabit together in an open state of adultery, when Berta Rodgers then and there had a lawful husband living, Berta Rodgers then being married to Jim Rodgers, and that Berta Rodgers had a husband living on the date named in the indictment, July 4, 1919, and between that date and that of filing the indictment on the 15th day of October, 1919.
The second assignment is based upon the denial of the motion for a new trial, the first and second grounds of which attack the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict.
The couple lived together five or six miles from Marianna. Several witnesses testified to seeing them together in Marianna on a number of occasions, when they demeaned themselves towards each other as husband and wife.
Jim Rodgers, the husband of Berta, took his wife and baby to Alabama, and Lockhart followed them ther and carried Berta...
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Laughlin v. State of Florida
...of time as in the conjugal relation between husband and wife. Braswell v. State, 88 Fla. 183, 101 So. 232 (1924); Lockhart v. State, 79 Fla. 824, 85 So. 153 (1920) (both cases involving what is now § 798.01); Wildman v. State, 157 Fla. 334, 25 So.2d 808 (1946); Penton v. State, 42 Fla. 560,......
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