McIntosh v. Commonwealth
Decision Date | 21 March 1933 |
Citation | 248 Ky. 297,58 S.W.2d 584 |
Parties | McINTOSH v. COMMONWEALTH. |
Court | Kentucky Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Estill County.
Lusby B. McIntosh was convicted of detaining a woman against her will, and he appeals.
Reversed with instructions.
Shumate & Shumate, of Irvine, for appellant.
Bailey P. Wootton, Atty. Gen., and H. Hamilton Rice, Asst. Atty Gen., for the Commonwealth.
Appellant was convicted of the offense of detaining a woman against her will and sentenced to serve two years in the penitentiary. He appeals.
As grounds for reversal, he contends, first, that the verdict is flagrantly against the evidence; and, secondly, that the court erred in excluding competent evidence offered by him.
As to the first ground, although there was some other evidence introduced than the testimony of the prosecutrix and that of the appellant, the case in its final analysis rested on her word against his word. While there was a good many circumstances proven that rather tended to discredit the story told by the prosecutrix, yet, under well-settled principles, the jury was the judge of her credibility as well as that of the appellant, and, if it chose to believe her story rather than that of the appellant, it cannot be said that under the circumstances the verdict is flagrantly against the evidence.
As to the second ground, the court refused to permit the appellant to elicit from the prosecutrix how long it was after the alleged detention of her by the appellant before she made any complaint of it. Examined out of the presence of the jury she testified that it was at least two weeks before she said anything to her husband about it, and that it was about a month before she made any move in the courts to have appellant arrested. It may not be amiss to say here that the prosecutrix had testified before the jury that, after the alleged detention, she had met the appellant at the church and at the store in which he worked and spoken to him and had been very friendly with him.
It is well settled in cases of rape that the commonwealth may prove by third parties that the outraged woman made complaint soon after the alleged attack upon her. In the case of Meade v. Commonwealth, 214 Ky. 88, 282 S.W. 781, 782, we said:
As stated in 52 C.J. 1063: "Such evidence is admitted for the purpose of confirming the testimony of the ravished woman, and not as proof that the crime was in fact committed, or as evidence of the truth of the facts complained of, but merely to rebut the inference of consent that might be drawn from her silence; in fact, it has been stated that such evidence is not received to corroborate the prosecutrix, but rather to support her credibility by meeting any possible inference of self-contradiction in her conduct in the absence of a complaint."
It is also settled that the defendant in such cases may examine the woman on the question whether or not she made any complaint after the alleged attack; it being open to her, if she made no complaint, to explain why she made no complaint. The reason for the admission of such testimony is thus stated in Adams v. Commonwealth, 219 Ky. 711, 294 S.W. 151, 152:
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