Miller v. Commonwealth, Record No. 2691.
| Decision Date | 13 October 1943 |
| Docket Number | Record No. 2691. |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
| Parties | HOWARD MILLER v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA. |
Present, Campbell, C.J., and Hudgins, Gregory, Browning, Eggleston and Spratley, JJ.
1. CRIMINAL LAW — Presumptions and Burden of Proof — Presumption of Innocence. — In every criminal charge there inheres the presumption of innocence in favor of the accused. It remains with him throughout the trial and casts upon the Commonwealth the burden of rebutting it by the production of evidence that will establish the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
2. RAPE — Evidence — Sufficiency to Show that Prosecutrix Was Drugged — Case at Bar. — In the instant case, a prosecution for rape, the Commonwealth contended that the prosecutrix was drugged or doped by the accused. Prosecutrix and accused and others met at a night club, where accused purchased a quart bottle of wine of which the prosecutrix drank a half glass. Prosecutrix testified that after drinking the wine she quickly passed out and remembered nothing more. A witness for the Commonwealth testified that after leaving the night club accused and prosecutrix passed close to him at which time they had their arms around each other and were laughing and talking. This witness further testified that when the parties had passed a short distance beyond him the first sexual act took place, that the witness turned lights on them and yelled at them, and that they got up and walked off a short distance where the act was accomplished a second time, after which they walked off together. The witness testified that the prosecutrix did not appear to be drunk. She sounded no alarm and made no outcry. Another witness for the Commonwealth said that he saw prosecutrix at the night club and could not say she was drinking then, and that when he saw her later that night with the accused she could talk but it was difficult to understand her.
Held: That the Commonwealth had not proven its contention that the prosecutrix was drunk, doped or drugged and the evidence failed to sustain the charge of rape.
Error to a judgment of the Circuit Court of Wise county. Hon. George Morton, judge presiding.
The opinion states the case.
Vernoy B. Tate and Bandy & Bandy, for the plaintiff in error.
Abram P. Staples, Attorney General, and Edwin B. Jones, Assistant Attorney General, for the Commonwealth.
The plaintiff in error was charged with having raped Aileen Amos, an unmarried woman twenty years old. The jury returned a verdict of guilty and fixed his punishment at five years in the state penitentiary, which was approved by the trial court. This court granted him a writ of error and the case is before it for review.
The defendant brings seven assignments of error but we shall only be concerned with three which are all embraced within the general objection that the verdict was contrary to the law and the evidence. Our consideration of this issue will dispose of the case.
To meet the legal requisite of force to sustain the charge the Commonwealth relied chiefly on the accusation that the prosecutrix was drugged or doped by the accused, which rendered her unconscious and insensible and therefore an easy and irresponsible victim for the accomplishment of his purpose.
In every criminal charge there inheres the presumption of innocency in favor of the accused. It remains with him throughout the trial and casts upon the Commonwealth the burden of rebutting it by the production of evidence that will establish the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
The defendant is a young man 19 years old and was employed as a loader in a coal mine in Wise county. The prosecutrix was employed in the clerk's office of the circuit court of the county. It was on Saturday night of June 6, 1942, that the neighborhood of the courthouse town of Wise and the nearby town of Norton was the scene of the gathering of those persons, young and old, who were on pleasure bent. Their particular rendezvous were two night clubs known as Beverly Hills and Esco Inn. These were less than a fourth of a mile apart and seemed to afford fruitful vents for the exercise of pent up passions for social gaiety. The places served beer and wine and the usual exhilaration of dining and dancing — the latter to the strains of a nickelodian.
The prosecutrix started out with another girl and a boy friend in the early afternoon plying between Norton and Wise and the intermediate night clubs referred to. They visited first one and then the other until nighttime overtook them at Beverly Hills where they fell in with the accused and other companions of both sexes. From there they went to Esco Inn where wine is served. The accused had eighty-five cents with which he purchased at the establishment a quart bottle of white port wine. The prosecutrix drank a half of a glass of this and the rest of it was consumed by others of the party including the accused. This was the beginning of the unhappy episode of the evening. The prosecutrix testified that after drinking the wine sh...
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