Powers v. The State Of Ga.
Decision Date | 31 July 1871 |
Citation | 44 Ga. 209 |
Parties | ASBURY H. POWERS, plaintiff in error. v. THE STATE OF GEORGIA, defendant in error. |
Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Criminal Law. Before Judge Hopkins. DeKalb Superior Court. April Term, 1871.
Powers, alone, was charged with "incestuous fornication, " in that, on the, etc., being an unmarried man, he had carnal *knowledge of Amanda Powers, an unmarried female, who was his sister. Upon arrangement, he demurred to the indictment upon the ground that said offense is a joint offense, and no provision was made by law for a separate indictment therefor. The demurrer was overruled. On the trial Amanda Powers testified subsantially as follows: She lived now with her brother-in-law, Reeves, but in 1869lived with her brother, the defendant. In December 1868, defendant had carnal knowledge of her against her will, and continued to have till March 1869, when she left his house. She had a child, the fruit of this intercourse, in November 1869: it is alive. She made certain contradictory statements as to dates, etc. There was an attempt to show an improper intimacy between her and one Burdett, but she denied it. She said she did not tell any one about the matter till she moved to Reeves\'. that she had never had criminal intercourse with defendant, and that Burdett got it up to disgrace her; and she denied telling her and Miss Gardner so after that; she said she never told anything of the kind. She said she had never gotten any part of her father\'s estate, that defendant was her guardian, and as such she sued him; that is the suit pending.
Her uncle, Burdett, father of said Burdett, testified that in November 1868, about daylight, he was passing defendant's and through a crack of the house saw him over Amanda, with his pants off, trying to have carnal knowledge of her, heard her insist that he should not, and him say he would, and witness passed on, and did not mention it to any one, neither to his wife nor any member of the family, nor to any one till the Spring of 1870. He admitted that he and *defendant had had a quarrel and had not spoken to each other for a long time. The State proved that she and defendant were unmarried, and closed. Mrs. Corley and Mrs. Gardner testified that Amanda did tell them at said time that her brother had never hinted such a thing as carnal intercourse with her, and they testified that they would not believe her on oath, because of her bad character. And Mrs. Gardner testified that from the general character of the witness, Burdett, she would not believe him on oath. Three other witnesses, akin to defendant, testified that Burdett's and Amanda's characters were so bad that they were unworthy of belief on oath. Defendant's counsel offered in evidence an action by Amanda, by Reeves as her next friend, against defendant for trespass in violently having carnal knowledge of her, begun in September 1870, with a garnishment founded upon it, in which Ramsey stood Reeves' security for costs and damages. The Court permitted so much of it to be read as showed when it was begun.
In rebuttal, four or five witnesses sustained Burdett as a man of such character as that his testimony should be believed, and several of them so sustained Amanda. Defendant stated that the charge was false, that he had whipped Amanda because she would go to Burdett's against his orders, and this raised them against him. His counsel requested the Court to charge as follows:
The Court charged the jury as follows: ...
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People v. Frye
...one may be guilty and the other innocent, State v. Ellis, 74 Mo. 385, 41 Am. Rep. 321;People v. Patterson, 102 Cal. 239, 36 P. 436;Powers v. State, 44 Ga. 209. On a charge of conspiracy between two persons, in order to convict one it is imperative that the jury find the other equally guilty......
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Mosley v. State
...the crime is incestuous adultery, and the fact that the force used "cannot be said to be that violence which constitutes rape" (Powers v. State, supra) immaterial. "In a majority of jurisdictions, it is held that the consent of both parties is not an essential element of the crime of incest......
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Mosley v. State
...mutual consent (and without this there is no joint offense), we think but few cases of this unusual crime would be punished." Powers v. State, 44 Ga. 209, 214, 215. See, also, Raiford v. State, 68 Ga. 672, 674. Thus if the female was capable of consent, "A man accused of incestuous adultery......