State v. Acheson

• Decision Date: 08 January 1898
• Citation: 39 A. 570,91 Me. 240
• Parties: STATE v. ACHESON.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

39 A. 570

91 Me. 240

STATE

v. ACHESON.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Jan. 8, 1898.

(Official.)

Exceptions from supreme judicial court, Washington county.

William E. Acheson was convicted of an offense, and he brings exceptions. Sustained.

W. T. Haines, Atty. Gen., and F. I. Campbell, Co. Atty., for the State.

C. B. Bounds, G. M. Hanson, and K. J. McGarrigle, for defendant.

WHITEHOUSE, J. This is an indictment for an assault with "attempt" to ravish and carnally know a female child under the age of 14 years. There is but one count in the indictment, and the offense is there alleged to have been committed on the 3d day of January, 1897. In support of the charge the complainant gave testimony tending to show that such an assault was committed upon her on Sunday evening, the second Sunday after Christmas, which was the 3d day of January, while the defendant's wife was "at meeting." The government then offered to show another independent assault, of the same nature, committed on the complainant four or five days later. The defendant's counsel objected to this testimony, and the following colloquy took place between the court and the counsel:

"Court: What is the ground of the objection?

"Counsel: The ground of the objection is that in this indictment the allegation is of the assault on the 3d day of January, which has already been described. There is no allegation of any other offense at any other time. I simply say this story has been told three times under oath, and an election has been made, at a former time, entirely different from this. * * * we ought to be warned by the indictment what we are to defend. I don't think they should be permitted to put in an accumulation of offenses without the allegation being made that those offenses were meant. * * * Now, one has already been sworn to. I don't think we are to answer to other dates; and, as the county attorney states in his opening, the most important assault was away on, at some other date.

"The Court: WeU, the testimony that the county attorney has detailed in his opening has already been gone over. You heard her testify to it before.

"Counsel: That ought not to be the essential in this trial.

"The Court: If that be true, I don't think it can surprise the defendant any.

"Counsel: Yes; but we ask it upon another ground, that it is an election,—what would be the attempt, perhaps, to prove another assault, —and he accumulates a mass of assaults.

"The Court: Yes; but he cannot have but one.

"Counsel: Then let him elect.

"The Court: He must tell you before he gets through which one.

"Counsel: Ought he not to tell now, so we can be prepared?

"The Court: No; I will admit the evidence in this case and reserve for you an exception. The county attorney offers evidence of assaults subsequent to this one already detailed, and I admit the evidence.

"Counsel: To all that I wish now to object.

"The Court: Yes; but subject to the modification which I shall give before the case closes.

"Counsel: I wish to object to the whole."

Thereupon the complainant was permitted to give testimony tending to prove the commission of three other similar assaults upon her by the defendant on different days specified by her, following January 3d, and all within a period of about two weeks. But the report of the case does not disclose that there was any subsequent modification by the court of the ruling under which this testimony was admitted. Neither does it show that at any later stage of the trial the government expressly elected, or was required to elect, which one of the four separate assaults thus identified by the complainant's testimony it would rely upon to prove the substantive charge set out in the indictment. Nor does it appear that there was any further allusion to this question, before the close of the trial, except in the following instruction to the jury in the charge of the presiding judge:

"Now, in this case the charge is laid on the 3d of January last. I have already ruled, and I do now rule to you, that that date is immaterial, and I say to you that, if you are satisfied as I have told you, that the defendant is guilty of this charge at any time during the period when this little girl lived in the family of Mr. Acheson, that will be sufficient. I do not require you to fix the date, nor is it necessary for the state to fix the precise date. If the state has satisfied you by evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that on any date while this little child lived in defendant's house, he was guilty of this charge, then it is your duty to convict him."

To this instruction, and to the rulings of the presiding justice admitting evidence of assaults upon other occasions than that alleged in the Indictment, and refusing to require the prosecuting attorney to elect upon which one he would rely as the act charged, the defendant has exceptions.

It is an elementary principle in the law of evidence that, when a respondent stands charged with the commission of a particular criminal act, evidence that he did a similar thing at some other time is generally deemed irrelevant and inadmissible. The considerations of justice underlying this rule are sufficiently obvious. The admission of such collateral facts in evidence would tend to place the defendant's whole life in issue on the charge of a single act, and oppress him with irrelevant matter of which he had received no notice and which he could not be prepared to meet. Proofs of numerous other crimes similar to that charged may indeed have a tendency to show the accused to be devoid of all moral restraint, and "fatally bent on mischief," and thus, in a moral sense, increase the probability of his guilt with respect to the particular offense set out in the indictment; but such evidence does not, for that reason, become legally admissible when there is no question in regard to the nature of the act charged. Evidence that the defendant's general reputation is bad with respect to that element of character involved in the crime charged, or bad generally as a man of moral worth, might also tend in some degree to lay the foundation for a presumption of guilt; but the rule is firmly established and unquestioned that...