State v. Baker

• Decision Date: 20 February 1899
• Citation: 56 P. 81,6 Idaho 496
• Parties: STATE v. BAKER
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

56 P. 81

6 Idaho 496

STATE v. BAKER

Supreme Court of Idaho

February 20, 1899

RAPE-VERDICT-EVIDENCE.-Evidence in this case examined and held not to support verdict of guilty.

(Syllabus by the court.)

APPEAL from the District Court of Ada County.

Reversed and remanded.

John C Rice, H. A. Griffiths and T. D. Cahalan, for Appellant.

As the common law, where the defendant was not permitted to testify in his own behalf, the testimony of the prosecutrix alone was sufficient to sustain a conviction for rape. But under statutes making the accused a competent witness, when he avails himself of his right to testify, and explicitly denies the commission of the offense, the uncorroborated testimony of the prosecutrix is not sufficient to sustain a conviction. (7 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law, 2d ed., 867; Mathews v State, 19 Neb. 330, 27 N.W. 234; Sowers v Territory, 6 Okla. 436, 50 P. 257; People v. Lambert, 120 Cal. 170, 52 P. 307.) Not only is the testimony of the prosecutrix uncorroborated, but it is improbable, inconsistent and self-contradictory. In those states where the unsupported testimony of the prosecutrix is sufficient to sustain a conviction, such testimony must not be inconsistent, self-contradictory or improbable. (State v. McMillan, 20 Mont. 407, 51 P. 827; Tway v. State, 7 Wyo. 74, 50 P. 189; Sowers v. Territory, 6 Okla. 436, 50 P. 257; People v. Benson, 6 Cal. 221, 65 Am. Dec. 506; People v. Hamilton, 46 Cal. 540; People v. Ardago, 51 Cal. 371.)

Samuel H. Hays, Attorney General, for the State.

In many cases the statute provides that there shall be no conviction on the uncorroborated evidence of the prosecutrix, but we have no such statute. Corroboration other than by the outery or complaint of the prosecutrix is usually impossible to obtain. Such crimes are not committed publicly. Corroboration has been emphasized by the courts in numerous cases going to the question of consent, but where, as in this case, prosecutrix is under the age of consent, corroboration is no more of an element than in other criminal cases, with the exception, perhaps, that greater care is necessary in scrutinizing the evidence. (State v. Wilcox, 111 Mo. 569, 33 Am. St. Rep. 551, 20 S.W. 314; Hamilton v. State, 36 Tex. Cr. Rep. 372, 37 S.W. 431; State v. Cone, 1 Jones (N. C.), 18.)

HUSTON C. J. QUARLES, J., SULLIVAN, J. concurring.

OPINION

HUSTON, C. J.

The defendant was convicted of the crime of rape, alleged to have been committed upon the person of his daughter, aged about fifteen years, and sentenced to the state penitentiary for a period of twenty-one years; from which judgment, and from the order of the court overruling his motion for a new trial, defendant appeals.

Appellant raises several objections to the constitutionality of the act under which he was indicted, both as to the sufficiency of its title and the manner of its enactment. As an examination of the record satisfies us that the judgment of the district court will have to be reversed upon the merits, and as the objections to the statute have been remedied by subsequent legislation, we do not feel called upon to discuss or pass upon those questions, but will consider the case upon its merits, as the same appear in the transcript. It is a rule, we believe, of very general recognition, that courts will not, where the decision of a case does not necessarily involve the passing upon the constitutionality of a statute, assume to do so. This court said, in State v. Ridenbaugh, 5 Idaho 710, 51 P. 750; "An opinion obiter as to the validity of said act being unnecessary, all authority, as well as reason, forbid that we should express our views as to the validity of said act until that question becomes necessary in a case properly before us." And the position taken by the court in that case is accentuated in the case at bar by the fact that the questions raised have been eliminated by the action of the legislature in re-enacting the statute. While the changing of the age within which the party against whom the offense of rape is alleged to have been committed is capable of consenting thereto has eliminated from the offense in such case the necessity of proving the employment of any of the various means mentioned in the statute for accomplishing such crime, and limits the proof in such cases to the committing of the act of sexual intercourse, and the age of the alleged victim, it is not to be presumed that the nature and character of the evidence essential to the establishment of the offense charged are done away with, or materially changed. The remark of Sir Mathew Hale in regard to the character of the offense of rape, that "it is an accusation easy to make, and hard to be proved, and harder still to be defended by the party accused, though ever so innocent," receives additional force by reason of such changes in the law as make that the highest grade of felony which, before such change in the statute, was, or might have been, a minor offense. It is doubly incumbent upon the courts in prosecutions for this offense under the statutes as they now stand to see to it that every element of the offense, within the narrow limits to which the proof is now confined, be established beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the rule of the statute which was enacted for the protection of female virtue be not made a means whereby the vindictive wanton may add further infamy to her iniquitous calling by making it a means of extortion and blackmail, or the medium of wreaking vengeance for some real or imaginary wrong.

We have examined the record in this case with much care. The crime charged is the most heinous known to the law. It seems a...