State v. Burgdorf
| Decision Date | 31 March 1873 |
| Citation | 53 Mo. 65 |
| Parties | STATE OF MISSOURI Respondent, v. WILLIAM BURGDORF, Appellant. |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court.
Jecko and Hospes, for Appellant.
Burgdorf was indicted for the crime of rape alleged to have been perpetrated by him on Anna Rorschach, a girl about sixteen years of age.
The trial of the cause resulted in a verdict of guilty, and judgment accordingly, and after moving unsuccessfully for a new trial, this case comes here by appeal.
The only ground relied on for a reversal, is that the verdict is entirely unsupported by the evidence.
Without setting forth in detail the disgusting particulars of this accusation, it is sufficient to say with regard to the salient points in the evidence, that whether we consider the place of the reputed offense, (a house but a few feet distant from one in which two families were then living,) the early hour in the evening at which it is said to have occurred, or the manner of its alleged perpetration, (viz: the seizure by the defendant of both of the girl's hands, in one of his, the holding of them behind her back, and while thus still holding them seating himself in a chair, raising one of her legs with one hand, and the other leg with his foot, pulling her “ astraddle” of his lap and consummmating the outrage, and this too, while holding to the table on which was a lighted lamp, with his other hand, and thus preventing her from pushing him over, as she says, the second time,) the story of the girl is to the last degree improbable.
In addition to this, she is contradicted by Hammill, a witness on the part of the State who was peeping through a crack of the door, only some seven or eight feet distant, and who reiterates the statement that though he heard a kind of screaming at first, the girl made no outcry while the offense was being perpetrated; and that after defendant laid down his pipe and took her by the arm, and placed her in the position above referred to, she seemed to be ““satisfied,” and that she also caught hold of the table with the lighted lamp on it; and the lamp stood still.
And Ehert, though not so positive in his statements as to outcries, as Hammill, says he heard no screaming while he and the former were together at the door.
Further than that, the physician who examined the girl the next day, stated that he found no bruises on her person, and that he got her to make statements respecting the alleged...
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...for rape: Reg. v. Fletcher, Bell, 63; 8 Cox, C. C. 131; Com. v. McDonald, 110 Mass. 405; Brown v. People, 36 Mich. 203; State v. Burgdorf, 53 Mo. 65; Walter v. State, 40 Ala. 325; to prosecutions for highway robbery: Rex v. McDaniel, Fost. 121, 128; Long v. State, 12 Ga. 293; to prosecution......
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