State v. Gatlin

• Decision Date: 17 May 1946
• Docket Number: 15841.
• Citation: 38 S.E.2d 238,208 S.C. 414
• Parties: STATE v. GATLIN.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

38 S.E.2d 238

208 S.C. 414

STATE v. GATLIN.

No. 15841.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

May 17, 1946

D. R. Stack, of Charleston, for appellant.

Robert McC. Figg, Jr., Sol., of Charleston, for respondent.

STUKES, Justice.

Appellant was convicted of the statutory (Sec. 1109, Code of 1942) crime of rape in the Court of General Sessions of Charleston County at the June 1945 term. The crime was committed in the evening of the last day of March preceding. The victim is a young white married woman whose husband was then a corporal of infantry in military service overseas and she was living with her invalid mother in the suburbs of the city of Charleston, near the United States military reservation known as the Port of Embarkation. In a secluded section of this neighborhood, as the young woman was making her way in the darkness from a public bus stop to her home, after a shopping trip into the city, the attack occurred. The prosecutrix had to be hospitalized for some time afterward. Naturally there was no eyewitness to the attack other than the participants.

The appellant is a young colored man, a native of Mississippi who was then in the Quartermaster Corps of the army, on duty as an enlisted man in a Service Company at the Port of Embarkation.

Upon his failure to plead when the case was called for trial, the Court entered a plea of not guilty and saw to it that counsel appeared and aided in the defense; but appellant did not testify. In keeping with this course of the trial judge, we have searched the record for error, having in mind our established rule of in favorem vitae. State v Grant, 199 S.C. 412, 19 S.E.2d 638 certiorari denied, 316 U.S. 662, 62 S.Ct. 942, 86 L.Ed. 1739.

There is no need to repeat from the record further sordid details of the heinous crime. There can be no doubt that it was committed and by appellant; indeed, no contest of those facts was made in the lower court. After mandatory death sentence (Code, Sec. 1110) was imposed this appeal followed. It is upon twelve exceptions which do not make so many issues. All have been carefully considered and are disposed of in this opinion.

Appellant's defense was insanity which the state contends was feigned and the jury so found by their verdict of guilt. In view of the record it is manifest that they could not have honestly concluded otherwise. The clear and undisputed testimony was that his conduct in Charleston was normal until his mother visited him in jail two or three weeks after his apprehension and arrest shortly after the crime; then it became erratic. The county officers, anticipating the defense, procured an order of the court for his admission to the State Hospital in Columbia where he remained for over thirty days under observation and subject to the mental tests of psychiatrists, and one of the staff of experts testified unqualifiedly of their conclusion of sanity and absence of mental disease or abnormality. Sec. 6239, Code of 1942. Only appellant's mother testified to prior mental aberration and she admitted that she made no report of it when he was called and inducted into military service about a year before.

The commanding officer of appellant's company, called by the prosecution, testified that he had before noticed no signs of mental unbalance and the same was true of the chaplain, a colored officer, a witness for appellant. Two army medical officers visited him in jail and did not testify.

The court's instructions to the jury are printed in full in the transcript before us. They were clear and free from error. The jury were told that insanity, which was accurately defined, is an affirmative defense which must be made out by the defendant by the preponderance of the evidence but that it would be a good defense if the jury should have a reasonable doubt whether it had been made out by the greater weight or preponderance of the testimony. Thus appellant was given the benefit of every reasonable doubt of his guilt under the law. He was certainly not entitled to a more favorable charge. S. C. cases in 10 S.E.Dig., Criminal Law, k46 et seq., P. 87 et seq. An 'irresistible impulse' is not a defense against a charge of crime in this State. State v. Gilstrap, 205 S.C. 412, 32 S.E.2d 163.

No more details of the nature of the crime were needed to be given by the Court in his instructions to the jury than we find there. The elements of it, comprehending the minutiae, were contained in the uncontradicted testimony of the prosecutrix. And there were numerous, unquestioned corroborating circumstances.

But it is contended that the court erroneously failed to instruct the jury respecting circumstantial evidence and the nature and strength of it required for conviction. The argument overlooks the fact that the crime in this case and the identity of appellant were established by direct evidence and the circumstances introduced were merely corroborative. In such a case it is not requisite that the law of circumstantial evidence be charged. State v. Bunyon, 137 S.C. 391, 135 S.E. 361; State v. Rickenbaker, 187 S.C. 448, 198 S.E. 43.

Moreover, our statutes do not require, and we know of no decision of this court requiring, corroboration of the testimony of the prosecutrix to establish the guilt of the accused in a rape case. See to the contrary, State v. Floyd, 174 S.C. 288, 177 S.E. 375. The law generally is collated in Noonan v. State, 117 Neb. 520, 221 N.W. 434, 60 A.L.R. 1124.

There is further complaint of the charge to the jury, that it did not contain instructions relative to the lesser crimes included within the greater, to wit, assault with intent to ravish, and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. It is argued that the jury should have been told that they could convict for one or the other of these lesser crimes, in default of which appellant was prejudiced by thus restricting the jury to render a verdict of guilty or not guilty of the greater offense, or finding him insane. In the first place, the penalty for such an attempt upon conviction without recommendation to mercy by the jury as here, is the same as for the accomplished crime (Code, Sec. 1110), so there was no prejudice even if there had been an erroneous failure to instruct thereabout. But there was no error in such omission. An example of the applicable principle is found in State v. Wilson, 162 S.C. 413, 161 S.E. 104, 113, 81 A.L.R. 580, from which the following is quoted: 'The...