State v. GODWIN
| Decision Date | 20 March 1947 |
| Docket Number | No. 4961,4961 |
| Citation | 178 P.2d 584,51 N.M. 65 |
| Parties | STATE v. GODWIN. |
| Court | New Mexico Supreme Court |
Claud S. Mann and Harold O. Waggoner, both of Albuquerque, for appellant.
C. C. McCulloh, Atty. Gen., and Robert W. Ward, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
The defendant appeals from a sentence of life imprisonment imposed by the district court of Valencia County following conviction before a jury of having on July 10, 1945, unlawfully and carnally known and abused Nan Bost, a female child three years and one month old in violation of 1941 Comp., § 41-3902.
On the date mentioned, at about 7:30 p. m., Nan Bost, three years and one monthold fied screaming from the rear door of the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Adams in Belen, New Mexico. She crossed a small court yard and went to the rear door of the apartment in which she lived with her father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. George V. Bost of Belen. The child's mother, attracted by her screams, went to the back door to meet and admit her. Immediately after getting inside, the child exclaimed: 'That man hurt me' and when questioned by the mother informed her that it was a man over at the Adams' apartment wearing a white hat. Her condition was described by the mother as follows: 'She was torn up physically, her hair was mussed, her clothes were off partially, both her legs were through one leg of her sun suit, she was holding the bib of her play suit.'
The child was found to be bleeding at the vagina and there was blood on her lower stomach and legs. A medical examination conducted by two physicians within an hour following the injuries suffered disclosed that the child's labia was bruised and bleeding and that the hymen was ruptured.
As soon as Mrs. Bost had examined her daughter she crossed the small court yard and went to the rear door of the Adams' apartment. Receiving no response to a knock, nor to a call, and the rear door being open, she stepped from the outside through the screen door into the kitchen and called against but still got no response. The apartment seemed to be vacant. She then called a woman living nearby to come to her apartment. Together they took the child to the office of the physicians.
Less than an hour and a half prior to the time the child, Nan, ran screaming from the Adams' apartment in the condition described, the defendant had been left there in an apparent drunken stupor in a chair in the living room by Robert B. Adams, tenant of the apartment and Ray Borland. The defendant, Adams and Borland were all fellow employees of the Santa Fe Railroad Company which maintains a division point at Belen. The three had come to the apartment following a meeting on the street after visiting two bars and drinking for a time in each. The defendant already was in a drunken condition when Adams first met him on the street about midafternoon of that day. While in the latter of the two bars visited some woman came in and seated herself by defendant and remained between 40 and 45 minutes during which time he and she sat with their arms around each other, 'loving each other, loving', as a witness described their actions. When she left the defendant inquired her address and on being told left his companious and was gone about 30 minutes.
It was while proceeding from the last bar visited by the trio to the Adams' apartment and just before arriving there that the group met George Bost, accompanied by his little daughter, Nan, en route to a grocery store to make a purchase. This was about6:30 in the afternoon. Following the usual greetings, the defendant inquired of Bost if the child was his daughter and upon being told that she was responded that he didn't known Bost had a daughter.
It was Adams' intention, upon leaving the first bar visited with defendant to take him to the Kuhn hotel where defendant lived but he refused to give them his room number. Accordingly, after the trio visited the second bar they took him to the Adams' apartment. Adams had just quit work when he met defendant, so he conceived the idea of going home to wash up when all three would go up town to eat at some restaurant. However, when they attempted to arouse defendant from a drunken stupor into which he had fallen while seated in the chair in the living room of the apartment, he gave no reaction, even to an application of face towels dipped in ice water. The other two then proceeded up town without him.
They first went to a drug store to get some sandwiches. While still there, George Bost, the father of Nan came to the store looking for defendant. Adams left the store with Bost and one Sid Smith who had been encountered in the meantime and went directly to the Kuhn hotel where they found defendant. They took him with them to the doctors' office. When first contacted at the hotel, the defendant said: 'Hello Bob, hello Sid, what is going on', or something to that effect. Adams replied that he, the defendant, was in trouble. The defendant made no response to this statement.
When they reached the doctors' office, they parked their car directly in front of it. They met the child's mother and others, who had accompanied her there coming out of the doctors' office, Frank Mauldin, a neighbor, carrying Nan in his arms. Bost, Nan's father, Godwin, the defendant, and Adams walked toward the party and when only a short distance away the father, without doing anything to indicate the defendant, said to his daughter: 'Is this the man?' Nan, pointing directly to defendant, said: 'Yes, Daddy, that is the man.' The accused made no response but 'dropped his head and changed color', as one witness described it. Whereupon, the father of the child struck defendant on the head and in the face with his first, knocking him down and kicking him two or three times while on the ground. It was about 8:00 p. m. when this happened.
Just as one of the examining physicians, Dr. Parkinson, was about to leave in his car, following his examination of the child, he was called by Mauldin and adked to return to his office to examine the defendant. The latter had been knocked out momentarily but was picked up, taken inside and placed on a table in the doctor's office. Regaining consciousness, he wanted to know what had happened and was told by the doctor to lie down; and that some one else would have to tell him about it. He lapsedinto unconsciousness again after the doctor had forced him back on the table for an examination-either unconsciousness or a stupor from the inebriated condition into which he had gotten himself earlier in the afternoon, it was difficult to say which, both the blows given him by Bost and the liquor probably contributing to his condition.
The doctor understood he was asked to examine defendant for the purpose of determining whether he had venereal disease. Hence, he made no special examination for the discovery of blood on his male organ or underwear. Actually, he observed none. There was fresh bleeding on his forehead and around the mouth from the blows struck by Bost, father of the child. The defendant's trousers were found to be unbuttoned all the way down in front, save for the top button holding them together. The male organ disclosed a slight redness on portions thereof that would have been irritated by sexual intercourse. This condition, however, could have been due to other causes and was in no way conclusive that defendant had engaged in recent sexual intercourse.
Following the visit to the doctors' office with her daughter, Mrs. Bost returned home and in the company of her husband and another visited the Adams' apartment lookingfor Nan's panties. They were found in one of the bedrooms, hanging on the side of the bed between the bed and the wall. The beds had been freshly made up within the week, Mrs. Adams having placed new bedspreads on them and the room was clean, not having been occupied for over a week with everything in an orderly condition. However, when examined after the child's flight from the apartment, as above related, one of the beds in this bedroom was 'mussed up', with the pillow at the foot and the bedspread turned back toward the foot and Nan's panties hanging on the side of the bed toward the wall.
When and under what conditions the defendant left the Adams' apartment, no one knows. He was not seen to leave by any person, so far as known. It is quite possible that he was still in it when Mrs. Bost, Nan's mother, stepped inside the kitchen screen immediately after Nan ran from it, crying out: 'That man hurt me.' It was a four room plywood apartment. The accused could easily have been secreted in some part of it, but if so, he made no response to Mrs. Bost's effort to arouse some one. All known is that he appeared in the lobby of the Kuhn hotel about 8:00 p. m., where he was given a letter that had been received for him by Mrs. Mary Whittington, the proprietor. He read the letter and engaged in apparently normal conversation with her for a few minutes. The defendant was wearing a light colored straw hat on reaching the hotel. Shortly after his arrival, George Bost came in and they went out together, the defendant leaving his hat on a table in the lobby as well as the letter Mrs. Whittingtonhad given him. She remainded him that he was leaving the letter and asked if he wanted same. He asked her to keep it for him, saying he would return. Before Mr. Bost's arrival, the defendant also carried on a conversation with another guest of the hotel, a Mr. Beamis, discussing expenses met with in railroad work, the high cost of living and income taxes. This conversation was broken up by Mr. Bost's arrival, however, and he and the defendant left together going directly to the doctor's office where the events already related took place.
The defendant testified in his own behalf but did little more than to relate that he was so intoxicated that he remembered nothing that took place from about 5 o'clock in the afternoon on the day in question until he ...
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