State v. GOODSON, 5265
| Decision Date | 15 April 1950 |
| Docket Number | No. 5265,5265 |
| Citation | 54 N.M. 184,217 P.2d 262 |
| Parties | STATE v. GOODSON. |
| Court | New Mexico Supreme Court |
Joe L. Martinez, Atty. Gen., W. R. Kegel, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellant.
Richard H. Robinson, Carlsbad, for appellee.
The question for decision is whether a plea of guilty and sentence in the court of a justice of the peace on a charge of assault and battery is a bar to a subsequent prosecution on an information charging rape by force on the female who filed the complaint in the justice court.
Shortly after the information was lodged in the District Court the defendant, appellee here, filed a motion to dismiss upon the ground that he had theretofore entered a plea of guilty to a charge of assault and battery filed against him in the justice court of Precinct No. 1, Eddy County, growing out of the same facts as in the present case, and had been sentenced to serve 60 days in jain and to pay a fine of $100.
The state and defendant entered into the following stipulation:
'(a) That the charge in the information filed herein is 'rape by force' and grew out of the same transaction wherein the defendant herein was charged with assault and battery in the Justice of the Peace Court, Precinct No. 1, Eddy County, New Mexico, to which charge the defendant entered a plea of guilty and was sentenced to serve 60 days in the Eddy County jail and was ordered to pay a fine in the sum of $100.00.
'(b) That had there been a trial of the assault and battery charge in the Justice of the Peace Court, Precinct No. 1, Eddy County, New Mexico, the facts submitted would have been the same as the facts submitted in the trial of the present case, plus the additional facts necessary to constitute the charge of rape.'
The motion to dismiss was sustained and the state has appealed.
The Attorney General contends that a conviction by a justice of the peace of the offense of assault and battery is not a bar to a later prosecution for rape growing out of the same occurrence, where the justice of the peace had no jurisdiction over the crime of rape, and says assault and battery is not an offense necessarily included within the offense of rape, and is therefore not to be considered as the same offense. Article 2, Section 15, of our Constitution provides that no person shall be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense.
The crime of rape is punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary for not less than one year nor more than 99 years, while the penalty for assault and battery is limited to a fine of not less than $5 or a jail sentence of not more than 60 days, or both. On a charge of rape a justice of the peace has jurisdiction only to bind a person charged with such offense over to the district court, while the trial of an assault and battery charge is within his jurisdiction.
While the questions involved are before this court for the first time there have been many such cases in other jurisdictions, and the courts of those states are in hopeless conflict.
We find the general rule is stated in 1 Wharton's Criminal Law, Twelfth Edition, Sec. 394, as follows:
See also 44 A.J. 'Rape', Sec. 38, for a statement of the varying views of the courts.
In State v. Rose, 89 Ohio St. 383, 106 N.E. 50, 51 L.R.A.1915A, 256, the court overruled an argument almost identical to the one adopted by the trial court in this case. There the defendant had been tried in the probate court on a charge of contributingto the delinquency of a minor, and the jury was discharged over the objection of the defendant without reaching a verdict. The defendant was later indicted on a charge of rape without consent of the same juvenile, and upon substantially the same set of facts as were involved in the former charge. In Ohio the charge of contributing to the moral delinquency of a minor was within the jurisdiction of Probate Court, while the charge of rape was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Court of Common Pleas. The court held: 'The probate court was wholly without jurisdiction to try the charge of rape, hence the defendant could never have been in jeopardy on the charge of rape in the probate court; for to be in jeopardy there must not only be a sufficient legal charge, but a sufficient jurisdiction to try the charge.'
The contention that an assault and battery is necessarily a part of rape by force, and that therefore...
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Huff, Matter of
...to meet its burden in the delinquency proceeding.9 We note that New Mexico adopted a jurisdictional exception in State v. Goodson, 54 N.M. 184, 217 P.2d 262 (1950) where the court held that the appellant's conviction on assault and battery in the justice court did not bar a later prosecutio......
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State v. Hansen
...Other state supreme courts would later use the same language. E.g., Burton v. State, 79 So. 2d 242, 247 (Miss. 1955); State v. Goodson, 217 P.2d 262, 264 (N.M. 1950); State v. Taylor, 293 N.W. 219, 225 (N.D. 1940); State v. Winger, 282 N.W. 819, 821 (Minn. 1938). The Florida Supreme Court f......
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State v. Rodriguez
...incident to the trial before the justice did not extend to an offense beyond his jurisdiction." Id. {9} In State v. Goodson, 54 N.M. 184, 188, 217 P.2d 262, 264 (1950), we adopted the jurisdictional exception articulated in Ball and Diaz in the context of prosecutions for greater and lesser......
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Bennett v. State
...200 F.2d 70; People v. Townsend, 214 Mich. 267, 183 N.W. 177, 16 A.L.R. 902; State v. Holm, 55 Nev. 468, 37 P.2d 821; State v. Goodson, 54 N.M. 184, 217 P.2d 262; State v. Rose, 89 Ohio St. 383, 106 N.E. 50, L.R.A. 1915A, 256; Crowley v. State, 94 Ohio St. 88, 113 N.E. 658, L.R.A.1917A, 661......