State v. Griffin

• Citation: 175 N.C. 767,94 S.E. 678
• Decision Date: 23 December 1917
• Docket Number: (No. 91.)
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of North Carolina
• Parties: STATE . v. GRIFFIN.

94 S.E. 678

(175 N.C. 767)

STATE .

v.GRIFFIN.

(No. 91.)

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Dec. 23, 1917.

[Ed. Note.—For other definitions, see Words and Phrases, First and Second Scries, Crime Against Nature.]

Appeal from Superior Court, Vance County; Whedbee, Judge.

W. L. Griffin was convicted of the crime against nature, and he appeals. No error.

T. T. Hicks, of Henderson, for appellant.

The Attorney General and R. H. Sykes, Asst. Atty. Gen.,.for the State.

BROWN, J. The evidence for the state tends to prove that defendant offered Jimmie Mustian, a boy nine years of age, $5 to go with him into a neighboring cornfield in the suburbs of Henderson and let defendant have intercourse with the boy by the mouth. The boy went with defendant, who took the boy's penis in his mouth and continued the act for about five minutes, when he desisted. He did not pay the boy, who then complained of the offense.

The defendant's evidence tends to prove that he is 52 years of age and has a wife 42 years of age; that they have seven children from 27 to 7 years old; that he has been a man of good character, except for getting drunk, and has never been accused or suspected of such crime before this. The defendant testified:

"That he was drunk that afternoon, and the only recollection he had after about 3 o'clock was of lying on the ground in the cornfield in the dark, and of a boy 'peeing' in his face;and that the next thing he knew was on coming to himself in the jail; that he had never done such a thing as he was accused of."

The defendant at the close of the state's testimony, and again at the close of all the testimony, demurred and asked his honor to hold:

"(1) That the crime is not complete upon the testimony, since the law contemplates the insertion of the private parts of the defendant into the person of the pathic or other party to make out the crime, and that the insertion of the penis of the boy into the mouth of the defendant does not constitute the crime.

"(2) That the statute and the nature of the case require that to constitute the crime the party of the second part must be capable of an emission, which a boy of 9 years is not."

The motion was denied and the defendant excepted.

We think the demurrer was properly overruled. The statute reads as follows:

"If any person shall commit the abominable and detestable crime against nature, with mankind or beast, he shall be imprisoned in the state's prison not less than five nor more than sixty years." Revisal of 1905, § 3349.

The statute does not define the crime ' against nature, but it has been done by the courts, and, in declaring what indecent and unnatural acts come within the denunciation of the law, the courts have differed to some extent, as pointed out by Mr. Justice Allen in State v. Fenner, 106 N. C. 248, 80 S. E. 970. In that case it is held that having carnal knowledge of a man by inserting the sexual organ of the defendant in his mouth is an indictable offense under the statute.

The only difference in that case and this is that this defendant took the boy's penis in his mouth, and undertook by that unnatural and indecent method to gratify a perverted and depraved sexual instinct We think the one method is as much a crime against nature as the other.

While the crime against nature and sodomy have often been used as synonymous terms, our statute is broad enough to include in the crime against nature other forms of the offense than sodomy and buggery. It includes all kindred acts of a bestial character whereby degraded and perverted sexual desires are sought to be gratified.

The method employed in this case is as much against nature, in the sense of being unnatural, indecent, and against the order of nature, as sodomy or any other bestial and unnatural copulation. It is the identical act for which the accused was convicted (in Honselman v. People, 168 111. 175, 48 N. E. 304, which is cited and approved in Kelly v. People, 192 111. 119, 61 N. E. 426, 85 Am. St. Rep. 323.

Under a statute similar to ours the Supreme Court of South Dakota declared that the words "crime against nature, " not only included...