State v. Heyer
| Decision Date | 19 June 1916 |
| Docket Number | No. 85.,85. |
| Citation | 98 A. 413 |
| Parties | STATE v. HEYER. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
(Syllabus by the Court.)
Error to Supreme Court.
William Heyer was convicted of crime, and brings error. Affirmed.
William R. Wilson, of Elizabeth, for plaintiff in error. Alfred A. Stein, Prosecutor of Pleas, and Martin P. O'Connor, Asst. Prosecutor of Pleas, both of Elizabeth, for the State.
WALKER, Ch. The record in this case discloses a conviction of the defendant of the crime of rape upon his plea of guilty. He brings error and makes numerous assignments; those only which go to the record being available to him, as no exceptions were taken in the progress of the cause in the trial court.
It is contended that the judgment is invalid because in the complaint it was recited that it was made by Annie Atamcuk, but was signed by Anna Atamacuk. The defendant waived trial by indictment, and the prosecutor, by virtue of the statute, preferred an allegation against him charging the commission of rape upon Anna Starncuk. Counsel argues that these variances are fatal. This is not so, at least for this reason: The defendant, when arraigned to plead upon the allegation which charged him with having committed a rape upon Anna Starn- ouk, pleaded guilty, and for this offense, namely, rape upon Anna Starncuk, so preferred against him, he was by the court adjudged guilty upon his plea, and sentenced.
When a defendant pleads guilty to a criminal offense charged in an indictment, or an allegation when that is preferred upon indictment being waived, he certainly cannot avoid the consequences of his plea and reverse the judgment entered upon it by showing that the preliminary complaint before the magistrate recited a name as that of his accuser other than that in the indictment or allegation, and also because the complaint was signed by still another name, being neither the one in the caption of the complaint nor the one used in the indictment or allegation, and especially so when no point of it was made in the trial court.
It is next contended that the allegation does not charge rape, but only assault and battery, for which the defendant was not tried. He had no trial because he pleaded guilty. If the objection that rape was not charged were valid, and if it were to be held that the conviction could be sustained for assault and battery, the sentence imposed, the maximum of which was for rape, could be corrected here or sent to the court below for that purpose. State v. Hugging, 84 N. J. Law, 254, 87 Atl. 630.
The pertinent language of the allegation is this:
"That the said William Heyer on the 26th day of November in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirteen, at the city of Elizabeth, in the county aforesaid, and within the jurisdiction of this court, then and there being, did feloniously and forcibly and against the will of one Anna Starncuk, a woman, make an assault upon the body of her, the said Anna Starncuk, and did then and there feloniously ravish and carnally know her the said Anna Starncuk."
Rape at common law is defined by Blackstone as "the carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will." 4 Bl. Com. 210.
Our crimes act (Comp. Stat. p. 178.3, § 115) provides that "any person who shall have carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly against her will" shall be guilty of a high misdemeanor. There is here no departure from Mr. Justice Blackstone's definition. The only difference between these definitions and the terms employed to charge the crime in the allegation in the case at bar is that in the Commentaries the phrase is "forcibly and against her will" and in the statute it is "forcibly against her will," both following the words "carnal knowledge of a woman," while in the allegation the words "forcibly and against the will of," etc., precede the words "and did then and there feloniously ravish and carnally know her," etc.
To aver that a man forcibly and against the will of a female did carnally know her is the same as to say that he carnally knew her forcibly and against her will. There is no statute or rule of law prescribing the order in which these collocations of words shall precede and follow one another in an indictment or allegation.
It is, however, contended that, because the allegation avers that the defendant "did feloniously and forcibly and against the will of Anna Starncuk, a woman, make an assault upon the body of her the said Anna Starncuk," notwithstanding the immediately following words, "and did then and there feloniously ravish and carnally know her the said Anna Starncuk," it only charged an assault and battery, because the words "forcibly against her will" preceded the averment of the assault and battery, and neither immediately preceded nor followed the charge of ravishment and carnal knowledge, which latter charge was written after a comma, and that therefore the ravishment and carnal knowledge is not averred to have taken place forcibly and against the will of the woman.
The phrases just quoted are all part of the context of a single sentence, and the sentence is not to be defeated as a criminal pleading if it can rationally and reasonably be construed to charge an offense which apparently it was intended to charge. When the pleader said that the prisoner did feloniously ravish and carnally know the woman he undoubtedly meant to charge rape.
In Bouv. Law Dic. (Rawles' Rev.) vol. 1, p. 421, in defining "context," it is stated:
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