State v. Huff

• Decision Date: 12 November 1901
• Citation: 65 S.W. 256,164 Mo. 480
• Parties: STATE v. HUFF.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

65 S.W. 256

164 Mo. 480

STATE v. HUFF.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

November 12, 1901.

ASSAULT WITH INTENT TO COMMIT RAPE — EVIDENCE — SUFFICIENCY — REQUESTED CHARGE — IMMATERIALITY — REVIEW OF EVIDENCE.

1. The supreme court will not pass on the weight of evidence in a criminal case, and, unless there is no substantial evidence to justify the verdict, or it is the result of passion, prejudice, or partiality in the jury, will not interfere.

2. A feeble-minded girl 22 years old was overtaken by defendant on a public road and given a ride in his buggy. He immediately

commenced to take liberties with her, which she did not resent, but refused to have intercourse with him. He persisted in his efforts to induce her to consent, when her mother heard her crying, and asking to be let out of the buggy, and came to her rescue. In a prosecution for assault with intent to commit rape, defendant testified that he did not intend to have intercourse without the girl's consent, and that he had no knowledge of her enfeebled condition. She testified that she did not object to the privileges defendant took with her, and knew it was wrong to permit them. Held to warrant a conviction, the question whether defendant intended to have intercourse regardless of the girl's resistance being for the jury.

3. In a prosecution for assault with intent to commit rape it appeared that, while the girl was feeble-minded, she knew that it was wrong to permit defendant to take liberties with her, and therefore was capable of consenting to criminal connection. Held, a charge that, if the girl was too weak-minded to consent, but defendant had no knowledge of her mental unsoundness to that extent, such unsoundness of mind should not be considered by the jury, was properly refused as immaterial, the only issue being whether she did in fact, directly or indirectly, consent.

Appeal from circuit court, Monroe county; D. H. Eby, Judge.

J. M. Huff was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape, and appeals. Affirmed.

Bodine & Boyd, for appellant. E. C. Crow, Atty. Gen., for the State.

BURGESS, J.

Defendant was convicted in the circuit court of Monroe county for assault with intent to ravish one Nettie Carter, and his punishment fixed at three years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. After unavailing motions for new trial and in arrest, defendant appeals.

It appears from the record that between 2 and 3 o'clock of the afternoon of October 8, 1900, at Monroe county, while Nettie Carter, a feeble-minded female, then about 22 years of age, was going from her father's house in said county along the public road leading therefrom to a neighbor's on an errand, defendant, who was traveling along the road in a one-horse buggy, in the same direction, overtook her, and asked her to get in the buggy and ride with him, which she did. Immediately after she got in the buggy and they had started the horse, defendant began taking liberties with her, with her consent, such as hugging and kissing her, and feeling her breast, and then soliciting her to permit him to have sexual intercourse with her, which she refused. After having gone a few hundred yards, defendant gave her a dollar, stopped the buggy, and asked her if he should hitch the horse to the fence, and he got out, but she declined. He then asked her about the dollar, and she gave it back to him. He then got down upon his knees in front of the girl, with his back to the dashboard and his hands under her clothing, when her mother, who was cutting sprouts in a pasture hard...