State v. Katz
| Decision Date | 30 November 1915 |
| Docket Number | No. 18731.,18731. |
| Citation | 181 S.W. 425 |
| Parties | STATE v. KATZ. |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court; Kent K. Koerner, Judge.
Albert Katz was convicted of crime, and he appeals. Affirmed.
Defendant was tried and convicted, and his punishment assessed at imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of 2½ years.
The state's evidence, in substance, is that about 11 or 11:30 on the night of August 5, 1913, the prosecutrix and one Harry Schonberg, who had been acquaintances for years, were seated in Benton Park, where they were accosted by defendant and two companions, Harry Long and Richard Gausman, who falsely represented themselves to be private detectives. Long and Gausman seized Schonberg, and, under the guise of arrest, took him to one end of the park, while defendant forcibly and against her resistance took prosecutrix to the other side of the park, near a lake, and there ravished her. After the act of sexual intercourse was completed, he forcibly detained her for some time and then committed the unnatural crime alleged in the information. He then turned her over and inserted his private parts in her rectum. These transactions consumed about 45 minutes, and just about the time they were finished Long and Gausman appeared and, in turn, and with the assistance of defendant, assaulted and mistreated the girl in the same manner as had the defendant. Their acts occupied about 30 or 40 minutes. After this they took the girl to a saloon about two blocks from the scene of the first assault, and there purchased for her a glass of soda. It was then about 1 o'clock, and from this saloon they proceeded to the rear of an abandoned brewery, about three blocks distant, and there again assaulted her as they had in the park. The evidence discloses that but a very short time elapsed between the occurrences in the park and those at the brewery, in fact only the time required to travel from point to point and stop at the saloon to purchase the soda. After the last assault prosecutrix went to the corner of Cherokee and Jefferson streets, and there met an officer to whom she made complaint concerning her mistreatment. While in his company she met another police officer, who took her to the police station, and from there to the city dispensary, where a physical examination was made. In the presence of the police captain, certain other officers, and the defendant himself, prosecutrix, immediately after arriving at the police station, recited her story, as heretofore detailed, which was then and there denied by defendant.
The evidence further discloses that when the prosecutrix met the police officers her clothing was soiled and torn. The physician who made the examination testified that the vagina was excoriated, or reddened, and irritated inside and around the edges and greatly relaxed; that her rectum was similarly affected; and that her clothing was soiled from vaginal discharge.
On the part of defendant the testimony tends to prove that the defendant was not with the prosecutrix on the occasion testified to, nor was he with her at all in the park or at the brewery. He denied all the statements of the prosecutrix, and offered evidence tending to establish that he was engaged in the performance of his regular duties as a bartender until 12:45 that night. He admitted that immediately after quitting work he saw the prosecutrix and walked with her to a saloon and there got a glass of soda, but denied entirely that he had committed any assault, or that any had been committed upon prosecutrix in his presence.
John A. Gernez, of St. Louis, for appellant. John T. Barker, Atty. Gen., and Lee B. Ewing, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
REVELLE, J. (after stating the facts as above).
I. The judgment should be reversed, so asserts defendant, because: (1) The information charges no offense; the court (2) admitted improper evidence; (3) erred in its instructions to the jury; (4) should have required the state to elect upon which charge of alleged assault it would stand; and (5) that the evidence is wholly insufficient to sustain the verdict.
It is strongly urged and adroitly argued that the laws of this state do not make criminal the acts charged in the information, but we think otherwise, and have heretofore so held. State v. Wellman, 253 Mo. 302, 161 S. W. 795. It would serve no useful purpose to go into the conflicting holdings of other jurisdictions as to whether the act here charged was at common law included in the general terms "crime against nature," because, even were the negative of this proposition conceded, it would avail defendant nothing in view of our amended statute. In the statutes of this state it is written:
"Every person who shall be convicted of the detestable and abominable crime against nature, committed with mankind or with beast, with the sexual organs or with the mouth, shall be punished," etc.
— the words in italics having been added by amendment in 1911. Laws 1911, p. 198. The Legislature surely meant something by this amendment; and, if so, it evidently was to include certain acts against nature which the general common-law terms did not embrace, and the acts it had in mind it designated. The method denounced by the amendment, and employed in this case, is as much against nature, in the sense of being unnatural and against the order of nature, as sodomy, buggery, or any other unnatural copulation. The original statute gave no definition of the crime against nature, and it was unnecessary for the amendment, in order to embrace the act here charged, to more definitely define the act in contemplation than it did. As said in Honselman v. People, 168 Ill. loc. cit. 174, 48 N. E. 305:
"The statute gives no definition of the crime, which the law, with due regard to the sentiments of decent humanity, has always treated as one not fit to be named"
— and so with the amendment. Without lengthening the...
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State v. Damon
...Neb. 90; State v. Hilberg, 22 Utah 27; Conners v. State, 47 Wis. 523; State v. Burgdorf, 53 Mo. 65; State v. Wilson, 91 Mo. 410; State v. Katz, 181 S.W. 425; State Atkins, 292 S.W. 427; State v. Lawhorn, 157 S.W. 344; State v. Remley, 237 S.W. 489; State v. McCrackin, 162 S.W.2d 853; State ......
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The State v. Parr
... ... 414] of one cannot ... be made without a showing of the facts tending to establish ... the other. In short, the entire otherwise relevant facts may ... be regarded as part of the res gestae ... [ State v ... Sykes, 191 Mo. 62, 89 S.W. 851; State v. Katz, ... 266 Mo. l. c. 493, 181 S.W. 425.] Without their admission, a ... connected and intelligible statement of the transaction could ... not well be made, nor a clear understanding had of the same ... This exception to the admission of testimony of other ... offenses we discussed at length in ... ...
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State v. Scown, 46139
...not well have been related or described without also bringing the others directly into the picture. See the companion case, State v. Katz, 266 Mo. 493, 181 S.W. 425. But, be that as it may, the Pfeifer case, on its facts, cannot be controlling here. The only remotely similar question in our......
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State v. Pfeifer
...accordance with the verdict to imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of two years. The case is a companion case to that of State v. Katz, 181 S. W. 425, decided at this term, but not yet officially reported. The facts and the acts of defendant here were the same as the facts and the a......