State v. Keesler
| Decision Date | 31 January 1878 |
| Citation | 78 N.C. 469 |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. JAMES KEESLER. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
INDICTMENT for Incest, tried at Fall Term, 1877, of CHEROKEE Superior Court, before Furches, J.
The defendant was charged with having had an improper intercourse with his own daughter, and was found guilty by the jury, and upon motion of the defendant's counsel, His Honor arrested the judgment upon the ground that the bill of indictment did not charge a criminal offence, and Tate, Solicitor for the State, appealed.
Attorney General, for the State .
No counsel for the defendant.
BYNUM J.
The defendant is indicted for incest. This offence was not indictable at common law, and as we have no statute in this State declaring it to be a criminal offence, this indictment cannot be maintained. It is related that in the time of the Commonwealth in England, when the ruling powers found it for their interest to put on the semblance of extraordinary strictness and purity of morals, incest and wilful adultery were made capital crimes; but at the Restoration, when men from the abhorrence of the hypocrisy of the late times fell into a contrary extreme of licentiousness, it was not thought proper to renew the law of such unfashionable rigor; and these offences have been ever since left to the feeble coercion of the Spiritual Court according to the canon law. 4 Bl. 64; 2 Tomlin L. D. 160; Bish. Stat. Cr., §§ 725, 728; Bish. Mar. & Div. §§ 313, 315.
In most of the States of the Union incest is made an indictable offence by statute. Perhaps its rare occurrence in this State has caused the revolting crime to pass unnoticed by the Legislature.
No error.
Judgment affirmed.
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Lowe v. Swanson, No. 5:08 CV 686.
...v. Baker, 69 Cal.2d 44, 49, 69 Cal.Rptr. 595, 442 P.2d 675 (1968)); State v. Sauls, 190 N.C. 810, 130 S.E. 848 (1925) (citing State v. Keesler, 78 N.C. 469 (1878) (dismissing indictment for defendant's improper intercourse with his daughter as not contrary to any statutory offense and unind......
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State v. Sauls
... ... Though ... punishable by the ecclesiastical courts of England as an ... offense against good morals, incest was not indictable at ... common law. It was made a felony in this state by the Act of ... 1879, c. 16, C. S. 4337, 4338; State v. Keesler, 78 ... N.C. 469; State v. Cutshall, 109 N.C. 764, 774, 14 ... S.E. 107, 26 Am. St. Rep. 599; State v. Brittain, ... 117 N.C. 783, 23 S.E. 433. As it is of statutory origin, an ... indictment therefor must charge a crime substantially within ... the terms of the statute. The act denounced as a ... ...
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Mccaskill v. State
...courts of England. 4 Blackstone's Com. 64; 22 Cyc. 44; Bishop's Stat. Crimes (3d Ed.) § 728; 10 Ency. Pl. & Pr. 334; State v. Keesler, 78 N.C. 469; Tuberville State, 4 Tex. 128, text 136. The statutes of this state provide that: 'Persons within the degrees of consanguinity within which marr......
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State v. Judd
... ... appeared to have been a capital offense in the time of the ... commonwealth in England, but the statute was not renewed at ... the Restoration, and thereafter it was not an indictable ... offense, the punishment thereof being relegated to the ... ecclesiastical courts. State v. Keesler, 78 N.C ... The ... crime is purely statutory, and, as scienter is not included ... in the definition contained in the section of our Code ... defining it, it is not an element of the crime and therefore ... need not be alleged in the indictment nor affirmatively ... proven ... ...