State v. MacKey

Decision Date12 May 1891
Citation82 Iowa 393,48 N.W. 918
PartiesSTATE v. MACKEY.
CourtIowa Supreme Court

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Appeal from district court, Johnson county; S. H. FAIRALL, Judge.

The defendant was indicted and tried for the crime of seduction. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and he was discharged. The state appeals.John Y. Stone, Atty. Gen., C. S. Rank, Co. Atty., and M. J. Wade, for the State.

ROTHROCK, J.

Mary M. Costello, the prosecutrix in the case, is the daughter of a farmer in Johnson county. It is not denied by the defendant that he repeatedly had sexual intercourse with her. Before any evidence was introduced upon the trial the defendant caused the following admission to be made of record: “It is admitted on the part of the defense that the defendant had intercourse with the prosecutrix, and is the father of the child born to her; and it is conceded that he did promise to marry the girl, and that he loved her.” A great many exceptions were taken by the state to rulings of the court on the admission and exclusion of evidence; and nearly the whole charge to the jury was also excepted to. Many of these questions were presented by an assignment of errors, and are argued by counsel. As is usual in the appeals by the state in criminal cases, there is no appearance for the defendant. The verdict of not guilty is a final disposition of the charge as to the defendant, and there is no motive for him to follow an appeal to this court. The only object of the appeal is to obtain from this court an authoritative exposition of the law upon disputed questions. In view of the character of the appeal it is not proper for this court upon a mere ex parte appeal to discuss and dispose of technical questions as to the admission or exclusion of evidence, unless they present some important question of law proper to be determined as a precedent in the criminal practice in the district courts of this state. We will not set out nor discuss these alleged errors further than to say that we think that in the trial of the case too much importance was attached to the admissions of the defendant, above set out. The prosecutrix, at the time she yielded to the defendant, was a child a few days past the age of 14; and the evidence tends to show that she was not only a child in years, but that she was of weak mental development for one of her age. She testified as a witness that before the first act of sexual intercourse the defendant not only promised to marry her, but that he stated to her that many others of the young girls of the neighborhood were in the habit of engaging in sexual intercourse. We have stated these facts in brief, that it may be seen that it was an important question in the case whether the defendant, a man of 35 years of age,...

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