State v. Otis

• Decision Date: 10 October 1893
• Docket Number: 16,904
• Citation: 34 N.E. 954,135 Ind. 267
• Parties: The State v. Otis
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

34 N.E. 954

135 Ind. 267

The State v. Otis

No. 16,904

Supreme Court of Indiana

October 10, 1893

From the Huntington Circuit Court.

The judgment is affirmed.

A. G Smith, Attorney-General, S. E. Cook, Prosecuting Attorney and W. A. Branyan, for State.

Z. T Dungan and C. W. Watkins, for appellee.

Howard J. Dailey, J., took no part in the decision of this case.

OPINION

Howard, J.

Under section 1992, R. S. 1881, an affidavit and information were filed against the appellee, and he was arrested for the seduction of the prosecuting witness, Ella M. Otis.

To the affidavit and information the appellee answered by special plea in bar, saying, "he is not guilty, for the reason that after the matters and things as set up in the affidavit and information he married the prosecuting witness, and that she is still his wife."

A demurrer for want of sufficient facts, to this plea, was overruled.

The prosecuting attorney then filed a reply, admitting that the appellee, "after the seduction, went through the form of marriage with Ella M. Otis, the person named in the affidavit and information as being seduced," but saying that at the time of the marriage ceremony the appellee was in the custody of the sheriff awaiting the action of the circuit court, on a charge of bastardy, "having been adjudged by a justice of the peace to be the father of a bastard child born to said Ella Otis"; that he fraudulently went through the ceremony of marriage, "for the purpose of avoiding the continuance of imprisonment for bastardy, and for the purpose of avoiding a prosecution for criminal seduction"; that at the time of the marriage ceremony he did not intend to live as the husband of Ella M. Otis, and keep his marriage vows, "but to break his promise immediately and leave the said Ella Otis without remedy"; and that he "did, immediately after the marriage, break his marriage vows and promises"; averring, therefore, "that such marriage was a mere sham, a fraud, a deception, a trick, a device to avoid prosecution and imprisonment, and that defendant ought not to go acquit but be held to answer said charge."

To this reply a demurrer was sustained and the appeal followed.

The overruling of the demurrer to the plea in bar, and the sustaining of the demurrer to the reply, are assigned as errors.

In case of seduction under promise of marriage, we think there can be little doubt that the subsequent marriage of the parties is a bar to further prosecution for the crime committed.

The keeping of the promise of marriage is a partial reparation for the wrong done, the only reparation in any degree adequate to the injury.

The chief object to be attained by our criminal statutes is the betterment of the condition of society, and the reform rather than the punishment of the criminal. Section 18 of article 1, of the constitution of the State, provides that "the penal code shall be founded on the principles of reformation and not of vindictive justice."

If the wronged woman freely enters into the married relation with her seducer, thus restoring in some measure the honor of her own womanhood, and securing also the good name and well being of her child, it would seem that her act is a condonation of the offense, so far as she is concerned, and that the policy of the law would be better served by such marriage than by any punishment that might be meted out to the offender.

The question does not appear to have arisen heretofore in this State. Our decisions are nearly silent upon the subject.

Dowling v. Crapo, by her next friend, 65 Ind. 209, was an action for seduction, where the prosecuting witness afterwards married a person other than the seducer, and it was contended that such marriage barred her action. The court said: "We can conceive of no good reason why an action for the seduction of an unmarried female should be barred by her subsequent marriage. Such subsequent marriage does not remove the stigma, or compensate the injury caused by the seduction, nor is there any principle of public policy which requires that a subsequent marriage should bar the action. Public policy encourages, rather than discourages, marriage. Of course, we intimate no opinion as to the effect of a subsequent marriage to the seducer."

In bastardy, the marriage of the...