State v. Richey

• Decision Date: 27 March 1911
• Citation: 70 S.E. 729,88 S.C. 239
• Parties: STATE v. RICHEY.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

70 S.E. 729

88 S.C. 239

STATE v. RICHEY.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

March 27, 1911

Appeal from General Sessions Circuit Court of Abbeville County; S.W G. Shipp, Judge.

R. A Richey was convicted of having carnal knowledge of a girl under 14 years of age, and he appeals. Affirmed.

Wm. N Graydon and Wm. P. Greene, for appellant.P. A. Cooper, Sol for the State.

JONES C.J.

The defendant was convicted and sentenced under an indictment charging him with carnal knowledge of Martha Hall, a woman child under 14 years of age.

The first question presented by the exceptions is whether it was error to allow the solicitor to amend the indictment, found September term, 1909, which charged that defendant committed the offense on -- day of December, 1907, by inserting the 1st day of the month, without resubmitting the indictment to the grand jury. The amendment was permissible under the authority of State v. May, 45 S.C. 509, 23 S.E. 513, which sustained an amendment changing the year named in the indictment from 1890 to 1895, on the ground that the amendment did not change the nature of the offense charged and was within the provisions of section 58, Criminal Code. Previous to this legislation, designed to make indictments less technical, it was the settled law that it was not necessary to prove the precise day or year laid in the indictment, except where time entered into the nature of the offense or is made a part of the description of it. State v. Anderson, 3 Rich. Law, 176; State v. Porter, 10 Rich. Law, 148. In so far as time may be regarded as entering into the nature or description of the offense charged, it appears in the allegation of the indictment that on -- day of December, 1907, the defendant ravished Martha Hall, a maiden child under 14 years of age; and it would be necessary to prove that the victim was under the age of 14 at the time of the offense. Whenever it is not necessary to prove the precise time as alleged, it should be competent, under section 58, to amend the allegation as to time. To this extent State v. Brown, 24 S.C. 224, must be regarded as inconsistent with and overruled by State v. May, supra.

A more serious question is presented by the exceptions which assign error in allowing the introduction of evidence of acts of illicit intercourse between defendant and Martha Hall subsequent to the time when she became 14 years old. The time of the offense as laid in the indictment, as stated, was 1st day of December, 1907. The prosecutrix became 14 years old January 23, 1908. She had been living in the house of defendant since a small child, and looked upon him as if he was her father. After testimony that defendant had illicit intercourse with her along in November or December, 1907, a good many times, before she became 14 years old, the court allowed testimony that this relation continued during the summer and fall of 1908; that in February, 1909, prosecutrix went to the Door of Hope in Columbia, S. C., and there, on May 1, 1909, gave birth to a child, which the prosecutrix testified was begotten by the defendant. The general rule of evidence is that, on trial for one crime, testimony of other distinct and independent crimes is not admissible. But to this rule there are well-established exceptions, well stated in People v. Molineux, 168 N.Y. 293, 61 N.E. 294, 62 L. R. A. 240, in this language: "Generally speaking, evidence of other crimes is competent to prove the specific crime charged, when it tends to establish (1) motive; (2) intent; (3) the absence of mistake or accident; (4) a common scheme or plan embracing the commission of two or more crimes, so related to each other that proof of one tends to establish the others; (5) the identity of the person charged with the commission of the crime on trial. Wharton, Crim. Ev. (9th Ed.)...