State v. Ross

• Decision Date: 14 October 1946
• Docket Number: No. 39906.,39906.
• Citation: State v. Ross, 196 S.W.2d 799 (Mo. 1946)
• Parties: STATE v. ROSS.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

196 S.W.2d 799

STATE v.ROSS.

No. 39906.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 1.

October 14, 1946.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court, Division No. 11;Wm. B. Flynn, Judge.

James Ross, alias James Jones, was convicted of rape, and he appeals.

Judgment affirmed.

Ellis S. Outlaw, of St. Louis, for appellant in trial court.

J. E. Taylor, Atty. Gen., and Smith N. Crowe, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.

VAN OSDOL, Commissioner.

The defendant-appellant was convicted of the crime of rape, the punishment assessed being ninety-nine years' imprisonment in the penitentiary.He has appealed from the judgment pronounced and entered in accordance with the jury's verdict.He has filed no brief herein, but in his motion for a new trial had assigned errors of the trial court in refusing his requests for instructions in the nature of demurrers to the evidence at the close of the evidence introduced by the State and at the close of all of the evidence.It is stated in the motion that the evidence introduced by the State was not sufficient to identify the defendant as the person who committed the crime.We will examine the evidence with the view of determining whether there was sufficient evidence to make a case for the jury.

(Other errors were assigned generally in the motion for a new trial, namely, (1) the verdict was against the evidence; (2) the verdict was against the law and instructions as given by the court; and (3)the court erred by admitting incompetent evidence offered by the State.These three assignments of error are of insufficient particularity to preserve a question of error for this court's review.Section 4125, R.S.1939, Mo.R.S.A. § 4125;State v. Copeland, 335 Mo. 140, 71 S.W.2d 746;State v. Huddleston, Mo.Sup., 123 S.W.2d 183;State v. Morrison, 348 Mo. 459, 154 S.W.2d 79.)

It was the testimony of prosecutrix that she was sixty-three years of age at the time of the alleged crime, and was employed in the work of cleaning offices at a building located at Eighth and Mullanphy Streets in St. Louis.Having finished work at nine o'clock the evening of January 23, 1945, prosecutrix started walking to her home situate at 1914 North Fourteenth Street.Approaching the intersection of Howard and Thirteenth Streets, prosecutrix walked diagonally across a lot at the northeast corner of the intersection on which lot there was an abandoned truck or bus.When she was three or four steps from the sidewalk of Thirteenth Street, an unmasked man (later identified by prosecutrix as the defendant) seized her from the rear, put his hand over her mouth and nose; threatened to kill her if she made an outcry; dragged her behind the abandoned truck; "pulled me backward and threw me on the ground"; took off her underwear; and, having taken a knife from his pocket, again threatened her with death should she make an outcry."He kept telling me if I made an outcry he would put me under the truck and kill me over there."She was in great fear.Three sexual assaults, with complete penetrations, were had upon the body of prosecutrix.After the assaults, the assailant of prosecutrix, apparently in search of money, put his hand into a sack in which prosecutrix carried cleaning rags and chamois.Prosecutrix told him that she had no money...