State v. Round

• Decision Date: 31 October 1884
• Citation: 82 Mo. 679
• Parties: THE STATE v. ROUND, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

82 Mo. 679

THE STATE

v.ROUND, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

October Term, 1884.

Appeal from Mercer Circuit Court.--HON. G. D. BURGESS, Judge.

AFFIRMED.

Ballew & Ormsby for appellant.

D. H. McIntyre, Attorney General, for the State.

It is contended that the taking was in Iowa and not in Mercer county, Missouri, and that the evidence, therefore, is not sufficient to convict, the court having no jurisdiction of the offense. Under the English statute against taking women forcibly, and against their will, for purposes of marriage or defilement when taken in one county and carried into another, if the force was continued in the last county, the abductor could be indicted therein. 1 Wharton Crim. Law, (8 Ed.) § 588; 1 East P. C., 453. The gist of the offense under that statute, as under section 1257, Revised Statutes, was the taking away, and the abductor, under our statute, may be indicted in any county into which he takes the girl. In larceny, where the taking is in one county and the thief takes the stolen property into another, he may be indicted in the latter county. This was the doctrine at the common law. Upon the same principle this defendant was liable to indictment in Mercer county, Missouri, when he carried the girl into that county after taking her in Iowa. For by nature and by law the father had the right to her legal charge and possession at all times and places, ( People v. Cook, 61 Cal. 478,) and having the girl in possession in Mercer county without the father's consent, was taking her out of his possession in said county.

HENRY, J.

Defendant was indicted for taking one Sarah A. Fuqua, a female under eighteen years of age, from the charge of her father for the purpose of prostitution. His plea was not guilty. On a trial the jury found him guilty and assessed his punishment at imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of three years. From the judgment of the court on the verdict he has appealed.

The evidence was to the effect that the girl was under eighteen years of age; had gone with her father's consent to visit an uncle in Iowa, about thirty miles distant from her home in Mercer county. That after she had been there about two weeks the defendant, in pursuance of an arrangement with her before she went to Iowa, went with a two-horse wagon to her uncle's house and represented that her brother was sick at home and her father had sent him for her. They started next morning and passed that night alone in the woods in Mercer county, and he had sexual intercourse with her in Mercer county. We forbear to relate other disgusting details which are disclosed by the evidence. The contention of appellant's counsel in the court below, he files no brief here, was, that having taken her, not from her father's in Mercer county, Missouri, but from her uncle in the state of Iowa, where she was on a visit, the offense defined in ...