State v. Sandore

• Decision Date: 25 April 1924
• Citation: 124 A. 528
• Parties: STATE v. SANDORE.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

124 A. 528

STATE

v. SANDORE.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

April 25, 1924.

Appeal from Supreme Court.

Michael Sandore was convicted of assault and battery with intent to carnally abuse. From a judgment of the Supreme Court affirming the conviction, defendant appeals. Affirmed.

The following is the per curiam opinion of the Supreme Court:

The grand jury of Essex county presented against Michael Sandore, the defendant below, three separate indictments, charging assault and battery with intent to carnally abuse three small girls, each of them about 10 years of age. The indictments were tried together and resulted in a verdict of guilty upon each of the charges.

The various grounds upon which we are asked to reverse these convictions are so plainly without merit as hardly to be worthy of specific reference. The first is that the court erroneously permitted the prosecutor of the pleas to call upon a Mrs. Cavalier, who had been subpoenaed as a witness by the state, to stand up during the cross-examination of the defendant, for the purpose of having the defendant admit or deny that he had seen this woman in the neighborhood of the place where these assaults were said to have been committed and at the time thereof. There is not even a suggestion contained in the brief of counsel for the plaintiff in error of a reason for holding this judicial action illegal.

The next ground of reversal is that the court erred in instructing the jury that "if you believe the testimony of these girls"—that is, the little girls whom the state claimed to have been assaulted—"there is evidence before you sufficient to make out the offense of assault with intent to carnally abuse." The argument is that this instruction was harmful; that it tended to prejudice the defendant in the minds of the jury. But this is not enough. A charge to the jury invariably contains matters which are prejudicial to the defendant; but, in order to justify a reversal, it must appear that these matters are not only prejudicial, but that the charge is erroneous in law, and there is no suggestion that this excerpt from the instruction to the jury is open to that criticism.

Next, it is said that the following instruction to the jury was erroneous: "Indeed, as I recall the testimony of one or two of the little girls, they testify that he did, in fact, place his sexual organ against their sexual organ, which, if true, would make out the offense of carnal abuse itself, although he is not...