State v. Smith

• Decision Date: 12 November 1913
• Citation: 79 S.E. 979,164 N.C. 475
• Parties: STATE v. SMITH.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

79 S.E. 979

164 N.C. 475

STATE v. SMITH.

Supreme Court of North Carolina

November 12, 1913

Appeal from Superior Court, Union County; Bragaw, Judge.

John A Smith was convicted of abandoning his wife without providing adequate support for her and her child, and he appeals. Affirmed.

Evidence held to sustain conviction of a husband for willful abandonment of his wife without providing adequate support for her and her child.

Adams Armfield & Adams and Redwine & Sikes, all of Monroe, for appellant.

The Attorney General, for the State.

WALKER J.

This is an indictment against the defendant for abandonment of his wife without providing adequate support for her and their child, under Revisal § 3355. The evidence unfolds a very sad but revolting, story of this unhappy marriage, caused by the persistent indifference of the defendant towards the prosecutrix and his constant neglect of her, which finally culminated in his desertion of his home and his refusal to perform his marriage obligations. He had seduced this woman before their marriage "with studied, sly, ensnaring art," and pleaded scriptural authority for his betrayal of her and her consequent ruin. He went through the form of redeeming his promise, it is true, and married her, but with evident intent of dissolving the unhallowed union. He plied her with false and repeated accusations of infidelity to him, and refused to support her, in the studied execution of his preconceived design of breaking off their marital relations and forcing her to set him free by suing for a divorce. He saved himself from a prosecution for this seduction by the formal ceremony of marriage, for, so far as he is concerned, it really had no moral sanction. A child was born to them. Shortly after the marriage he began his persecution of his wife by baseless charges of her intimacy with other men, which he himself must have known were without foundation in fact. He proposed that he debauch himself so that she could get a divorce, and, failing in this, he indecently proposed that she do the same thing and give him grounds for severing the marital tie, adding that he would give her $500 to release him in that way. He told her that he had a wife and children in Florida, but this was not true, and seems to have been said to frighten her into submission to his will. The jury might well have found from the evidence, not only that he deserted her willfully after the marriage, and failed to furnish her and their child an adequate support, but that he clearly intended, when he married her, to separate himself from her, and to add the crime of abandonment to that of antenuptial seduction, which she had condoned by the marriage, and which stood as a bar to his criminal indictment. She scornfully resented all of his immoral suggestions and wicked solicitations, and indignantly protested against his evil course towards her, which had grown from bad to worse. When baffled by her steady refusal to defile herself for his vile purposes, or even to listen to his base proposals, he then tried to subject her to temptation, and offered a bribe for the purpose of placing her in a compromising position so that he could use the testimony of his accomplice against her virtue. But he again failed and finally offered to take her to a neighboring city to live, but she declined to go, as his previous treatment and his conduct had convinced her that he was not acting in good faith, after a change of heart and promise of repentance and reform, but solely for the purpose of removing her from the protection of her friends and family, and so isolating her that he might the more easily and successfully continue in his efforts to destroy her character out of the mouths of suborned witnesses of low degree, and, if the evidence is credible, she had good reason to think so and to take counsel of her fears. He complained of her extravagance when she had spent none of his money. For some weeks after the marriage they lived at her grandmother's home. The evidence shows that during this period as the Attorney General puts it, "he squandered on her the sum of 30 cents. Not being able to stand such excessive cost of living, the defendant made arrangements for him and his wife to live in the home of the wife's father. He carried his wife and all of their belongings to the father's home, but after 11 days, during which time he spent only one night with his wife, he moved his own things away, and has never lived with her since." He finally left for Florida, remaining away several months, and stating, while there, that he never expected to live with his wife again, and that the people at his home could do nothing with him, as, "if it got hot, he could go somewhere else and stay," and he repeated this declaration several times, and once admitted that he married the prosecutrix to get rid of trouble he had brought upon himself, alluding to his seduction of her.

The defendant introduced no evidence, but this failure on his part to explain the damaging facts we have recited, and there are more of the same kind in the testimony sent up, cannot be used against him and should prejudice him in no degree.

The abandonment must be willful; that is, without just cause or excuse--unjustifiable and wrongful. State v. Hopkins, 130 N.C. 647, 40 S.E. 973; State v. Toney, 163 N.C. --, 78 S.E. 156. If she consented to the separation, his departure from her home and living apart from her would not be an abandonment. Witty v. Barham, 147 N.C. 479, 61 S.E. 372. There are two ingredients of this crime--abandonment and failure to provide adequate support for wife and child --and both must be alleged and proved. State v. May, 132 N.C. 1021, 43 S.E. 819. The state offered ample evidence to establish the completed offense.

Defendant's offer to provide a home for his wife in Charlotte is no defense, if it was not genuine or made in bad faith. The court submitted this view of the...